Creating a CNAME record for any of the domain names or subdomains that you have in a hosting account will allow you to forward it to a different domain/subdomain. The forwarded domain will lose all its records - A, MX and so on, and will take the records of the Internet domain it is being redirected to. In this light, you cannot set up a CNAME record to direct your domain name to a third-party company and maintain a functional email service with the first provider. It is also very important to know that a CNAME record is always a string of words rather than a number because it is often wrongly identified as the A record of the domain being redirected. One of the major uses of a CNAME record is to direct a domain address you own through one company to the servers of another company assuming you have created a website with the latter. That way, the Internet site will appear under your own domain name, not under some subdomain provided by the third-party company.