Hosting somewhere else

[Deep Joshi]

if I want to get the domain from Cloudflare but get the hosting somewhere else, Cloudflare is not a good option for the domain name?

 

[Helmuts]

Hi, Cloudflare is a great registrar. There are many good ones out there. Best! H

 

[alan]

Hi @Deep Joshi,

As @Helmuts said above, Cloudflare is a good option for a domain registrar, especially as they offer at-cost pricing for domain registrations: https://www.cloudflare.com/en-gb/products/registrar/

However, if you register the domain name with Cloudflare, I don't believe you can change the authoritative DNS nameservers to use another provider. But, depending on your hosting provider, you may be able to add appropriate DNS records on Cloudflare to point towards that hosting provider's services.

May I ask what hosting provider you are using or hoping to use?

 

[TheLeadGuy]

You can use CF to set ALL DNS records, you don't need to use there Name Servers...
You can leave all other records blank and just add 2 NS records pointing to the web hosts NS records, so would be :

yourdomain.com. NS ns1.yourwebhostns.com
yourdomain.com. NS ns2.yourwebhostns.com

Some DNS providers allow you to omit the "yourdomain.com" as the name from the record some don't.
Try without the yourdomain.com. first to see if it lets you

This way you can set the SOA record at any web host you choose that allows DNS Management which most do ( although its typically added by default when you add a domain to the hosting account anyway ).

 

[DarkSky]

Keep in mind, that cloudflare place a 60 day lock on new registrations, so you cannot change the IPSTag via them for 60 days. You'll need to go via nominet.

 

[TheLeadGuy]

Thats only if you want to change the IPS tag though, the above doesn't require an IPS tag chance if the domain itself is remaining with CF

 

[DarkSky]

You can use CF to set ALL DNS records, you don't need to use there Name Servers...
You can leave all other records blank and just add 2 NS records pointing to the web hosts NS records, so would be :

yourdomain.com. NS ns1.yourwebhostns.com
yourdomain.com. NS ns2.yourwebhostns.com

Some DNS providers allow you to omit the "yourdomain.com" as the name from the record some don't.
Try without the yourdomain.com. first to see if it lets you

This way you can set the SOA record at any web host you choose that allows DNS Management which most do ( although its typically added by default when you add a domain to the hosting account anyway ).

You'd need to add an NS record for each name you want to use, i.e. @, www., mail. - not very practical and another reason I wouldn't recommend CF as a registrar for a domainer.

This for example, would mean that if you want to take advantage of a brokers discounted commission rate for using their nameservers, i.e. DAN, you cannot.

 

[TheLeadGuy]

On the DNS zone itself at CF you simply add 2 NS records which would point to the web hosts main name servers.
You can then also add GLUE records , e.g. ns1 & ns2 and set the A record to the IP address of your web hosts name servers

Then whoever you use for the web hosting when you create your account and add the domain the DNS zone will automatically be created with the relevant hostnames @, www, mail etc

I work for a large hosting company and many of our clients use CF as they also want to create custom name servers for their reseller accounts.
Its actually quite simple