When you can't sign in to Grafter

Start with which button you used last time

Almost every sign-in problem is the same problem: there are three ways into an account and they are not interchangeable. An account made with Continue with Google has no password on it. Typing one will be refused, and the message you get back says your details are wrong rather than saying you are at the wrong door.

So before anything else, work out which button you pressed the first time. If your address ends in gmail.com, or it is a Google Workspace address your business uses for mail, Continue with Google is almost certainly how you started.

1. If you have a Google address, press Continue with Google. It needs no password and it cannot be forgotten.
2. If you set a password on purpose, use Log in rather than Create account — they are two different states of the same form.
3. If no Google button is showing at all, reload the page. The list of sign-in buttons is fetched each time the box opens, and a connection that drops while it loads leaves only the email form behind.

Note. That last one catches people out on a patchy phone signal: the button you are looking for is missing rather than moved.

The email that asks for a code and contains a link

If you asked for a sign-in email, the screen you land on has a six-digit box on it. The email itself arrives from Supabase Auth and, on this setup, carries a link and no six-digit code. There is nothing to type into the box.

This is our fault rather than yours, and the way through it is the link.

1. Open the email and press the link in it, rather than looking for numbers to copy.
2. Open it on the same device and in the same browser you asked from — see the next section for why that matters more than it sounds like it should.
3. If the link has already been used or is more than an hour old, go back and ask for a new one.

Tip. Continue with Google avoids this route completely. If you have the option, it is the shortest way in and there is nothing to wait for.

Why the link has to open where you asked for it

A sign-in link creates your session wherever it is opened. Ask for it on your laptop, read your mail on your phone, and the phone is now signed in while the laptop still shows the sign-in box. Nothing is broken — the session simply went where the link went.

There is a second, quieter half to this. Whatever you were in the middle of — the plan you were about to buy, the description of your business you had just typed — is remembered by the browser you typed it in. It is not attached to your account, so it cannot travel to another device with you. Sign in on the phone and the laptop is still holding it.

• Asked on a laptop, opened on a phone: go back to the laptop and sign in there instead.
• Opened inside a mail app's own browser: some of those keep no storage at all, so the session vanishes the moment you leave. Open the link in your normal browser.
• Half-typed description gone: it is still on the machine you typed it on.

If you have forgotten your password

There is no reset link in the sign-in box yet. That is a gap rather than a hiding place, so here is what actually works today.

1. If your address is a Google one, press Continue with Google. You are in, and the password stops mattering.
2. Otherwise ask for a sign-in email and use the link in it, which needs no password at all.
3. If neither is possible, write to us from the contact page and say which address the account is on. We can reset it by hand.

Note. A password has to be at least eight characters for the button to become pressable. If you set a shorter one on an older account, the Log in button will look dead rather than telling you why — use the emailed link instead, then set a longer one.

It said check your email, and no email came

The most common reason is that the address already has an account on it. Pressing Create account with an address that is already registered does not send anything, and it does not say so either — you are moved to the code screen exactly as though it had.

That silence is deliberate, and not ours: it stops a stranger typing addresses into the box to find out which of them are registered. The cost is that it looks identical to a mail that has gone astray.

1. Press Use a different address to get back to the form.
2. Choose Log in rather than Create account.
3. Use the password you set the first time, or Continue with Google if that is how you started.

You are signed in, and all your sites have gone

An account is the address you signed in with. Two addresses are two accounts, even when they both belong to you and one forwards to the other — so a site built under one is genuinely not there when you sign in with the other.

This happens most often when somebody starts with Continue with Google on a personal address and later types a work address into the email form, or the other way round.

1. Sign out.
2. Sign back in with the other address — the one you were using when you built the sites.
3. If you are not sure which it was, check your mail for anything from us; the address it arrived at is the account.

Tip. Nothing has been lost while you work this out. Sites sit on the account that made them and stay online whether or not anybody is signed in.

You deleted your account and it still lets you in

Deleting your account removes everything Grafter holds. It does not remove the sign-in itself, because that front door is shared with another product built on the same accounts — deleting it here would remove somebody from a service that never got the request.

So the door still opens. What it opens onto is a brand-new empty account, which is why your name may still appear in the corner while every site is gone.

Note. Your payment records are kept, and deliberately: the law sets how long those have to be held and that clock has nothing to do with the account being closed. They are moved off you and onto a row with no name, no address and no way back to you.

Common questions

Is my site offline while I cannot sign in?

No. A published site is served whether or not anybody is signed in, and nothing about a sign-in problem takes it down.

Can I move a site from one account to another?

Not from inside the product. Write to us from the contact page with both addresses and say which sites should move.

Do I lose credits by signing in with the wrong address?

No. Credits belong to the account that bought them and are still there when you sign back into it.

Why is there no code in the email?

The mail goes out on a default template we cannot edit yet, and that template carries a link instead of a code. Use the link, and open it on the device you asked from.