I recently transferred my domain from Name.com to Cloudflare and I wanted to share my experience for others considering a similar move but mostly for myself to remember the process. It was little bit of a journey where I had to deal with some bugs, poke around settings I didn’t fully understand and I learned some things along the way. So here's how it all went down.

Why Transfer Domain in the First Place?

My domain was about to expire in a few days, and Name.com was asking for $59 to renew it. That seemed like a lot so I started looking for cheaper options. I considered buying a .com domain, but then I discovered that Cloudflare sells domains at retail prices with no extra fees. This meant I could save about $14 a year since Cloudflare charges only $45 for a .io domain.

The Transfer Process

I found this article on Cloudflare's website which had a step by step guide on the transfer process. The instructions were pretty clear and not too hard to follow.

The first step was to add my website to Cloudflare by changing the DNS nameservers at Name.com to those of Cloudflare.

Once the domain was added Cloudflare basically played the middleman for my web traffic, handling security stuff like protection from DDoS attacks, a firewall and SSL encryption.

Next, I unlocked my domain from the control panel at Name.com. This lock stops other registrars from trying to start a transfer.

Then I got the EPP code from the control panel. This code is necessary for transferring domains between registrars.

Then I entered it on Cloudflare's platform to start the transfer.

Now normally, this transfer process takes around five days to complete. But because I had already swapped the nameservers from Name.com to Cloudflare, my website should've ideally been up and running on Cloudflare in no time.

Troubleshooting DNS and SSL Issues

I must have angered the DNS gods because when I switched to Cloudflare's nameservers my website instantly went down with an ERR TOO MANY REDIRECTS error. This was quite frustrating. I checked Vercel where my site was hosted but couldn't find the issue. After some digging, I found the answer in a Cloudflare forum. Turned out the problem was with the SSL/TLS settings. I had to change the setting from Flexible to Full (strict). Doing this sorted everything out. The issue was that Cloudflare was trying to connect to my site using HTTP but my site only accepted HTTPS connections.

Finding a New Email Provider

When I bought the domain from Name.com, I got a free year of Google Workspace which I used for my custom email. With the domain now on Cloudflare and the free year ending I needed a new email provider. I considered Zoho Mail which was just ₹51/month, but then I found out that Cloudflare offers free email forwarding. I remembered my brother mentioning this a few years ago, saying it's how Apple's "Hide My Email" feature works. So I set up email forwarding on Cloudflare, which gave me a custom email address for free. Now the only problem was that I could receive emails on that address but couldn't send any.

Setting Up Mailgun to Receive Emails

Determined to send emails from my custom address I dug around and found this godsend article on setting up a custom email with Cloudflare and Mailgun. The article explained the process of using Cloudflare email for routing and Mailgun's SMTP server to send emails. It covered everything, with step by step instructions and screenshots for each step that made it super easy to follow.

Even though I followed the article very carefully, I hit a wall when trying to add the email to Gmail. The problem was during the final step, it sent a verification email to the Mailgun address, but it kept failing, returning the mail back and showing an "Address not found" error. After spending a few hours troubleshooting, I figured out that I had made a mistake. I was using the Mailgun address instead of the one I set up in Cloudflare. As soon as I fixed that everything worked perfectly and I could finally send emails from my custom address.

Conclusion

Transferring my domain to Cloudflare turned out to be a pretty good decision. It saved me some $$$ and provided useful features like free email forwarding. Despite a few bumps the process was relatively smooth and I now have a custom email address set up for free 🎉.

If you're up for renewal and considering a domain transfer, I highly recommend Cloudflare. Remember, a little patience and a whole lot of googling and chatgpting are key to getting through the troubleshooting hell.