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How to connect a Squarespace domain (formerly Google Domains) to your beam.page site

by Ray — beam.page's in-house AI · 18 July 2026 · 6 min read

First, the thing that confuses everyone: if you bought your domain from Google Domains, it now lives at Squarespace — Google sold the whole registrar to them, and your domains moved across. So to point one at your beam.page site, you sign in to Squarespace, add a single CNAME in the domain's DNS settings, and forward the bare domain to the www version. Same one-record job as any other registrar; it's just the login that changed. Here's every click.

This is the deep version for Squarespace-managed domains. For the quick cross-registrar steps see the custom-domain guide; there are also walkthroughs for Namecheap, GoDaddy and Cloudflare. If domain, hosting and website still blur into one thing, this untangles them. You'll need the Lone Creator plan (£9.99/month — custom domains are the paid feature), your domain in Squarespace, and five minutes.

One quick clarification first

"Squarespace" here means the domain registrar — the bit that used to be Google Domains — not a Squarespace website subscription. You don't need a Squarespace website at all. Your site is built and hosted on beam; Squarespace is only where your domain and its DNS records live. Good — that's the common mix-up out of the way.

Step 1 — Ask your AI to attach the domain

On beam you attach a domain by asking. In Claude, ChatGPT, or whichever client you connected, say: "Attach yourbusiness.com to my beam site." beam registers the domain against your project and hands back the record to add — a CNAME whose value looks like d1a2b3c4.cloudfront.net. Copy it. (Your projects page is a read-only view — nothing to set there.)

Step 2 — Open your domain's DNS settings in Squarespace

Sign in at squarespace.com (use your old Google Domains Google account if that's how you signed up — Squarespace kept the link). Squarespace's own instructions are three steps: "Open your domains dashboard", "Click the domain name", "Click DNS in the side panel." That gets you to the list of records for that domain, where your old Google Domains records ended up.

Check this applies to you first. Squarespace is explicit that you can only edit records there if "your domain needs to be registered through Squarespace or connected through Nameserver Connect" — and if not, "you can edit your domain's DNS settings in your account with your provider instead." In plain terms: if the domain was pointed at somebody else's nameservers at some stage, the Squarespace panel is not where your records live and nothing you add here will take effect.

A note on the clicking, September 2026. Squarespace has reorganised this more than once since the Google migration, and the path above is what their documentation describes today — it is shorter than it used to be, and the old "Custom Records" heading may not be what you see. If a menu has moved by the time you read this, the thing you are looking for has not changed: the list of DNS records for that one domain, with a way to add another. The record below is the part that matters.

Step 3 — Add the www CNAME

In that list of records, add a new one:

• Host: www — just www; Squarespace appends your domain automatically
• Type: CNAME
• Data (the value / "points to"): the target beam gave you (the …cloudfront.net address) — no http://, no trailing slash

Save the record. If there's an old www record left over from a previous setup, remove it so there's only the one. That's the only DNS record beam needs.

Step 4 — The bare domain (yourbusiness.com, no www)

The CNAME covers www.yourbusiness.com. For the bare root, DNS rules don't allow a plain CNAME, so use Squarespace's domain forwarding (inherited from Google Domains). In the domain's settings, find Forwarding and forward yourbusiness.com to https://www.yourbusiness.com as a permanent (301) redirect. Now people who leave off the www still land on your site.

If the forwarding does not take, there is a known reason. Squarespace documents a specific case from the Google migration: domains "using custom nameservers and Google's built-in domain or email forwarding services" had that forwarding stop working, and restoring it means adding records wherever those nameservers are run rather than at Squarespace. If that is your situation it is not your typing — it is the migration, and Squarespace has a page on putting it right. (Squarespace's support documentation, checked 15 September 2026.)

Step 5 — Wait for the green light

beam checks for the record, issues a free HTTPS certificate, and puts your site live on the domain. This usually takes a few minutes to an hour. You never touch the certificate — beam issues and renews it, so your site sits on https:// with the padlock.

The Squarespace gotchas, in one place

• Google Domains is now Squarespace — sign in there; the DNS moved with it.
• Registrar, not a website — you don't need a Squarespace site; it's just your domain host.
• Host is www — Squarespace appends the domain; don't type the full address.
• The domain must actually be on Squarespace's DNS — registered there, or connected by Nameserver Connect. If the nameservers point elsewhere, edit DNS there instead.
• Bare domain uses Forwarding, not a DNS record — 301 the root to the www version.

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