This is the route from start to finish on the Cloudflare side: create the account, add the domain, check what it imported, and get it answering. The preparation that happens before this is in putting a CDN in front of your site, step by step, and it is not worth starting without it.
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The account is yours, not ours. We do not sell a CDN, we do not resell Cloudflare, and there is no button in your panel that does this. You open it on their site, with your e-mail, and the free plan is enough for most sites.
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The steps, in the right order
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Create the account and confirm the e-mail address. Use an e-mail you can genuinely reach and that is not on the domain you are about to touch: if mail stops halfway through, you still need to get in.
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Add the domain, typed without www and without https. Write the name exactly as it is registered.
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Choose the free plan when it asks. Paid options can be switched on later, if they ever turn out to be needed.
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Let it read the current records. It queries your public DNS and brings across whatever it can see.
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Only now swap the nameservers, in the panel of whoever registered the domain.
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The two nameservers it gives you
At the end of the process Cloudflare shows you two names, something like somename.ns.cloudflare.com. Those are the ones that replace ours at the registrar.
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The pair of names differs from account to account. It is not one universal pair. We checked this on domains hosted on our own servers: some answer with one pair of names and others answer with a completely different pair, because they sit in different Cloudflare accounts. Use the two it shows to you, never the ones you saw in a tutorial, a video or this article. Copying the wrong ones makes the domain go quiet.
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You can test before you risk anything. Their nameservers already answer for your domain as soon as the zone exists, before they are ever entered at the registrar. Query them directly and compare the answers with your list. If they match, the swap is safe; if something is missing, you fix it without anyone noticing.
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From pending to active
After the swap, the domain sits pending in their dashboard until they confirm the change reached the registry. They e-mail you when it goes active. Meanwhile the site does not stop: the old nameservers keep answering until they stop being asked. See how long propagation takes.
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What to check |
| It stays pending far longer than expected |
Were the nameservers actually saved? Look the domain up and see what answers: how to check a domain DNS. |
| It says the domain is already in another account |
Somebody added it there before: a partner, a developer, an agency. It has to leave the old account first. |
| The registrar will not save the nameservers |
Some extensions go through local registries and are fussier about the format. If the domain is with us, open a ticket and we will handle it. |
| The site opens but with no padlock |
Wrong SSL mode, or the certificate is not issued yet. See no padlock on your site. |
And after this
The road continues differently depending on your case. If the domain is registered with us, see what changes in the nameservers. If it is with another provider, see when the domain is registered somewhere else. To add subdomains after the move, see creating a subdomain on Cloudflare.
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