Signing up & launching
How long it takes
- Free, Community & Collective — a couple of minutes, no domain needed.
- Organization & Custom — about 3 minutes of your time; the rest (deploying your dedicated PDS) happens in the background over the next few hours, with email updates as each piece comes online.
What to bring
Your personal account to set up as an admin, your community's name and a little about you (all plans), and a domain if you're on Organization or Custom — you can buy one during signup or bring your own, since it becomes both your community's home and the root of every member's handle.
The flow
Pick your plan
Free, Community, Collective, Organization, or Custom. See Pricing.
Sign up with your personal account
Not your community account right away. This is important so you can have at least one Acorn account admin from the beginning.
Pay (skipped on Free)
On Organization & Custom, this kicks off deploying your dedicated infrastructure.
Tell us about you
Name, email, and a description of your community.
Name your community
And on Organization/Custom, claim its address. We check the domain live and preview your members' handles as you type.
This is one thing that's hard to change later, since it's woven into every member's handle.
You're live 🥳
Acorn points you to natural next steps: moderation rules, creating feeds, (for Organization/Custom, finishing your look), then inviting members.
Connect your domain (Organization & Custom)
Your dashboard shows the exact DNS records to add. Quick pointers by registrar:
- Namecheap: Domain List → Manage → Advanced DNS — add each record as shown.
- Cloudflare: DNS tab → Add record for each — set proxy status to DNS only (grey cloud), not orange.
- GoDaddy: My Products → Domain → DNS → Manage Zones — add each record.
- Porkbun: your domain's DNS records page — add each record.