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How it works

Orange-to-Orange (O2O) is a specific traffic routing configuration where traffic routes through two Cloudflare zones: the first Cloudflare zone is owned by customer 1 and the second Cloudflare zone is owned by customer 2, who is considered a SaaS provider.

If one or more hostnames are onboarded to a SaaS Provider that uses Cloudflare products as part of their platform - specifically the Cloudflare for SaaS product - those hostnames will be created as custom hostnames in the SaaS Provider's zone.

To give the SaaS provider permission to route traffic through their zone, any custom hostname must be activated by you (the SaaS customer) by placing a CNAME record on your authoritative DNS. If your authoritative DNS is Cloudflare, you have the option to proxy your CNAME record, achieving an Orange-to-Orange setup.

With O2O

If you have your own Cloudflare zone (example.com) and your zone contains a proxied DNS record matching the custom hostname (mystore.example.com) with a CNAME target defined by the SaaS Provider, then O2O will be enabled.

DNS management for example.com

TypeNameTargetProxy status
CNAMEmystorecustomers.saasprovider.comProxied

With O2O enabled, the settings configured in your Cloudflare zone will be applied to the traffic first, and then the settings configured in the SaaS provider's zone will be applied to the traffic second.

flowchart TD
accTitle: O2O-enabled traffic flow diagram

A[Website visitor]

subgraph Cloudflare
  B[Customer-owned zone]
  C[SaaS Provider-owned zone]
end

D[SaaS Provider Origin]

A --> B
B --> C
C --> D

Without O2O

If you do not have your own Cloudflare zone and have only onboarded one or more of your hostnames to a SaaS Provider, then O2O will not be enabled.

Without O2O enabled, the settings configured in the SaaS Provider's zone will be applied to the traffic.

flowchart TD
accTitle: Your zone using a SaaS provider, but without O2O

A[Website visitor]

subgraph Cloudflare
    B[SaaS Provider-owned zone]
end

C[SaaS Provider Origin]

A --> B
B --> C