Transferring a domain and using Cloudflare as a Nameserver/Google Workspace Help.
Hey everyone, I have an odd situation where I am taking over a domain from another user and they just gave me admin and changed the contact. I'm looking to migrate the domain to Namecheap (or another registrar) because of terrible(personal experience) Squarespace support. Researching this, I read on reddit of people using Cloudflare as an intermediate Nameserver to keep records up and site functionality live while the transfer goes through. I had a couple of questions about that. Does this apply to mx records as well? The site I'm working with cannot really afford downtime, especially with their email(Google Workspace). I went through the process on CF up until the point where it wanted me to change Nameservers. I saw Namecheap's FreeDNS asks to add their Nameservers in tandem with the original before deleting the original 48 hours later. Does Cloudflare work the same way or do I need to replace the original nameservers with Cloudflare's from the beginning? It didn't make note of holding both. After receiving the domain I see they have their DNS hosted apart from SS so I wanted to make sure that Cloudflare could discover the records(and edit the A/CNAME out the gate with my project if possible) and house them so I could then get the domain running in a different environment. I plan to have Namecheap host the domain and DNS records and I'm looking to use a repository I have on Render if that helps. Unfortunately I feel like time is of the essence now that they changed the domain over with another third party housing their DNS records. Any help to guide me along would be amazing. I'm still a fledgling developer and I just want to do a good job and have things be as seamless as possible. Thank you 😄
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Cloudflare as an intermediate Nameserver to keep records up and site functionality live while the transfer goes through. I had a couple of questions about that. Does this apply to mx records as wellCf provides free auth. dns, supporting all common record types and such.
Does Cloudflare work the same way or do I need to replace the original nameservers with Cloudflare's from the beginning?Cloudflare free plan requires it to be the only nameservers for the domain, doesn't support secondary/primary setup
After receiving the domain I see they have their DNS hosted apart from SS so I wanted to make sure that Cloudflare could discover the records(and edit the A/CNAME out the gate with my project if possible) and house them so I could then get the domain running in a different environment.If your goal is just to transfer it, why not stick to their current DNS that's already external then? 🤔 Don't rely on Cloudflare's auto discovery stuff (or anyone's), it's always best effort. Either export the records from the current dns host and import them into CF, or use Quick Scan but very carefully check if it didn't miss any of the records. There's no rush -- you can add the domain to Cloudflare, carefully ensure all the records are in place, and then switch after. If your goal is to end with Namecheap and not stick to Cloudflare, sounds like Cloudflare's an unnecessary step in your journey. Why not just stick to using the external DNS they already use, transfer with those nameservers still set, and then migrate to namecheap?