Setting up a CNAME record for any of the domains or subdomains that you have in a hosting account will enable you to direct it to a different domain/subdomain. The forwarded Internet domain will lose all its records - A, MX and so on, and will take the records of the Internet domain it's being directed to. In this light, you cannot create a CNAME record to redirect your domain name to a third-party provider and keep a functional email service with the first provider. Also, it is essential to know that a CNAME record is always a string of words rather than a number as it's commonly confused with the A record of the domain being forwarded. One of the main uses of a CNAME record is to point a domain you own through one provider to the servers of another company when you have set up an Internet site with the latter. In this way, the Internet site will appear under your own domain, not under some subdomain provided by the third-party provider.
