Transferring My Domain from AWS to Cloudflare and Hosting My Astro Blog

Cloudflare AWS Domain Transfer Astro Web Hosting DevOps

March 15, 2025

I have used vercel and netlify to host my websites in the past. Both are great services. But I had never used Cloudflare before just read a lot about it on the internet. So when I decided to re-create my blog, I thought it would be a good opportunity to try Cloudflare.

This is my experience and the steps I followed to transfer my domain from AWS to Cloudflare and deploy my Astro blog.

Domain Transfer Process: AWS to Cloudflare

Step 1: Prepare Your Domain in AWS

  1. Logged into AWS account and opened Route53.
  2. Domains are listed in the “Registered domains” section.
  3. Disabled the “Transfer Lock” feature through the “Actions” dropdown (this took about a minute for me).
  4. Selected “Transfer to another registrar” from the “Transfer out” dropdown.
  5. Saved the Authorization Code. This is needed confirm you own the domain when transferring it to another registrar.
  6. Removed WHOIS privacy protection (optional but recommended to avoid potential transfer issues).

AWS will definitely update their UI over time, so I am not sharing screenshots of the process. The core functionalities should remain available, though their exact location might change.

Step 2: Initiate Transfer in Cloudflare

  1. Logged into Cloudflare and went to “Domain Registration”.

For me the transfer options wasn’t visible, so I just hard refreshed the page.
  1. Selected “Transfer a domain you own” and entered my domain.
  2. Chose “Quick Scan for DNS records”. This will scan your domain for existing records and provide a list of records to transfer.
  3. Selected my plan and removed any conflicting DNS records.
  4. Continued to activation.

Step 3: Complete Transfer and Wait

  1. Updated nameservers. There was an option to disable DNSSEC but it was already disabled for me in the AWS Dashboard.
  2. Entered the AWS authorization code.
  3. Verified my contact details and payment information.
  4. Confirm and finalize the transfer.
  5. Waited for the AWS confirmation email (usually arrives within minutes).

Approve the transfer immediately to expedite the process Without approval, transfers can take up to 5 days.

Deploying an Astro Blog to Cloudflare Pages

While waiting for the domain transfer to complete, I decided to deploy my Astro blog.

Deploy and Connect

  1. Went to “Workers & Pages” → “Pages” in Cloudflare.
  2. Connected to GitHub and selected my Astro repository.
  3. Chose “Astro” from Framework presets (this configures build settings).
  4. Clicked “Deploy” to start the build process.
  5. After deployment, went to “Custom domains” and added my domain.
  6. Added the provided CNAME value to my DNS records (on Cloudflare, not AWS).
  7. Returned to Pages and clicked “Activate domain”.

Even if your domain hasn’t fully transferred yet, you can still set up the Pages configuration. The domain will activate itself once the transfer completes.

Verification and Next Steps

Domain activation usually happens quickly but can take up to 48 hours. If your site doesn’t appear, try checking in a different browser to avoid cache issues.

Success! While my main browser showed caching issues, testing in a fresh browser session confirmed both the domain transfer and deployment worked.

Now that everything is on Cloudflare, I’ll explore their DDoS protection, CDN performance, and security features.

The whole process took me about 30 minutes. Might have been less if I didn’t have to google and read some docs.

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