4. Cloudflare Nameservers vs. Google DNS/OpenDNS

Response

Hi there, José Miguel from Cloudflare Support! Cloudflare's nameservers host your DNS settings. Google DNS and OpenDNS don't host anything — they just look up DNS records to help users reach your site.

If you point your nameservers to Cloudflare, Cloudflare becomes your DNS provider. That means you'll want to make sure all your DNS records (like A or CNAME records) are correctly added to Cloudflare.

Thought Process

What I gathered through research

Cloudflare Nameservers are authoritative — meaning they answer DNS queries based on the records you configure in Cloudflare.
Google DNS / OpenDNS are public resolvers — they retrieve DNS info, but don't manage your DNS settings themselves.

Common scenario

I looked into how Cloudflare works when hosting providers are involved. It's common to host a site elsewhere but still delegate DNS to Cloudflare. In that case, users should:

Change their domain's nameservers at the registrar to the ones Cloudflare provides
Add matching DNS records in Cloudflare that point to their host's IP address

Partial (CNAME) Setup

I also came across something called a CNAME setup. This lets users keep their current DNS provider but still route specific subdomains through Cloudflare. This seems to be more relevant on Enterprise plans.

Example DNS Record

Type: A
Name: example.com
Content: 192.0.2.123
Proxy status: Proxied

This example shows how Cloudflare can direct traffic to a third-party host while still applying its protection and performance features.