Keep the domain. Change what is on it.
GoDaddy sells you the name, the mailbox and the template. Clay builds the site itself, out of the Google listing you already keep up to date.
A real Clay site — built from a Google listing
Most people on GoDaddy's website builder did not choose it. They bought the domain there, years ago, and the builder came with it — so one Sunday they opened it, picked a template, got as far as the opening hours, and the rest of the page still says what it said on the day it was generated.
Clay starts at the other end, and it does not want your domain. Type the business name and the site is built out of the Google listing you already keep current: your photographs, your week, your reviews, your map and your phone number. When it looks right, you change one record at GoDaddy and the name you already own points here.
One record moves. The rest stays.
You do not have to transfer anything. The domain stays registered at GoDaddy, in your account, on your card — the only thing that changes is the A record, which is the line that says which computer answers when somebody types the name.
Your mailboxes are a different line entirely. Mail is carried by the MX records, and pointing the website somewhere else does not touch them, so anything@yourshop.com keeps arriving exactly where it arrives today.
It is not instant and nobody does it for you. You paste our address into the DNS panel you already have a login for and wait for it to spread, usually inside an hour. Pointing your own domain is part of the paid plan; until then the site is live and free at name.clay.site.
A template is somebody else's business
The wizard asks what kind of business you are and hands back a page of stock photographs of a bakery that is not yours, a heading about passion and a paragraph where your story goes. None of it is wrong, exactly. It is just not yours yet, and making it yours is the entire job.
Clay does that part before you arrive. It reads your listing through Google's own API, takes up to eight of your photographs and looks at them before the design is chosen, and reads about a hundred of your reviews to find out what people actually say. The first page you see already has your Tuesday hours on it.
We do not sell email
GoDaddy is a registrar with a website builder attached, and the registrar half is good at its job. Keep the domain there. Keep the mailboxes there. Ring their line at eleven at night and somebody picks up, and there is no equivalent of that here.
What moves is the site itself — the part your customers actually look at, and the part that on most of these accounts was never finished. Two bills instead of one is a real cost. So is a business whose website still carries a placeholder heading eighteen months on.
Clay vs GoDaddy Website Builder
Four rows here go to GoDaddy. Two of them — the mailboxes and the phone line — are good reasons to keep paying them, and this page is not going to argue with either.
What arrives at the other end
Built from the listing, not a template
Your photographs, your week, your reviews, your map and your phone number are on the page before you type anything.
The phone page is its own drawing
Not the desktop squeezed: one column of cards with the bar at the top, drawn from the same content so it cannot drift.
Menu, shop and booking are the site
A menu with courses and prices, a shop with a basket, and booking for appointments, tables or hire on the paid plan.
Your hours and reviews stay current
Once the site is claimed we re-read your Google listing about once a day, so a bank holiday is changed in one place.
The short version
- The domain stays at GoDaddy — one A record points it here
- Your mailboxes are untouched: we do not sell email and do not need to
- A finished site out of your Google listing, before you sign up or pay
- Menu, shop, reviews, hours and a map, with no add-on to buy
- Eight languages, written in that language rather than translated
- Swap the theme at three in the afternoon without losing a word
Questions
Do I have to move my domain away from GoDaddy?
No, and we would rather you did not. It stays registered in your GoDaddy account. You change one A record in their DNS panel so the name points at Clay, and everything else — renewal, ownership, your mailboxes — carries on as it does today. Pointing your own domain is part of the paid plan: how domains work.
Will my GoDaddy email keep working?
Yes. Mail is carried by the MX records and the website by the A record, and changing one does not touch the other. Clay does not sell mailboxes and has no plans to, so keep buying them where you buy them now and nothing about your address changes.
Can I import my GoDaddy site?
No. There is no importer, and on a five-page business site there is rarely anything worth importing: the photographs, hours, reviews and map come straight from your Google listing, and a paragraph you are fond of is a copy and paste. If your site is a hundred blog posts deep, stay — Clay has no blog.
Is there somebody to ring?
No. GoDaddy's phone line is a genuine advantage and this page is not going to pretend otherwise. You write to us and a person reads it, but there is no number and no night shift. If that line is what you are paying them for, it is a fair reason to stay.
Can I take payments on the site?
Not on the page. The shop is a real catalogue with a page per product and a basket, and the order is handed to WhatsApp or email for you to answer with payment and pickup — the site says so in its own small print. A booking deposit is the same: stated on the confirmation, taken in person.
Real sites, made with Clay
Open one. It is the live site in a frame, not a screenshot — so what you see is what it looks like right now.
Keep the name. Change the site.
Type your business name and see what comes out of your own Google listing. Nothing to sign up for, and the domain stays exactly where it is.