Creating a CNAME record for each of the domain names or subdomains that you've got in a hosting account allows you to redirect it to a different domain/subdomain. The forwarded domain name will lose all of its records - A, MX and so on, and will take the records of the domain it's being directed to. In this light, you can't set up a CNAME record to point your domain to a third-party provider and retain a working e-mail service with the first provider. Additionally, it is essential to know that a CNAME record is always a string of words and never a number as it is often confused with the A record of the domain address being redirected. One of the main uses of a CNAME record is to direct a domain address which you own through one provider to the servers of some other provider in case you have created a site with the latter. In this way, the Internet site will appear under your own domain name, not under some subdomain provided by the third-party provider.
CNAME Records in Shared Website Hosting
Setting up a CNAME record with our Linux shared website hosting is very simple. Our in-house built Hepsia CP includes 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 just a few easy steps. There is also a video tutorial inside the same section in which you can see the process first-hand. This feature provides you with a variety of opportunities - if you build a company site on our end, for example, the staff can use their e-mails with the company domain address, not with the address of our mail server. If you choose to create a site through a different company which offers online web design services, you can easily redirect a domain hosted here and use it for the website. 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'll be able to set up a CNAME record for the www subdomain and direct it to the main domain name, so all your visitors are going to be forwarded to a secure URL.
CNAME Records in Semi-dedicated Hosting
The Hepsia hosting Control Panel, which comes with each of our semi-dedicated server accounts, will enable you to set up a CNAME record with ease. In case you want to create a private URL for your emails, to point a domain name to a subdomain within the account or to forward a domain address to another company and use some third-party service that they provide, it won't take you more than 3 clicks to set up this sort of record. All DNS records for the domain names and subdomains hosted in the semi-dedicated account will be listed in a separate section in the Control Panel, so once you're there, all that you will have to do will be to choose the type of the record that you want to set up and the hostname for which you are creating it, and then enter the actual record text. For your convenience, you can see a short video in the CP on how to set up a CNAME record or you can refer to the instructions in the help article, that's available in the DNS records section.