Creating a CNAME record for each of the domain names or subdomains that you have within a hosting account will allow you to forward it to a different domain/subdomain. The forwarded Internet domain will lose all its records - A, MX etc, and will take the records of the domain it's being forwarded to. In this light, you cannot set up a CNAME record to redirect your domain name to a third-party provider and retain a functional e-mail service with the first provider. It's also essential to know that a CNAME record is always a string of words and not a number because it is commonly mistaken for the A record of the domain name being redirected. One of the major uses of a CNAME record is to forward a domain which you own through one provider to the servers of another provider when you have created a site with the latter. In this way, the website will appear under your own domain name, not under some subdomain provided by the third-party provider.
CNAME Records in Website Hosting
Setting up a CNAME record using our Linux website hosting packages is extremely easy. Our in-house built Hepsia Control Panel has a section devoted to the DNS records of your domain names, so you can set up a new CNAME record for any domain or subdomain hosted inside your account in only a few easy steps. You can find a video tutorial inside the same section in which you can see the process first-hand. This feature offers you a number of options - if you build a company website on our end, for example, the employees can use their emails with the company domain, not with the address of our mail server. If you want to set up a website by using a different company which offers online web design services, you can easily forward a domain address hosted here and use it for the site. Last, but not least, in case you have a web-based store and you have a billing system for http://your-domain.com and/or an SSL certificate, you could set up a CNAME record for the www subdomain and direct it to the main domain, so all your customers will be forwarded to a secure URL.
CNAME Records in Semi-dedicated Hosting
If you have a semi-dedicated server through our company and you want to create a CNAME record, it will take only a couple of mouse clicks to complete this task. The plans are handled via our in-house built Hepsia hosting CP in which you will discover a section dedicated to the DNS records of the domain names and subdomains hosted inside the account. To create a CNAME record, you will only have to select the record type and the hostname (domain or subdomain), type where the latter will be directed to and save the change. The new record is going to be active almost right away in our system and will propagate worldwide within a few hours. Changing or deleting an existing CNAME record within the account is just as simple and easy and takes a click. In case you experience any issues, you can go through our comprehensive help article, watch the short video on the topic that we have added in the Control Panel, or simply contact us for help.