You can host your site on Shopify, Wix, Squarespace, or any other platform while keeping your domain registered with us, and keep your email working on Flashcloud at the same time. The trick is DNS: point the specific records the external platform needs (usually an A record or CNAME at the root, plus a www record) while leaving your MX records alone so mail keeps routing to us.
This only works if your domain's DNS is managed somewhere you can edit records directly. If your domain uses our nameservers, that's your DNS panel in the portal under Domains. If DNS lives elsewhere (Cloudflare, another registrar), edit it there instead.
The general pattern
Every external platform needs two things pointed at it: the root domain (yourdomain.com) and the www subdomain. Most platforms document one of two setups:
- Root domain via A record. Some platforms give you an IP address to put in an
Arecord for@(the root). This is the traditional approach and works everywhere, including with our nameservers. - Root domain via ALIAS/ANAME or CNAME flattening. Some platforms (Shopify included, for many setups) prefer a
CNAMEat the root, which technically isn't allowed by the DNS spec at a zone apex. Providers that support this use an "ALIAS" or "flattened CNAME" record type that behaves like a CNAME but is legal at the root. Whether this is available depends on your DNS provider, not on us. wwwvia CNAME. This one's simple everywhere: aCNAMErecord forwwwpointing to the hostname the platform gives you (e.g.shops.myshopify.com,your-site.wixdns.net,ext-cust.squarespace.com).
The exact values (which IP, which CNAME target, whether they want a TXT record for verification) come from the platform itself; check their domain-connection docs when you set this up, since these values change and we don't want to hand you a stale one.
Keeping email on Flashcloud while the site lives elsewhere
This is the part people get wrong. Moving your site's A/CNAME records to an external platform has no effect on mail, as long as you don't touch your MX records. Leave MX pointing at our mail servers (and leave any SPF/DKIM TXT records we set up in place), and mail for you@yourdomain.com keeps flowing through us untouched while yourdomain.com itself resolves to Shopify or Wix.
If your domain uses our nameservers, we already have MX, SPF, and DKIM configured for you, so there's nothing to redo: add the platform's records alongside what's there. If DNS is managed elsewhere, copy those same mail records over exactly (mail server hostname, SPF string, DKIM key) before you switch anything, so mail doesn't drop mid-change.
Pointing a subdomain instead of the whole domain
If you only want part of the domain on the external platform (like shop.yourdomain.com running Shopify while the main site stays on Flashcloud), it's simpler: add a single CNAME record for that subdomain pointing to the hostname the platform gives you. Nothing else on the domain changes; your root domain, www, and mail keep working exactly as they do now.
After you make the change
DNS changes propagate over the next few minutes to a few hours, the same as any other DNS edit. During that window some visitors may still see the old destination depending on caching. The external platform will usually show a "pending" or "not connected" status in its dashboard until it detects the new records; give it time before assuming something's wrong.
If you later decide to move the domain (or its DNS) somewhere else entirely, that's a separate process, covered in transferring a domain away from Flashcloud. And if a domain lapses while you're mid-setup, the recovery window and grace period are explained in what happens if I forget to renew my domain.
When to contact support
If your domain uses our nameservers and you're not sure which record type to add, or an edit you made doesn't seem to be resolving after a few hours, open a ticket from Support → New ticket in the portal, or use live chat. A real person can check the zone and confirm the records are set up the way the external platform expects.