Apex Domains

An apex domain, also known as a root, bare, or naked domain, is essentially a domain without a fully qualified domain name or FQDN (e.g., example.com). Most organizations have an apex domain, like barracuda.com. Apex domains cannot have CNAME records; they can only have A Records. 

For more information about Apex domains, why they cannot have CNAME records, and require redirects, refer to CNAME at the apex of a zone – an article by the ISC (International Systems Consortium), which is responsible for the BIND DNS server.

Because of the this nature of apex domains, they require some extra configuration to direct traffic to your FQDN.

If you manage DNS records through WAF-as-a-Service, you can easily set up a WAF-as-a-Service Application Pointer to satisfy this requirement and do not need to configure an A record. Go to Apex Domains - DNS through Barracuda for more information.

Otherwise see Apex Domains - DNS Managed Outside Barracuda. An example of DNS records managed outside of WAF-as-a-Service would be if it is done so through a third party site like Cloudflare, Godaddy.com, etc.