ClouDNS

Webflow hosting serves your site from a global CDN and issues SSL once your domain resolves to it. The DNS zone that answers for that domain lives somewhere else, and Site settings can only tell you which records to create there. Hosting also does not run health checks against your domain or fail over to a backup address when the primary stops responding. For teams whose zones sit at ClouDNS, every record still has to be written in the ClouDNS control panel or through its API.

Connecting the two puts the required records into a ClouDNS master zone. On paid ClouDNS plans, the same zone adds operational controls for availability, security, and migration. Quick connect lets Entri write the records for you after a ClouDNS sign-in. The ClouDNS HTTP API lets you script identical records into every client zone you manage.

Agencies onboarding client domains at scale get templated provisioning and sub-user access for each client zone. Marketing ops teams migrating a live site to Webflow get the low TTLs and staged zone imports a no-downtime cutover requires. Ecommerce managers get DDoS-protected authoritative DNS in front of a Webflow store, and DevOps engineers get monitoring and paging for the marketing site they already host on Webflow.

How to integrate ClouDNS with Webflow

What is ClouDNS? ClouDNS is a managed DNS hosting provider that has operated since 2010. It runs authoritative nameservers synchronized across 65 Anycast data centers in 33 countries, with Anycast servers on paid plans and Unicast nameservers on the Free plan. The service includes DNS Failover, DNSSEC, GeoDNS, Secondary DNS, an HTTP API, and over 1,200 domain extensions available for registration.

Teams pair ClouDNS with Webflow when the domain already resolves through ClouDNS nameservers, or when a Webflow site needs DNS features a registrar's default nameservers lack. A DNS migration often triggers this. Since January 13, 2026, publishing to the legacy A records 75.2.70.75 and 99.83.190.102 or the CNAME proxy-ssl.webflow.com is blocked, so any site still using those values must be re-pointed.

Choose an integration approach based on how much DNS control and automation you need:

• Quick connect handles the required records automatically through Entri after you sign in to ClouDNS, without touching a DNS form.
• Manual records in the ClouDNS control panel let you add A, CNAME, TXT, and CAA records yourself and control TTL, DNSSEC, and failover settings for eligible records.
• The Webflow Data API and ClouDNS HTTP API script zone creation, record writes, publish sequencing, and failover activation across a whole portfolio of client domains, which takes server-side development.

Most implementations combine two or more of these methods depending on the complexity of the setup.

Quick connect a ClouDNS domain to Webflow

A ClouDNS login authorizes Entri to write the site records without requiring you to open a record form. ClouDNS appears in Entri's provider list with automatic support marked yes. It suits site owners and agency clients who manage a domain at ClouDNS but do not want to edit DNS by hand. You need a paid Site plan, because hosting on a custom domain requires a paid plan.

To set up the integration:

1. Go to Site settings > Publishing > Production, click Add a custom domain, and choose Quick connect domain.
2. Enter the domain you want to connect, then search for and choose ClouDNS as your DNS provider.
3. Sign in to your ClouDNS account and authorize Entri to configure the records.
4. Click Close window to return to Site settings, click Verify domain, and publish once the confirmation appears.

Quick connect sets the www subdomain as the default domain for you, and Entri writes the current record values for your specific site, so legacy IPs never reach the zone. ClouDNS does not appear on the Domain Connect provider list, so the authorization runs through Entri's own integration rather than that standard. DNS changes can take up to 48 hours to propagate in all geolocations, though they usually finish within a few hours.

Quick connect covers only the records a Webflow site requires. For CAA records, DNS Failover on eligible A/AAAA records, or TTL changes ahead of a migration, work in the ClouDNS control panel directly.

Add Webflow DNS records in the ClouDNS control panel

Live migrations, DNSSEC, and CAA policies require a clear view of every record in the zone. Before you start, the domain needs a master zone in ClouDNS. Create one at Dashboard > DNS Hosting > Create zone > Master zone, enter the domain name, and leave the option to create the zone with NS records selected, as shown in the Getting Started with ClouDNS article. Confirm your registrar's nameservers point at the ClouDNS nameservers shown in your Dashboard. ClouDNS ships record templates for Blogger, Weebly, and Squarespace. Webflow records require manual entry.

Point the apex and www records to Webflow

The values below apply to sites created after April 21, 2025 or already migrated to current infrastructure; always copy the values shown in your own Site settings, since a site created earlier may still list two A records. Webflow's guide to migrating a live site lists the same three records from the Webflow side, and notes that SSL for a freshly pointed domain typically issues within a few minutes.

To point the domain:

1. Go to Site settings > Publishing > Production, click Add a custom domain, then choose Manually add domain.
2. Enter the domain, click Add domain, and copy the A record IP, CNAME target, and TXT verification value.
3. In ClouDNS, open the zone's DNS management page and click Add new record. Choose type A, host @, and enter 198.202.211.1 as described in the A record article.
4. Click Add new record again. Choose type CNAME, host www, and enter cdn.webflow.com as described in the CNAME record article.
5. Click Add new record once more. Choose type TXT, host _webflow, and paste the one-time-verification=… string from Site settings.
6. Delete any other A records on the root host. Extra root A records conflict with the Webflow record and trigger an error status.
7. Back in Site settings > Publishing > Production, click Make default next to www and publish. Setting a default domain redirects every other domain to it.

Leave the TTL at the 3600-second default unless you are on a paid plan and mid-migration. Skip the ALIAS record for the apex even though ClouDNS supports it; the ALIAS record article lists incompatibility with CDN services, and an ALIAS cannot coexist with a CNAME or Web Redirect in the same zone. Propagation usually finishes within a few hours and can take up to 48 hours. You can watch it from the ClouDNS NSlookup tool, which queries A, CNAME, TXT, and NS records against Cloudflare, Google, Quad9, and Cisco OpenDNS resolvers. SSL issues automatically once the records resolve, because Webflow enables it by default for sites created after November 14, 2018.

Allow Webflow's certificate providers with CAA records

SSL for your site comes from Let's Encrypt and Google Trust Services. If your ClouDNS zone holds any CAA record, it must permit both issuers or certificate provisioning and renewal fail. That requirement is spelled out in Webflow's CAA record guidance. A zone with no CAA records needs nothing here.

To add the CAA records:

1. On the zone's DNS management page, click Add new record and choose type CAA as described in the CAA record article.
2. Set the TTL and host, then enter flag 0, tag issue, and value letsencrypt.org.
3. Repeat with flag 0, tag issue, and value pki.goog; cansignhttpexchanges=yes.

Certificates then renew on their own for as long as the A and CNAME records keep pointing at Webflow.

Lower TTL before a live migration

Resolver cache duration determines how quickly traffic moves after a live site switches to Webflow. Webflow's guide to manual DNS migration recommends lowering TTL to the lowest value your provider offers, often 30 seconds, then restoring it once the site is stable. ClouDNS's own migration checklist sets a different bar: cut TTL to 300 seconds at least 48 hours before the change. Either number needs a plan that allows TTL edits, which the Free tier does not.

To stage the cutover:

1. On a Premium, DDoS Protected, or GeoDNS plan, edit the TTL on the apex A record and the www CNAME to 300 at least 48 hours before the switch.
2. If the domain is moving to ClouDNS from another provider, import the existing zone first. Use Zone Import > Import via Transfer (AXFR), enter a current nameserver IP, click Get All Records, and follow the zone import article to authorize the transfer.
3. Change the record values to the ones in your Site settings, then confirm the site loads over HTTPS.
4. Restore the TTL to 3600 or higher once the site is stable.

If DNSSEC is active on the zone, keep the DS records at your registrar consistent with the ClouDNS nameservers through the change. The DNSSEC article covers signing and DS output; a validation failure in that chain blocks resolution and, with it, SSL issuance.

Build with the Webflow and ClouDNS APIs

Custom-domain creation happens in the Webflow dashboard. Add the domain there before automating the remaining steps. ClouDNS's HTTP API exposes the whole control panel over HTTPS. API access starts with paid plans: ClouDNS documents HTTP API access as included with its Premium and DDoS plans. The Webflow side uses Data API v2 with an Authorization: Bearer <token> header, documented under authentication. Store both credential sets on a server and exclude them from page code.

The two APIs cover different halves of the job.

• ClouDNS HTTP API: Zones, records, failover on eligible A/AAAA records, and monitoring notifications all run through https://api.cloudns.net/, which answers in .json or .xml.
• Webflow custom domains: The Data API exposes a read-only list of the custom domains attached to a site, which is where you read each domain ID.
• Webflow publishing: A publish call pushes the site to one or more of those domain IDs once the ClouDNS zone has propagated.
• Webflow webhooks: A registered webhook delivers site_publish and 13 other event types to an endpoint you run.

ClouDNS authenticates every call with auth-id (or sub-auth-id / sub-auth-user) plus auth-password, per the API access article, which also documents the Read and write or Read only access level you pick per user and the optional IP restriction that limits which servers can call the API at all. Sub-users are walled off from each other's resources, so an agency can hand each client API access to that client's zone only.

Provision a client zone and Webflow records with the ClouDNS API

Each endpoint accepts GET or POST with the same parameters. A reusable DNS template lets an agency register a client zone and write its Webflow records in four calls.

To provision the zone:

1. Register the zone with the Register Zone endpoint: https://api.cloudns.net/dns/register.json with auth-id=0&auth-password=password&domain-name=example.com&zone-type=master.
2. Submit one request for each record defined in the manual setup through the Add Record endpoint at https://api.cloudns.net/dns/add-record.json. Include auth-id, auth-password, domain-name, record-type, host, record, and ttl=3600; use the Site settings token as the TXT record value.
3. Poll the Zone Is Updated endpoint at https://api.cloudns.net/dns/is-updated.json with domain-name until it returns TRUE, which means every ClouDNS nameserver holds the new zone.

The ttl value must come from the permitted list of 60, 300, 900, 1800, 3600, 21600, 43200, 86400, 172800, 259200, 604800, 1209600, or 2592000 seconds. Any other value returns {"status":"Failed","statusDescription":"Invalid TTL. Choose from the list of the values we support."}.

Publish to the custom domain once DNS resolves

The domain must exist in the site before the Webflow Data API can publish to it. Wait until the zone reports updated, then continue with the publish request.

To publish:

1. In Site settings > Publishing > Production, add the custom domain by hand; the custom domains reference exposes only GET.
2. Call GET https://api.webflow.com/v2/sites/{site_id}/custom_domains with the sites:read scope and capture the domain ID.
3. Call POST https://api.webflow.com/v2/sites/{site_id}/publish with the sites:write scope and body {"customDomains": ["<domain_id>"]}, following the publish site reference.

The body also accepts publishToWebflowSubdomain (boolean, default false) and an optional pageId for a single-page publish; at least one of customDomains or publishToWebflowSubdomain is required. The endpoint is rate limited to one successful publish queued per minute, so batch a client portfolio rather than firing the calls in parallel.

Verify ClouDNS records from a site_publish webhook

The domains array in the site_publish payload identifies the hostnames to check after each publish event. Register the webhook and check each hostname against ClouDNS. The site_publish event carries siteId, publishedOn, domains, publishedBy, publishScope, and pageId.

To wire the check:

1. Call POST https://api.webflow.com/v2/sites/{site_id}/webhooks with triggerType: "site_publish" and your url, using a bearer token from a Data Client App rather than a Site Token, per the create webhook reference.
2. On receipt, call the List Records endpoint at https://api.cloudns.net/dns/records.json with domain-name, host=www, type=CNAME, rows-per-page=10, and page=1 to read the current value.
3. If a value is wrong, call the Modify Record endpoint at https://api.cloudns.net/dns/mod-record.json with domain-name, id, host, and the corrected record. Record type cannot change through this endpoint.
4. Confirm the fix with dns/is-updated.json, then re-run the publish call if needed.

A sample payload looks like this:

{
  "triggerType": "site_publish",
  "payload": {
    "siteId": "62749158efef318abc8d5a0f",
    "publishedOn": "2023-07-31T12:34:56.789Z",
    "domains": ["my-website.webflow.io"],
    "publishedBy": { "displayName": "Some One" }
  }
}

ClouDNS reserves outbound webhooks for monitoring and DNS Failover state changes, documented as Webhook UP and Down events. Record changes are checked through polling. To have ClouDNS call your endpoint when the apex goes down, activate failover on the eligible A record ID with the failover-activate endpoint, then add a notification with https://api.cloudns.net/dns/create-failover-notification.json and type=webhook-down, as described in the failover notification article. Failover reaches the apex A record only. The www CNAME pointing to cdn.webflow.com stays on Webflow's CDN path, outside ClouDNS's control. Any backup IP must serve a separately hosted fallback site with appropriate host routing and TLS. Use the check for monitoring and paging when full Webflow-site failover is unavailable.

What you can build with the ClouDNS Webflow integration

ClouDNS provides monitored, Anycast-resolved DNS for the Webflow site while the domain stays at its current registrar.

• Agency onboarding with templated DNS: An agency launching 30 client marketing sites scripts register.json and three add-record.json calls per domain, then grants each client a Read only sub-user on their own zone. The same script points a client's regional TLDs at one site, since each domain needs the identical three records.
• Zero-downtime migration of a live SaaS site: A B2B marketing team follows the staged cutover above, including zone import and post-switch HTTPS checks. The no-downtime checklist recommends keeping the old zone live for 72 hours after the nameserver change.
• DDoS-resilient DNS for a Webflow store: A retailer running checkout on Webflow hosts the zone on a DDoS Protected DNS plan, which adds Anycast Protected servers and DNSSEC at the resolution layer. Cloudflare-backed hosting handles application-layer traffic, while ClouDNS absorbs attacks aimed at the nameservers themselves.
• Apex monitoring and paging for a marketing site: A DevOps engineer activates DNS Failover on the eligible apex A record with one-minute HTTP checks, then routes the webhook-down notification to the team's incident endpoint. A site_publish webhook on the Webflow side re-verifies the records after every deploy, which catches a record someone edited between releases.

Take the API path when you are provisioning many zones at once. For the token and scope setup those calls share, start with our guide to the Webflow CMS API.