DOMAIN ROUTING

DNS records explained without the alphabet soup

DNS records tell different internet services where to find your website, email and verification data. The record type determines what the value means.

A and AAAA

A records point a hostname to an IPv4 address. AAAA records point to IPv6. These are common when a website points directly to a server address.

CNAME

A CNAME points one hostname to another hostname. This is common for www records or hosted platforms that give you a target domain instead of a fixed IP.

MX

MX records tell other mail servers where to deliver email for the domain. Changing web hosting should not require blindly replacing mail records.

TXT

TXT records carry text values used for domain verification and email-security systems such as SPF, DKIM and DMARC.

TTL

Time to live controls how long DNS resolvers cache a record before checking again. Lowering TTL before a planned migration can shorten how long old answers remain cached, but not every resolver behaves identically.

Cloudflare proxy status is a separate choice

For supported A, AAAA and CNAME records, Cloudflare can proxy web traffic. MX and TXT records remain DNS-only. See Cloudflare's current DNS record reference.