Drawbacks of not getting a custom domain
- It hurts trust. Free-service addresses (e.g. pages.dev) are also commonly used by scam sites, so customers and business partners may doubt whether you are a legitimate business and hesitate to enquire, visit, or trade with you. It is also a weaker address to give banks, partners, or job boards as your company website
- The address includes a third-party name, so it is long, hard to remember, and awkward to say out loud when printed on business cards, flyers, and signs
- Switching to a custom domain later changes the address, so search rankings and indexing do not carry over and search optimisation starts again
- Printed QR codes, business cards, flyers, and signs all have to be remade
- Addresses registered on Google Maps (Business Profile), Instagram, LINE, review sites, and links already shared all have to be updated, and the old links break
- You cannot have an email address like info@yourshop.com
- The address belongs to the provider (e.g. Cloudflare), so a change of terms or a discontinued service can change or remove it. With your own domain, the address stays the same even if you move hosting
- Domain names are first come, first served — the name you want (e.g. yourshop.com) may be taken by someone else if you wait