A week ago, in my first post, I made a public promise to build JupiterGoals—a tool to solve a problem I know intimately. The first step to making that idea real wasn’t writing code. It was giving the project a home on the internet. Before you can build the house, you have to secure the land.

This post is the first entry in the Public Blueprint series, where I’m documenting every decision and dollar spent. My hope is that this serves as a practical, transparent guide for anyone else looking to turn their own idea into a reality.

(If you’re new here and want to follow the journey, you can join the ‘Day Zero’ waitlist to get early access and all future updates.)

Today, we’re laying the foundation. This post covers the first two items on the checklist: choosing a domain registrar and setting up a professional email.

Choosing the Digital Real Estate: Domain Registrars

A domain registrar is where you buy and manage your domain name (e.g., jupitergoals.com). While services like GoDaddy, Namecheap, and Cloudflare all sell the same TLDs (.com, .io, .ai), their pricing and business models are very different.

Founder’s Log: The choice of TLD was my first decision. A .ai domain costs around $70 for two years, and .io is about $45. As I’m bootstrapping JupiterGoals, keeping costs low is critical. A classic .com is not only the most recognized but also the most affordable at about $10, so I opted for that.

To make the decision, I put together this quick comparison table:

Feature Cloudflare GoDaddy Namecheap
Pricing Model At-Cost (Wholesale Price) Low Intro Offer, High Renewal Low Intro Offer, Moderate Renewal
.com First-Year Price ~$9.77 Often $0.01 - $12 (with plan) Often $5.98 - $10.98
.com Renewal Price ~$9.77 (stable price) ~$22+ (significant increase) ~$15+ (moderate increase)
WHOIS Privacy Free, Forever Free for first year, then paid Free, Forever
DNS Service Mandatory Cloudflare DNS Standard DNS (upsell for premium) Standard DNS (upsell for premium)
Best For Tech-savvy users, developers, those prioritizing long-term cost and security. Beginners wanting an all-in-one package and phone support. Users seeking a balance between low initial cost and free privacy.

My choice was Cloudflare. Their “at-cost” pricing means the renewal price won’t skyrocket after the first year. That predictability is invaluable for a new project. Plus, their world-class security and DNS services are included by default, which is one less thing to worry about.

🔽 Guide: Registering a Domain with Cloudflare
  1. Go to the Cloudflare Registrar page: https://www.cloudflare.com/products/registrar/ and search for your domain.
  2. Create a Cloudflare account.
  3. Choose the registration period. I chose 2 years so I don’t have to think about it for a while. Enter your contact and payment details.
  4. Purchase the domain.
  5. That’s it. The domain now appears under the “Domain Registration” tab in the dashboard.

Setting Up the Mailbox: [email protected]

A professional email address makes the project feel official and is essential for managing communications. I chose Google Workspace for this.

Founder’s Log: While I could use Cloudflare’s free Email Routing to start, I decided to invest in a full Google Workspace account from day one. For a small monthly fee, I get a dedicated inbox plus the entire integrated toolkit of Drive, Calendar, and Meet. Investing in a professional foundation from the start feels like the right call for the project.

Connecting Google Workspace to a Cloudflare domain is surprisingly simple, as Google’s setup wizard handles the complex DNS configuration automatically.

🔽 Guide: Linking Google Workspace to Cloudflare

Here is the setup flow.

  1. Sign up for Google Workspace: https://workspace.google.com/
  2. When prompted, choose to “Use a domain I already own.”
  3. Enter your domain name.
  4. Follow the verification steps. Google will detect you’re using Cloudflare and provide an automated setup option. It’s just a few clicks.
  5. Create your admin user and password. This will be your primary email (e.g., [email protected]).
  6. Once setup is complete, you’ll land in the Google Admin console.
  7. Pro Tip: Use Aliases. Google Workspace charges per user. If you just need another email address (like hello@ or support@) and not a separate user, use an alias. Go to Directory > Users, select your user, and click “Add alternate emails”. It’s free.

Cost-Saving Tip for Google Workspace

By default, Google Workspace signs you up for the “Business Standard” plan (£11.80/user/month). If you don’t need all its features, you can downgrade to “Business Starter” (£5.90/user/month) in the Billing settings to cut your monthly costs in half. More details are at workspace.google.com/pricing.

The Foundation is Laid

With that, JupiterGoals has an address and a mailbox. It’s a small but crucial step that transforms an idea into a tangible entity. The project now has its own identity, which I can use to secure brand accounts on platforms like Twitter and LinkedIn.

The digital land is secured. Next up: building the actual house. In the next post, I’ll show you how I set up this blog, connected it to the domain using Hugo and Netlify, and established the CI/CD pipeline to publish updates automatically.

Be a Founding Member: Join the JupiterGoals Waitlist

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