{"id":467,"date":"2024-11-05T06:12:05","date_gmt":"2024-11-05T06:12:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.hostinger.io\/support\/2024\/11\/05\/10085192-cname-vs-alias-records-at-hostinger\/"},"modified":"2026-05-08T13:01:40","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T13:01:40","slug":"10085192-cname-vs-alias-records-at-hostinger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hostinger.com\/support\/10085192-cname-vs-alias-records-at-hostinger\/","title":{"rendered":"CNAME vs ALIAS Records at Hostinger"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"no-margin\">CNAME and ALIAS are two different types of DNS records with similar purposes. Both records allow you to point one domain to another, directing traffic to the target domain&rsquo;s IP address.<\/p><p class=\"no-margin\">The main difference is the following:<\/p><ul>\n<li>\n<p class=\"no-margin\">A <b>CNAME record <\/b>can be used to map a domain (e.g., <b><code>www<\/code><\/b><code>.example.com<\/code>) to another domain (e.g., <code>example.net<\/code>). It <b>can&rsquo;t be used at the root domain level<\/b> (<code>example.com<\/code> or <code>@<\/code>) due to DNS restrictions.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"no-margin\">An <b>ALIAS record<\/b> works similarly to a CNAME but <b>can be used at the root domain level<\/b> (<code>example.com<\/code> or <code>@<\/code>), redirecting traffic to another domain without those CNAME restrictions.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul><p class=\"no-margin\">The format for adding the ALIAS record on Hostinger hPanel is as follows:<\/p><ul>\n<li>\n<p class=\"no-margin\">DNS record type: <b>CNAME<\/b><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"no-margin\">Name: <b>domain.tld<\/b> or <b>@ <\/b>(domain.tld = @)<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"no-margin\">Target: the address to direct the traffic to (it can be a sub\/domain name, but not a URL)<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul><p class=\"no-margin\">For example, adding a CNAME record of Hostinger Website Builder on Hostinger hPanel looks like this:<\/p><ul>\n<li>\n<p class=\"no-margin\">DNS record type: <b>CNAME<\/b><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"no-margin\">Name: <b>@ <\/b><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"no-margin\">Target: connect.hostinger.com<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul><div class=\"intercom-container\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/support\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/55\/2024\/11\/804d5b84-b3d0-4773-98b9-efeb90b3fa2e.jpg\" data-media-id=\"2265\" alt=\"Hostinger DNS records form with CNAME selected and target connect.hostinger.com entered\"><\/div><p class=\"no-margin\">Once the CNAME record is saved, it will appear as ALIAS (because a CNAME can&rsquo;t be used with root (@) domains):<\/p><div class=\"intercom-container\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/support\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/55\/2024\/11\/9922c90a-bcc8-4ddc-b403-5b8130e4c83c.jpg\" data-media-id=\"2267\" alt=\"Hostinger DNS record list with ALIAS @ row highlighted\"><\/div><p class=\"no-margin\">ALIAS records resolve to the <b>IP address<\/b> of the target domain. In the example above, the ALIAS record would resolve to the IP address of <code>connect.hostinger.com<\/code>.<\/p><p class=\"no-margin\">You can use online tools such as <a class=\"intercom-content-link\" href=\"http:\/\/dnschecker.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">DNS Checker<\/a> to verify it by checking the A record for your main domain. You need to check the A record because it resolves as an IP address:<\/p><div class=\"intercom-container\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/support\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/55\/2024\/11\/78d5b01b-bcfb-43b4-95f2-d96719062ac9.jpg\" data-media-id=\"2268\" alt=\"DNS checker results showing A record lookups for domain.tld across multiple locations\"><\/div><p class=\"no-margin\">The IP address that resolves when checking the main domain&rsquo;s A record will also match the IP address of the target (connect.hostinger.com):<\/p><div class=\"intercom-container\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/support\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/55\/2024\/11\/07dfd2f3-fe9d-4fea-bb65-69bb4ddb54eb.jpg\" data-media-id=\"2269\" alt=\"DNSChecker DNS check for connect.hostinger.com A record with results listed across locations\"><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Learn about the difference between CNAME and ALIAS DNS records<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":581,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"include_on_kodee":true,"footnotes":""},"categories":[182],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-information-dns"],"hreflangs":[{"locale":"en-US","link":"https:\/\/www.hostinger.com\/support\/10085192-cname-vs-alias-records-at-hostinger\/","default":1}],"include_on_kodee":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hostinger.com\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hostinger.com\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hostinger.com\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hostinger.com\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/581"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hostinger.com\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=467"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.hostinger.com\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8947,"href":"https:\/\/www.hostinger.com\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467\/revisions\/8947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hostinger.com\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hostinger.com\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hostinger.com\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}