Cannot add domain err_code 201

[jai]

We are unable to add a particular domain. we get the following response.

{“request”:{“act”:“full_zone_set”},“result”:“error”,“msg”:“Unfortunately, you cannot add that domain ("MYDOMAIN.COM</strong>") to Cloudflare. To find out why, review <a href="https://support.Cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/200167926-What-does-ERROR-Unfortunately-you-can-not-add-that-domain-to-Cloudflare-mean-" target="_blank">this article</a>.”,“err_code”:201}

The linked article is not useful in our case.

[Judge]

Can you confirm you did the following:

• tried disabling DNSSEC (if it was enabled)
• made sure the domain is registered (domains unavailable with statuses such as clientHold, serverHold, pendingDelete, etc will cause this to fail)
• made sure the domain currently has (at least temporary) authoritative nameservers that return DNS results

If you’ve done all of this, then maybe try adding it from the dashboard UI. If it’s a “banned zone”, you’ll get a more descriptive error message.

[jai]

Thank you so much. The domain was banned. Support has lifted the ban.

This domain was never ever used with Cloudflare in the past so don’t know reason for ban. We are trying to get more information and reason for ban from Cloudflare. I hope there is nothing to worry about. I am a bit concerned if Cloudflare can possible ban it again which would then impact our business.

[cloonan]

Hi @jai, sorry for the confusion. Zones can be banned for a number of reason, good tutorial here, Zone Banned and/or Other Zone Restricted Errors and some more details here, https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/205359838#h_874829316161540417303369.

Bottom line, if the ban is a temporary ban, Customer Support cannot assist, that is a delay that is in place as there were too many attempts to add the domain to Cloudflare; the solution is to wait a bit and try again.

If the ban is permanent, contacting support as you did is the route to go. The ban could be in place because the domain is high profile or the zone was previously associated with nefarious activities.

On a day-to-day basis, zones won’t change from unbanned to banned without some outside action/activity that calls for a ban.