Publishing takes the saved version of your website and puts it online at its address. Until you publish, your website exists only in the editor.
Draft and published are two different things
Every website has a draft (what you see and edit) and, once you have published, a published version, which is what visitors see. They are separate on purpose:
| Action | Changes the draft | Changes what visitors see |
|---|---|---|
| Editing | No, until you save | No |
| Save | Yes | No |
| Publish | No | Yes |
This is what lets you rework a live website over several sessions without your customers watching it happen.
What happens before it goes live
Publishing runs a check over your website first, and reports two kinds of finding.
- Errors block publishing. They are things that would produce a genuinely broken public website: a button with no destination, a link to a page that does not exist, a contact form with nowhere to deliver to, missing required metadata.
- Warnings do not block publishing. They are things you probably meant differently: an empty heading, a low-contrast button, a website that carries more pages than the current limit.
Publishing
Save first
Publishing snapshots the saved draft, not what is on screen. The editor saves any pending changes for you before it publishes, and stops if that save fails rather than publishing something older than what you are looking at.
Choose the address
An Instantsite address (instantsite.app) is available on every plan. A connected domain is a paid feature (see connecting a custom domain).
Publish
The website goes live at that address, and the editor and dashboard both show it as live.
Updating a live website
Edit, save, then publish again. Visitors keep seeing the previous published version the whole time, and see the new one from the moment you publish.
Taking a website offline
Unpublish takes the website off its address. The website itself is untouched: the draft, its content, its pages and its images all stay exactly as they are, and publishing again puts it back.
Use it when a business closes for a season, when a page needs rewriting in a hurry, or when an address needs freeing for another website.
What publishing does not do
- It does not submit your website to search engines. Search engines find websites on their own schedule.
- It does not change your plan or your billing.
- It does not lock the website. You can keep editing immediately.
Before your first publish
- Your business name, phone number and email address are correct on every page.
- Every button goes somewhere you meant.
- The contact form delivers to an address you actually read.
- Any placeholder section (reviews, certifications, team) is either filled in with real content or removed.
- You have read the whole website once on a phone-sized window.
The tutorial Publish your website walks the whole sequence, including what to do when a check fails.
How many websites can be live
Your plan sets how many websites your account holds (Free 1, Pro 2, Premium 5) and each of them can be published. There is no separate limit on how many may be live at once.