Setting up a CNAME record for any one of the domains or subdomains you have in the hosting account will enable you to point it to a different domain/subdomain. The forwarded Internet domain will lose all of its records - A, MX etc, and will take the records of the domain it's being forwarded to. In this light, you can't create a CNAME record to point your domain to a third-party provider and maintain a functional e-mail service with the first hosting provider. It is also essential to know that a CNAME record is always a string of words and not a number as it is often confused with the A record of the Internet domain being redirected. One of the main uses of a CNAME record is to forward a domain that you own through one provider to the servers of another company in case you have set up a site with the latter. This way, the Internet site will appear under your own domain, not under some subdomain provided by the third-party company.