Short guides for the services your site runs on — hosting at Netlify, your domain at Namecheap, and email through Google Workspace. The vendors keep their own instructions current; we point you there with the context that matters for a Sevra site.
Your Sevra site lives on Netlify — you own the account. These guides cover the account over its life: creating it at cutover, upgrading to Pro, adding Sevra as a collaborator, and downgrading to Free later if you decide to manage the site yourself.
You'll do this at cutover, before Sevra deploys the build. Use an email you want attached long-term — changing it later is doable but a small hassle. Any sign-up option works; email and password is the simplest.
Sign up: app.netlify.com/signup
Pro is what lets Sevra join your team and deploy the site. You'll upgrade at cutover, right before we push the build over — it's $20 per month, charged by Netlify directly, and month-to-month. You'll see your plan described in credits (3,000 per month); a Sevra site uses a small fraction, so the number isn't anything to plan around.
Netlify's walkthrough: Change your pricing plan
Once Pro is active, add Sevra as a team member so we can deploy the site and handle changes. Invite bruce@sevradesign.com from Team settings → Members → Invite; choose the Developer role, which covers deploying and managing the site without touching billing. Removing Sevra later is one click — useful if you switch to Independence at day 30.
Netlify's walkthrough: Manage team members
If you chose Independence at day 30 — running the site without Sevra holding keys — this is what closes out that decision. Hold off on downgrading until we've wrapped up any post-launch adjustments and we both agree the site is 100% good to go. The change takes effect at the start of your next billing cycle. If you need a change later, schedule a call and plan on re-upgrading to Pro for a month while we work.
Same walkthrough, downgrade section: Downgrading pricing plans
Your domain is your web address (yourbusiness.com, for example). Sevra recommends Namecheap for buying and managing domains — it's inexpensive, straightforward, and where Sevra's own domain lives. These guides cover buying a domain if you don't have one, then pointing it at Netlify so visitors reach your site.
Start at namecheap.com and search for the name you want. The flow is simple — search, pay, and the domain is yours — but the checkout page will try to sell you add-ons you don't need for a Sevra site. A few things worth knowing before and during purchase:
Before you buy:
.com” when it's available — still the most familiar extensionAt checkout, keep or skip these add-ons:
Buy at: namecheap.com
Once you own the domain, you'll tell it to send visitors to your Netlify-hosted site. That's done by adding two small records in Namecheap's Advanced DNS panel — an A record for the apex (yourbusiness.com) and a CNAME for www. Netlify supplies the exact values to enter; Namecheap's panel is where you enter them.
At Namecheap, the DNS editor lives at Dashboard → Domain List → Manage → Advanced DNS. The nameservers on the domain must be set to Namecheap BasicDNS for the Host Records editor to appear — if they're currently set to Custom DNS, switch back first. DNS changes usually propagate within an hour but can take up to 48 hours globally.
Values from Netlify: Configure external DNS · Namecheap UI: Host records setup
Email at your domain — you@yourbusiness.com instead of a gmail.com address. Sevra recommends Google Workspace: it gives you Gmail, Calendar, Drive, and Meet under your own domain, priced per user per month. Sevra runs on Workspace too.
Start at workspace.google.com — Google's signup tool walks you through picking a plan, verifying the domain, and adding the MX records that route mail to Google. The verification and MX records both live at Namecheap, on the same Advanced DNS panel you used to point the domain. If you ever switch email providers, the MX record is what you change.
Google reference: Set up MX records for Google Workspace