---
description: Prevent other teams from adding your active Cloudflare zones to a different account by enabling zone holds.
title: Zone holds
image: https://developers.cloudflare.com/fundamentals/account/account-security/zone-holds/og.png?v=e4315f344a0e3f8f
---

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# Zone holds

Last updated Aug 14, 2026|Copy as Markdown| [View as Markdown](https://developers.cloudflare.com/fundamentals/account/account-security/zone-holds/index.md)| [Agent setup](https://developers.cloudflare.com/agent-setup/)

Zone holds prevent other teams in your organization from adding zones that are already active in another account.

For example, you might already have an active Cloudflare zone for `example.com`. If another team does not realize this, they could add and activate `example.com` in another Cloudflare account, which may cause downtimes or security issues until the original zone could be re-activated.

Note

Zone holds are enabled by default for all Enterprise zones.

## Availability

|  | Free | Pro | Business | Enterprise |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Availability | No | No | No | Yes |

## Enable zone holds

When you enable a zone hold, no one else can [add your zone](https://developers.cloudflare.com/fundamentals/manage-domains/add-site/) to their Cloudflare account. If they attempt to, they will receive the following message:

*The zone name provided is subject to a hold which disallows the creation of this zone. Please contact the domain owner to have this hold removed.*

To enable a zone hold:

1. Log into the [Cloudflare dashboard ↗︎](https://dash.cloudflare.com).
2. Select your account and zone.
3. On the zone homepage, go to **Quick Actions**.
4. For **Zone Hold**, switch the toggle to **On**.

You also have the option to **Also prevent subdomains**, which prevents anyone in your organization from creating subdomains or custom hostnames related to your zone.

## Release zone holds

You may want to temporarily release a zone hold to allow another team to [register a subdomain](https://developers.cloudflare.com/dns/zone-setups/subdomain-setup/) in a separate Cloudflare account, such as `docs.example.com`.

To release a zone hold:

1. Log into the [Cloudflare dashboard ↗︎](https://dash.cloudflare.com).
2. Select your account and zone.
3. On the zone homepage, go to **Quick Actions**.
4. For **Zone Hold**, switch the toggle to **Off**.
5. Choose the length of your release.
6. Select **Release hold**.

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