When adding a DNS record for a domain or subdomain, you pick a type. Most often it’s A or CNAME. They are essentially different.
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A record
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Points to a specific IP address. E.g. yourdomain.tj → 195.158.10.20.
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- Browser immediately gets the IP and goes to the server
- The fastest type of resolution
- If the server IP changes — you must update the record manually
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CNAME record
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Points to another domain name. E.g. shop.yourdomain.tj → mystore.example.com.
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- Browser does an extra lookup: “where is example.com?” — an extra step
- Useful when the service changes IPs — you bind to their domain, they update their A
- Suitable for CDN, SaaS services, GitHub Pages
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Which to pick
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- A: for your own hosting where you know the IP and it’s stable
- CNAME: for external services (Netlify, Vercel, Cloudflare, GitHub Pages, Heroku)
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Important rule
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The root domain (yourdomain.tj without subdomain) cannot be a CNAME — only A or AAAA. This is a technical standard. For subdomains — both types are valid.
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Modern DNS providers (Cloudflare, Navju Cloud DNS) support “CNAME flattening” — they work around this limit, but it’s non-standard.