You need one domain to send visitors somewhere else.
The redirect itself sounds simple:
oldbrand.com → newbrand.com
Then you start looking at how to actually set it up and discover there are quite a few options. Your registrar might offer domain forwarding. Your hosting provider can probably do it. Cloudflare has redirect rules. WordPress has plugins. Or you can use a dedicated redirect service.
They can all get a visitor from one URL to another, but they solve slightly different problems. The best option depends on what you’re redirecting, how many rules you need, and whether you want those redirects tied to your website.
Here are five common ways to do it.
1. Use your domain registrar
If you only need to send one domain somewhere else, your registrar may already have everything you need.
Many registrars offer domain forwarding as part of their domain management. You choose a destination, save the setting, and the registrar handles the redirect for you. For example, Namecheap currently supports URL forwarding with permanent 301 and temporary 302 redirects.
For something simple like:
oldcampaign.com → company.com
that may be perfectly enough.
The trade-off is control. Forwarding features vary between registrars, and things like HTTPS handling, individual path redirects, wildcard behavior, or managing large numbers of rules may be more limited than with a dedicated redirect system. Namecheap, for example, documents specific SSL requirements around secure forwarding.
So if you have one old domain and one destination, start by checking what your registrar already offers. You may not need anything more complicated.
Best for: simple domain-to-domain forwarding with only a few requirements.
2. Configure redirects on your web server
If you already have hosting and access to the server configuration, you can handle redirects there.
Apache, Nginx, and other web servers can return redirects before a page is served. This gives technical teams a lot of control over how URLs are matched and where requests go.
It also means the redirects become part of your server infrastructure.
For a developer managing an existing website, that might be exactly where they belong. But it becomes less convenient when you’re rebranding, shutting down the old website, moving to a different platform, or keeping an old hosting account alive purely because its redirects still depend on it.
Server redirects can be powerful. They just come with a little more infrastructure attached.
Best for: technical teams that already manage the server and want redirects to stay within their existing setup.
3. Use your CMS or a plugin
If the source website is still running on a CMS, redirects can often be managed there too.
WordPress is a good example. Plugins such as Redirection let you create and manage 301 redirects through the WordPress interface without editing Apache or Nginx configuration directly. The plugin can handle anything from a few redirects to much larger collections and can also track 404 errors.
This can be a very convenient option when you’re changing URLs within an existing website:
example.com/old-service → example.com/new-service
Everything stays in the same CMS, and whoever manages the website can usually manage the redirects too.
The downside appears when the website goes away. If your redirects depend on WordPress, removing that WordPress installation also removes the system handling them. For an old domain that needs to keep redirecting long after the original website is retired, tying the redirects to the CMS may not be ideal.
Best for: URL changes within an active website that will continue running on the same CMS.
4. Manage redirects with Cloudflare
If your domain already uses Cloudflare, you can manage redirects at the edge rather than through the website itself.
Cloudflare currently provides Single Redirects for static or dynamic rules at the domain level and Bulk Redirects for larger collections of redirects across domains in an account. Bulk Redirects can also be imported through CSV.
Because the redirect is handled by Cloudflare before the request reaches the origin server, it doesn’t need to wait for your website to process it.
This gives you considerably more control than basic registrar forwarding and removes redirects from the website itself. The trade-off is that you’re working directly with Cloudflare’s rule system. For Bulk Redirects, for example, you create a redirect list and then a Bulk Redirect Rule to enable it, and incoming traffic for the hostname must be proxied through Cloudflare.
If your team is already comfortable managing Cloudflare, that may not be a problem at all.
Best for: teams already using Cloudflare that want direct control over edge-level redirect rules.
5. Use a dedicated redirect service
The final option is to separate redirects from your registrar, CMS, hosting, and server altogether.
That’s what Redirect Supply is built for.
You add the domain, update the generated DNS records, and manage the redirect rules from a dedicated dashboard. Redirect Supply handles the requests through Cloudflare’s edge network, so there’s no old website or origin server required to make the redirects work.
This is particularly useful when redirects need to outlive the website they originally belonged to. Think rebrands, website migrations, old campaign domains, merged companies, or a portfolio of domains that all need to send traffic somewhere new.
Redirect Supply also keeps redirect management in one place, with automatic HTTPS, guided DNS setup, path forwarding, import and export, and redirect status controls rather than spreading those jobs across separate systems.
The setup is still:
Old URL → Redirect Supply → New URL
The difference is that managing redirects is the product itself, rather than one feature inside another platform.
Best for: redirects that need to stay independent of your website and hosting, especially across migrations, rebrands, and multiple domains.
So which option should you choose?
There isn’t one redirect method that makes sense for every situation.
If you have one domain that simply needs to forward somewhere else, check your registrar first. If you’re changing URLs inside an active WordPress site, a plugin can be perfectly practical. If your technical team already manages everything through Cloudflare or your web server, keeping redirects there may fit naturally into the existing setup.
The question becomes more interesting when the redirects need a life of their own.
If you’re shutting down an old website, changing platforms, moving domains, managing redirects across several projects, or simply don’t want important redirect rules tied to hosting that may disappear later, a dedicated redirect service starts to make more sense.
That’s the problem Redirect Supply is designed around. The website can change. The hosting can change. The redirects have their own place to stay.
There are plenty of ways to create a redirect.
The useful part is choosing one that still makes sense a year after you create it.
