How to password-protect your site

A TeleportHQ site can ask visitors for a password before it opens. On the TeleportHQ trial, or in any workspace without a paid subscription, TeleportHQ adds the password itself when you publish, and it stays until the workspace subscribes. On Pro and Premium, the password is your choice: in the Publish window, open the Password Protection option and click Enable or Remove. The same buttons are in Project settings → General, under Password protection. The password is a 6-character code, for example K7Q2MX, and visitors need it at every address of your site. A visitor sees your site's password page, with the TeleportHQ logo and one field; once they type the password, that browser stays signed in for 30 days. On Pro and Premium you can show your own logo on the page instead.

Before you start#

• Publish first. The password and the Enable and Remove buttons appear only after the project has been published. See How to publish your site.
• Your plan decides. Without a paid subscription, for example on the trial, every publish is password-protected and you can't remove the password. On Pro and Premium, your site is public until you click Enable.
• Role. You need the Owner, Admin or Designer role.
• Your own logo on the password page (Pro and Premium). Pick it under Password Protection in the Publish window, or in Project settings → General, while your site has a password. See Show your own logo on the password page.
• Members-only pages are a different feature. To let only signed-in visitors see some pages, see How to make a page visible only to signed-in users.

On the trial: share the password TeleportHQ adds#

In a TeleportHQ workspace without a paid subscription, such as a trial workspace, every publish to Production or Staging puts your site behind a password. Publishing again keeps the same password, so the people you already gave it to can still open the site.

To copy the password:

1. Open your project in the editor.
2. At the top right, click Publish.
3. In the window's left menu, make sure Publish is selected. At the top, keep Production selected.
4. Below the Custom domain section, find the Password Protection option, with a lock icon. After a publish it reads On and is already open.
5. Next to Password:, click the copy button.
6. Send the password to the people who should see the site, for example a client reviewing a new design.

Before your first publish, the option reads Off and says "Without a subscription, every publish is password-protected. Subscribe to make your site public."

Without a paid subscription, Remove carries a PRO label. Clicking it opens "This feature is not available on your current plan", which says "Sites published on a trial or without a subscription stay behind a password." and "Subscribe to make your site public." Click Upgrade Now to choose a plan, or Cancel. Subscribing doesn't remove the password by itself: after the workspace subscribes, open the project in the editor again and click Remove. See How to subscribe to Pro or Premium.

On Pro or Premium: turn the password on#

On a paid TeleportHQ plan, your published site is public until you add a password.

1. Open your project in the editor.
2. At the top right, click Publish.
3. In the window's left menu, make sure Publish is selected. At the top, keep Production selected.
4. Below the Custom domain section, find the Password Protection option, with a lock icon and Off on its right. Click it to open it. It says "Visitors must enter a password to see your site, at every address it is published on."
5. Click Enable.

6. Next to Password:, click the copy button to copy the password.
7. Send the password to the people who should see the site.

Check that it worked#

After you click Enable, a message appears: "Your site asks for the new password at every address it is published on." The Password Protection option now reads On and shows Password: followed by the password. While a password is on, the option opens by itself each time you open the Publish window. To test it, open your site's address in a private browser window: within a minute it shows the password page. Enable, Remove and Refresh take effect on the published site within about a minute, without publishing again.

Show your own logo on the password page#

On Pro and Premium, the password page can show your logo instead of TeleportHQ's. The Logo on the password page picker sits below the password in two places, and both show the same logo:

• In the Publish window: open the Password Protection option.
• In Project settings: click the Project settings cog at the bottom of the left sidebar, then Site → General. Password protection is below FavIcon. Typing "logo" in the panel's search finds it too.

1. Make sure your site has a password. While password protection is off, the picker is greyed out and says to turn it on first.
2. Under Logo on the password page, click Browse files and pick a PNG, JPG, SVG or WebP file. It saves as soon as it's picked.

3. Publish the site. The page shows your logo from the next publish.

To go back to the TeleportHQ logo, remove the picture there and publish again. Without a paid subscription the picker is greyed out and says that a paid plan lets you show your own logo.

Change or remove the password#

These buttons are in the Password Protection option of the Publish window, and in Project settings → General under Password protection.

• Get a new password: click the refresh button next to the password (tooltip Refresh password). This works on every plan, the trial included. The message "Your site asks for the new password at every address it is published on." appears. The old password stops working, so share the new one.
• Remove protection (Pro and Premium): click Remove. The message "Password protection is off. Your site is public at every address it is published on." appears. Without a paid subscription, Remove opens the upgrade window instead.

What the TeleportHQ password protects#

The password page stands in front of every page and picture of your site, at every address it is published on: your TeleportHQ address, your staging address, your custom domain and every deployment link in Deployments. The page is part of the site itself, so a visitor can't open any page without the password, and search engines index nothing behind it.

The site's own services keep working behind the password: payment messages from Stripe and PayPal still mark orders paid, booking calendar links still work in other calendars, and scheduled workflows still run.

A password still stops these TeleportHQ features, because they need to read your live pages:

• the Site Health audit, the contrast check and competitor reports;
• the automatic screenshots of an installable app.

On the trial, these work once the workspace subscribes and you click Remove.

Troubleshooting#

"Publishing failed. The site could not be password-protected, so this publish was discarded. Try again or contact support." Your workspace has no paid subscription, and TeleportHQ couldn't put the password on the site. So it discarded the publish rather than put the site online without one: nothing from this publish went live. Publish again in a moment. If it keeps failing, write to hello@teleporthq.io.

Visitors still see the password page a minute after Remove, or the old password still works a minute after Refresh The published site re-reads its password setting about once a minute. Wait a minute and reload.

"This feature is not available on your current plan" with "Sites published on a trial or without a subscription stay behind a password." and "Subscribe to make your site public." You clicked Remove in a workspace without a paid subscription. Click Upgrade Now to choose a plan. After the workspace subscribes, open the project in the editor again and click Remove.

"Password could not be updated. Error message: …" The password couldn't be created. Try again in a moment.

"Password could not be deleted. Error message: …" If the message includes "This workspace has no active plan subscription", TeleportHQ doesn't see a paid subscription on the workspace right now, for example because it ended while the editor was open. Reload the editor and check the workspace's plan. Otherwise, try again in a moment. See Why does my published site ask for a password?.

Good to know#

• Password Protection is for the whole site. You can't protect a single page with it.
• Password Protection shows on Production only. With Staging selected, the Publish window has no Password Protection option, but the password covers the staging address too.
• Installable app. A password-protected site can still be installed as an app, but it keeps no pages for offline use, and TeleportHQ can't take its install-dialog screenshots. See How to make your site installable as an app (PWA).
• Your own Vercel account. TeleportHQ adds the password only to sites it hosts. A site you publish to your own Vercel account follows that account's settings.
• Sites published before the password page moved into the site show Vercel's own password screen until they are published again.