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CNAME setup (Partial)

A CNAME setup (also known as partial setup) allows you to use Cloudflare's reverse proxy while maintaining your primary and authoritative DNS provider.

Use this option to proxy only individual subdomains through Cloudflare when you cannot change your authoritative DNS provider. You will be able to create A, AAAA, and CNAME records, which are the DNS record types that can be proxied.

Once you are on a CNAME setup (partial), the actual resolution of your records to Cloudflare depends on CNAME records added at your authoritative DNS provider. Check your authoritative DNS provider to know which records are pointing to {your-hostname}.cdn.cloudflare.net.

How to

Availability

Free Pro Business Enterprise

Availability

No

No

Yes

Yes

Reference

DNS resolution

When you have a partial zone (CNAME setup), Cloudflare resolves DNS records differently than for primary zones (full setup).

CNAME flattening

A CNAME setup (partial) requires the proxied hostname to be pointed to Cloudflare via a CNAME record. Since CNAME records are not allowed on the zone apex ↗ (example.com), you can only proxy your zone apex to Cloudflare if your authoritative DNS provider supports CNAME Flattening ↗.

If your authoritative DNS provider does not support CNAME Flattening, redirect its traffic — for example, with an .htaccess file — to a subdomain proxied to Cloudflare. Alternatively, you can use static IPs or BYOIPs.

DDoS protection

DDoS protection for attacks against DNS infrastructure is only available for domains on primary setup (full). Domains on the CNAME setup (partial) are not using Cloudflare authoritative nameservers.

Domain ownership

Enterprise customers can use zone holds to prevent other teams in the organization from adding zones that are already active in another Cloudflare account. For CNAME setups (partial), if the same zone is added to different accounts, the last account to complete the setup will gain ownership.