DNSCloudflareEmail

Point the domain at Cloudflare (DNS)

By Harry Osmar Sitohang·Jun 2026·6 min

This is the foundation. Before Cloudflare can serve, secure and speed up the site, it has to own the phone book — be the authority that answers "what is pangaea.id?" That means moving the domain's nameservers from Hostinger (where we bought it) to Cloudflare. Here's the technical walkthrough — the part everyone gets nervous about: doing it without dropping a single email.

The handoff

Hostinger is the registrar — it owns the name. But whoever runs the nameservers runs the DNS. The move is one swap: point Hostinger's domain registration at the two nameservers Cloudflare assigns you, and from then on Cloudflare is your authoritative DNS (and your CDN, TLS and WAF ride along).

Hostinger (registrar — owns the name)set NS → 2× ns.cloudflare.comCloudflare (authoritative DNS + CDN/TLS/WAF)

One swap. Propagation is often minutes, but can take up to 24 hours.

Carry your email across first

Moving nameservers moves the whole phone book — including the records your email depends on. Cloudflare imports most of them when you add the site, but verify every one by hand, and keep them all DNS-only (grey cloud) — mail is never proxied.

The steps

Create a free Cloudflare account → Add a site → type pangaea.id.
Cloudflare scans your existing DNS and shows what it found. Check your email records came across (MX, plus SPF / DKIM / DMARC).
Cloudflare shows you two nameservers (like xxx.ns.cloudflare.com).
In Hostinger → Domains → your domain → DNS / Nameservers, switch from "Hostinger nameservers" to Custom nameservers and paste Cloudflare's two.
Wait for propagation (often minutes, up to 24h). Cloudflare emails you when the domain is active.

Copy the two Cloudflare nameservers exactly — one typo and the domain won't resolve at all
Confirm MX / SPF / DKIM / DMARC are present on Cloudflare before you flip the switch

Don't

Delete anything at Hostinger in a panic during propagation — the old records keep serving until the switch completes
Assume Cloudflare imported everything — DKIM as a CNAME is the one it most often misses

Verify the switch yourself

Don't only wait for Cloudflare's "active" email — ask the internet who holds the domain. From any terminal:

dig +short NS pangaea.id

While it still shows *.dns-parking.com (Hostinger's parking nameservers), the change hasn't reached you yet. Once it returns your two *.ns.cloudflare.com names — the specific pair Cloudflare assigned you — Cloudflare is in charge, and you can attach the Pages custom domains (Part 2).

With DNS pointed, the site needs something to serve: Ship it — Git → CI/CD → Pages. The plain-English story of why we chose Cloudflare at all is in our build diary: Point the domain at Cloudflare →.

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