Creating a CNAME record for any of the domain addresses or subdomains you have within a hosting account allows you to direct it to a different domain/subdomain. The forwarded domain name will lose all its records - A, MX and so forth, and will take the records of the domain address it is being redirected to. In this light, you can't create a CNAME record to point your domain name to a third-party company and keep a functional email service with the first hosting provider. Also, it is important to note that a CNAME record is always a string of words and never a number because it is commonly mistaken for the A record of the domain name being forwarded. One of the main uses of a CNAME record is to direct a domain name which you own through one provider to the servers of another provider when you have set up a site with the latter. In this way, the Internet site will appear under your own domain name, not under some subdomain provided by the third-party provider.