Redirects are simple from the visitor’s side. You open one URL and, a moment later, you’re somewhere else.
Behind the scenes, though, something still needs to receive that request and tell the browser where to go next. Traditionally, that job often sits with your website hosting, server configuration, or CMS.
That works perfectly well while the website is still there. It becomes less convenient when the only reason you’re keeping an old website or hosting plan alive is to keep its redirects working.
Redirect Supply separates the two. Your website can move, change, or disappear entirely while your redirects keep doing their job.
A redirect still needs somewhere to happen
It’s easy to think of a redirect as something attached to a domain itself. Point oldbrand.com at newbrand.com, and you’re done.
There’s one important step in between.
DNS can tell the internet where requests for your domain should go, but DNS itself doesn’t return an HTTP redirect. Something still needs to receive the request and respond with instructions to send the visitor somewhere else.
Usually, that “something” is a web server, hosting platform, CMS, or another service capable of handling redirects.
Redirect Supply takes over that specific job, without needing to host the website behind it.
You start by connecting your domain
The first step in Redirect Supply is adding the domain you want to redirect.
Once you add it, Redirect Supply generates the DNS records you need. Add those records at your DNS provider and that’s most of the setup done.
There’s no separate verification button to remember. Redirect Supply checks the DNS automatically. While that’s happening, you’ll see the domain as Pending. Once everything is in place, it changes to Connected.
DNS changes can take a little time to propagate, so don’t worry if that doesn’t happen instantly. In many cases it only takes a few minutes, but the exact timing depends on your DNS provider.
Once the domain is Connected, Redirect Supply is ready to receive requests for it.
What actually happens when someone visits an old URL?
This is the part you normally never see.
Say someone clicks an old link:
oldbrand.com/pricing
Their browser first needs to find out where oldbrand.com should go. The DNS records you added point that request toward Redirect Supply’s infrastructure.
From there, the request is handled through Cloudflare’s edge network. Redirect Supply checks the URL against the redirect rules you’ve created and, when it finds a match, returns the appropriate redirect response.
The browser then sends the visitor to the destination you specified.
So the journey looks roughly like this:
Old URL → Redirect Supply → matching rule → new URL
There doesn’t need to be an old website sitting somewhere in the middle. Redirect Supply only needs to know what should happen when the request arrives.
Your redirect rules decide where people go
Connecting the domain gets requests to Redirect Supply. The rules are what tell Redirect Supply what to do with them.
You might want an entire old domain to send visitors to a new one. Or you might need individual paths to go to different destinations.
For example:
oldbrand.com → newbrand.com
or:
oldbrand.com/pricing → newbrand.com/plansoldbrand.com/about → newbrand.com/company
Once your domain is Connected, you can create these rules from its Rules page. Choose the destination, select the redirect type, save the rule, and it can start handling matching requests.
For a permanent move, a 301 is usually the obvious choice. Redirect Supply also supports 302, 307 and 308 redirects when you need different behavior.
The useful part is that those rules belong to the redirect layer, not to the website you’re moving away from.
So, can you cancel the old hosting?
If the old hosting is only still running because it handles your redirects, usually yes — once you’ve moved that responsibility somewhere else and tested that everything works.
That distinction matters.
You can remove the old website without giving up the old domain. In fact, if you want URLs on that domain to keep redirecting, you still need to own the domain and keep control of its DNS.
Before cancelling anything, it’s worth doing a quick check:
Make sure the domain shows as Connected in Redirect Supply.
Create the redirect rules you need.
Test the old domain and a few important old URLs.
Check that each one reaches the intended destination.
Only then remove hosting you no longer need.
It’s a small check, but much nicer than discovering later that an important old link stopped working the day the hosting account was closed.
The website and its redirects don’t have to live together
That’s really the idea behind how Redirect Supply works.
A redirect needs infrastructure, but it doesn’t need an entire website. By separating redirects from hosting, you can keep old domains and URLs useful without keeping the websites that once lived behind them online.
That can be handy after a rebrand, during a website migration, when consolidating domains, or simply when an old site has reached the end of its life.
Your old website can go away. Your hosting can go away when you no longer need it.
The redirects can stay exactly where they’re needed.
