Creating a CNAME record for each of the domain names or subdomains you have in a hosting account will permit you to redirect it to a different domain/subdomain. The forwarded domain will lose all of its records - A, MX and so on, and will take the records of the domain address it is being pointed to. In this light, you cannot set up a CNAME record to forward your domain name to a third-party company and keep a functional email service with the first hosting provider. It is also important to note that a CNAME record is always a string of words and not a number as it is frequently mistaken for the A record of the domain address being redirected. One of the main uses of a CNAME record is to forward a domain address which you own through one company to the servers of some other company when you have set up a site with the latter. This way, the site will appear under your own domain, not under some subdomain provided by the third-party provider.