Apex domain needs to point at a hostname (e.g. Vercel or Netlify), but CNAME is not allowed there
RFC 1034 forbids a real CNAME at the apex because a CNAME cannot coexist with SOA and NS records. CNAME-flattening solves this: the DNS host resolves the target hostname itself and serves the result as A/AAAA records. Cloudflare, DNSimple, Netlify and Vercel support it under names like CNAME-flattening, ALIAS or ANAME.
Try this first
- 1First check whether your DNS provider supports flattening or ALIAS/ANAME. TransIP and Versio are limited, Cloudflare and Vercel handle it natively.
- 2Move the DNS zone to a provider that does support it if needed, that saves later headaches when IP addresses shift.
- 3Configure an ALIAS or flattened CNAME at the apex pointing to the target hostname, not to a fixed IP, otherwise the setup breaks the moment the platform changes IPs.
- 4Verify with dig vectel.nl A and dig vectel.nl AAAA that you get address records back, not a CNAME chain.
- 5Set TTL to 300 seconds during the first 48 hours after the change so you can roll back quickly.
When to bring us in
If you are unsure whether your apex points safely to an edge platform without downtime, we can review the DNS zone and plan the migration.
See also
- Domain expires tomorrow and nobody saw the emailAn expired domain doesn't transfer instantly. There's a redemption window, but you pay extra.
- Unsure whether to enable auto-renewDisabling auto-renew only makes sense for domains you'll truly drop. For anything live, just keep it on.
- New registrar asks for auth code, can't find itEPP code or transfer code is the password to move a domain from registrar A to B.
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