What is a 'naked domain'? (the terminology fix for a confusing problem)

If you have ever spent an hour Googling things like "why doesn't my website work without www" or "how do I make example.com load without typing www first," you have run into a problem that is easy to fix once you know the term for it but almost impossible to find a solution to if you don't. The term is **naked domain**.

This is a short, plain-English explainer of what a naked domain is, why so many web hosting providers cannot make it work out of the box, and what your real options are.

What a naked domain actually is

A naked domain is your domain name without any subdomain in front of it. So:

• example.com is a naked domain
• www.example.com is NOT a naked domain (the "www" part is a subdomain)
• blog.example.com is NOT a naked domain
• mail.example.com is NOT a naked domain

The technical name for the same thing is **apex domain** or **root domain**. Different writers use different terms. They all mean the same thing: your domain with nothing in front of it.

You might also see it called the bare domain, the zone apex, or just "the root." The term you will see most often in DNS documentation is "apex." The term you will see most often in web hosting documentation is "naked." Same concept.

Why this is a problem

Most modern web hosting platforms (Google Sites, Wix, Webflow, Notion, Carrd, Squarespace, Vercel, Netlify, and dozens of others) ask you to set up your custom domain using a DNS record type called a **CNAME**. A CNAME basically says "this subdomain is an alias for that other server."

The catch: CNAME records are not allowed on the apex (naked) domain by the DNS specification itself. This is not a Google Sites limitation or a Wix limitation. It is a fundamental rule of how DNS works. You can put a CNAME on www.example.com all day long, but you cannot put a CNAME on example.com.

The reason for this rule is technical. The apex has to have certain other records (like SOA and NS) that would conflict with how CNAMEs work. The DNS standard was written this way decades ago and has not changed.

So when your hosting provider tells you "set up a CNAME pointing to our server," they actually mean "set up a CNAME for your www subdomain pointing to our server." If you only set up the www subdomain, then typing example.com (without the www) will not work because there is no DNS record telling browsers where to send that traffic.

This is why so many DIY website builders only work with www.example.com and not example.com.

What the fix looks like

The fix is to set up an HTTP redirect from the naked domain to the www subdomain. When someone types example.com, they get redirected to https://www.example.com automatically and invisibly. The user sees your site. The address bar updates to show the www version. Nobody notices.

There are three common ways to set this up:

1. **Use a redirect service**. Cloudflare and redirect.pizza both do this for free. Cloudflare requires you to move your DNS to them. redirect.pizza just needs you to change one DNS record. We wrote a step-by-step guide for Google Sites users that walks through both, and the same steps work for any other CNAME-only platform by changing the CNAME target.

2. **Use a hosting provider that natively supports apex domains**. Some providers (Vercel, Netlify, and a few others) have technical workarounds called ALIAS or ANAME records that simulate a CNAME on the apex. If your hosting provider supports this, just use the feature they built for it.

3. **Run your own server with an A record on the apex**. This is the old way. It works but it costs more and requires more maintenance than the redirect approach.

For 95% of small business websites and DIY site owners on Google Sites, Wix, Webflow, Squarespace, Notion, Carrd, Substack, Beehiiv, or any other CNAME-only platform, option 1 (the free redirect service) is the right answer.

A few common misconceptions

**"My web hosting must be broken."** No. The CNAME limitation is in the DNS standard, not in your hosting provider's code. The hosting provider cannot change DNS.

**"I should just buy a different domain."** Doesn't help. The same limitation applies to every domain. The fix is the redirect, regardless of where you bought the domain.

**"Maybe I need to upgrade to a paid plan."** Almost never. The redirect fix is free with Cloudflare or redirect.pizza. Paid hosting plans rarely solve this directly.

**"Can I just tell users to type www?"** You can, but they won't. People type the domain name they remember, which is almost always the naked version. You will lose visitors who tried example.com, got an error, and gave up.

Why this term is so hard to find

The reason most people get stuck on this problem is that the user-facing language ("my domain doesn't work") and the technical language ("apex CNAME limitation") do not share any words. Search engines cannot bridge that gap on their own. You have to learn the term first to find the answer.

That is the entire reason this post exists. If you got here from a search and now know the term, you have what you need to find the rest of the fix. Search for "naked domain redirect" or "apex domain redirect to www" and you will find dozens of step-by-step guides, including the one on this site.