CNAME flattening

DNS' primary purpose is to translate a memorable domain name to an IP address. Historically, the record at the top of the domain, known as the Apex record, could only be pointed directly to an IP address (A Record).

As more of the world has moved to cloud-based technologies, there's been an increasing need to point to CNAMEs instead of IP addresses. Thus, CNAME flattening was born.

What is CNAME flattening?

In the simplest terms, CNAME flattening is a DNS feature that allows you to point the root of your domain to a CNAME, rather than an IP address.

DNS services that support CNAME flattening

Although the only way to know for sure is to ask your DNS provider directly, the following is a list of DNS providers that are known to support CNAME flattening:

• AWS Route 53
• Cloudflare
• Pagely

A quick way to check with any other provider is to see if you're able to create flattened record types, such as ANAME or ALIAS records.