Also called canonical name record
CNAME record, explained
A CNAME such as www pointing to a hosting or lander service lets that provider change its servers without you editing anything. Three rules trip people up. A CNAME cannot sit beside any other record with the same name, so it cannot go at the bare root of a domain, which must hold NS and SOA records; DNS providers offer workarounds under names such as ALIAS, ANAME or CNAME flattening. A CNAME must point to a hostname, never to an IP address, which is the A record's job. And MX and NS records must not point to a CNAME.
For a domain investor, CNAMEs come up when connecting a name to a site builder, a for-sale lander or a verification step for an email or analytics service, usually on www or another subdomain. The common mistake is adding a CNAME at the root, or on a name that already holds MX records, and breaking email. If a setup guide asks for a CNAME at the root, check whether your DNS provider supports flattening first.
Example. To show a marketplace lander on www, an investor adds a CNAME from www to the hostname the marketplace provides and leaves the root's records unchanged.
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Education, not financial, legal or tax advice. Domain investing is speculative and most domain names never sell. Read the disclaimer.