Setting up a CNAME record for any one of the domain addresses or subdomains that you've got in a hosting account allows you to direct it to a different domain/subdomain. The forwarded domain will lose all of its records - A, MX and so on, and will take the records of the domain address it is being redirected to. In this light, you can't set up a CNAME record to forward your domain to a third-party company and keep a working e-mail service with the first hosting provider. It is also important to note that a CNAME record is always a string of words rather than a number as it is often mistaken for the A record of the domain being redirected. One of the major uses of a CNAME record is to point a domain you own through one company to the servers of another company when you have created a website with the latter. In this way, the website will appear under your own domain name, not under some subdomain provided by the third-party company.
CNAME Records in Shared Website Hosting
Setting up a CNAME record using our shared website hosting services is really easy. Our in-house built Hepsia CP includes a section devoted to the DNS records of your domain addresses, so you can set up a new CNAME record for any domain or subdomain hosted inside your account in just a few simple steps. You will find a video tutorial within the same section in which you can see the process first-hand. This feature provides you with many options - if you set up a company site on our end, for example, the employees can use their emails with the company domain name, not with the address of our mail server. If you wish to create an Internet site using a different company which offers online web design services, you can easily forward a domain address hosted here and use it for the website. Last, but not least, in case you have an online store and you have a billing system for http://your-domain.com and/or an SSL certificate, you can create a CNAME record for the www subdomain and point it to the main domain name, 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 set up a CNAME record, it will take no more than a couple of mouse clicks to complete this task. The plans are handled using our in-house built Hepsia hosting Control Panel where you will see a section devoted to the DNS records of the domains and subdomains hosted inside the account. To create a CNAME record, you'll only have to pick the record type and the hostname (domain or subdomain), enter where the latter is going to be pointed to and save the change. The new record is going to be active almost immediately in our system and will propagate worldwide within a few hours. Modifying or deleting an existing CNAME record within the account is equally easy and takes a click. In the event you experience any troubles, you can go through our comprehensive help article, see the short video on the subject that we have added in the CP, or just contact us for help.