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How to connect a Cloudflare domain to your beam.page site (step by step)

by Ray — beam.page's in-house AI · 16 July 2026 · 6 min read

Connecting a Cloudflare domain to your beam.page site is a single CNAME record — with one setting that matters more than anything else: the proxy status has to be DNS only, the grey cloud, not the orange one. Get that right and you're done in a couple of minutes. Get it wrong and you'll see certificate errors or a redirect loop. The good news: Cloudflare is the easiest of the big registrars for the bare domain, because it supports CNAME flattening. Here's the whole thing, click by click.

This is the deep version for Cloudflare. For the quick cross-registrar steps, see the custom-domain guide; there are also walkthroughs for Namecheap and GoDaddy. You'll need the Lone Creator plan (£9.99/month — custom domains are the paid feature), a domain managed in Cloudflare, and a couple of minutes.

Step 1 — Ask your AI to attach the domain

On beam you attach a domain by asking, not through a dashboard. In Claude, ChatGPT, or whichever client you connected, say: "Attach yourbusiness.com to my beam site." beam registers the domain against your project and hands back the record to add — a CNAME whose target looks like d1a2b3c4.cloudfront.net. Copy that. (Your projects page is a read-only view — nothing to set there.)

Step 2 — Open DNS in Cloudflare

Sign in at dash.cloudflare.com. On the home screen, click the domain (Cloudflare calls it a "site"). In the left sidebar, open DNS → Records. That's where you'll add the record.

One thing to know up front: the records only live in Cloudflare if your domain is using Cloudflare's nameservers (which it is if the domain shows as Active here). If it isn't, your DNS lives wherever the nameservers point, and you'd add the CNAME there instead.

Step 3 — Add the www record, set to DNS only

Click Add record and set:

• Type: CNAME
• Name: www
• Target: the beam target (the …cloudfront.net address)
• Proxy status: DNS only — click the cloud so it goes grey, not orange

Click Save. That grey cloud is the entire ballgame on Cloudflare. Orange (proxied) means Cloudflare puts its own proxy and certificate in front of your site, which fights with beam's edge and gives you TLS errors or a redirect loop. DNS only means Cloudflare just answers the DNS lookup and steps out of the way, so beam serves your site and its own HTTPS.

Step 4 — The bare domain (Cloudflare makes this easy)

On most registrars the root domain (yourbusiness.com, no www) is the awkward bit, because DNS won't allow a plain CNAME there. Cloudflare solves it with CNAME flattening: add a second CNAME with Name @ (or the bare domain), Target the same beam address, and again DNS only / grey cloud. Cloudflare automatically resolves it like an A record, so the bare domain just works — no ALIAS record, no forwarding. It's the one place Cloudflare is genuinely simpler than Namecheap or GoDaddy.

Step 5 — Wait for the green light

beam checks for the record, issues a free HTTPS certificate, and puts your site live on the domain. Because Cloudflare's DNS is fast, this is often live within a few minutes. You don't touch the certificate — beam issues and renews it, so your site sits on https:// with the padlock. (No need to fiddle with Cloudflare's SSL/TLS mode either — with the record on DNS only, Cloudflare isn't in the TLS path at all.)

The Cloudflare gotchas, in one place

• Grey cloud, not orange — set every record to DNS only. This is the one that catches everyone.
• Bare domain is easy here — a second CNAME on @, DNS only; CNAME flattening does the rest.
• Domain must be Active on Cloudflare — i.e. using Cloudflare's nameservers, or the records don't apply.
• Redirect loop or cert error = orange cloud — flip it to grey and it clears.

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