Updated: 3 November 2026 · Applies to: cPanel's official Cloudflare plugin
To enable Cloudflare on a website through cPanel, open the Cloudflare icon under cPanel's Software section, sign in with your Cloudflare account, then choose whether to connect with a CNAME setup or a Full DNS setup. This only applies if your hosting provider has the Cloudflare plugin enabled for your account; it is a WHM level add-on, not something every cPanel account has by default.
Open the Cloudflare plugin in cPanel
Log in to cPanel and look under the Software section for a Cloudflare icon. If it is not there, ask your hosting provider to enable it; on Ucartz hosting, open a support ticket and we will confirm whether it is active for your account.
Sign in or create a Cloudflare account
The plugin will prompt you to log in with an existing Cloudflare account, or sign up for a new one if you do not already have one.
Choose how to connect: CNAME setup or Full DNS setup
The plugin offers two different ways to connect your domain to Cloudflare, and the choice matters:
- CNAME setup keeps your existing nameservers exactly as they are. Cloudflare's protection and caching only apply to the specific subdomains the plugin sets up as CNAME records through Cloudflare, not your whole domain.
- Full DNS setup moves your domain's nameservers to Cloudflare's. Cloudflare then manages all of your domain's DNS and its full feature set, caching, DDoS protection, SSL and so on, applies to the whole domain, not just the subdomains CNAME setup covers.
If you choose Full DNS setup, update your domain's nameservers at your registrar to the ones Cloudflare's dashboard gives you; CNAME setup needs no nameserver change at all.
Confirm it is active
Once Cloudflare shows the domain's status as Active in the plugin, traffic is now routing through Cloudflare. Check from outside your own network that the site still loads correctly, and that HTTPS still works, since certificate and SSL mode settings on the Cloudflare side can affect this.
A known limitation worth knowing about
cPanel's own community support channels have noted that DNS changes made from inside cPanel do not always reliably sync to Cloudflare, particularly since cPanel deprecated its older Advanced Zone Editor. If a DNS record you change in cPanel does not appear to update on the Cloudflare side, manage that specific record directly in the Cloudflare dashboard instead of relying on the cPanel plugin to sync it.
