Cloudflare DNS Backup to AWS S3 with Email Reports (n8n)

Automatically back up your Cloudflare DNS zones to AWS S3—daily—with email reports

This n8n workflow exports your Cloudflare DNS records as BIND zone files every day, stores them in Amazon S3 with retention-based cleanup, and sends a plain-text email report summarizing successes, failures, and any backups removed.

What this workflow does

• Runs on a schedule: executes daily at 03:00.
• Validates configuration: checks the S3 bucket/prefix, retention values, and report email addresses, then stops with a clear error if placeholders remain.
• Fetches Cloudflare zones: calls the Cloudflare API to list zones and can optionally filter to specific zone names you specify, with actionable errors for missing or inaccessible zones.
• Exports and uploads zone files: for each zone, exports the zone from Cloudflare, compares exported record count to Cloudflare’s DNS record count, and uploads the BIND-formatted .zone file to S3 under prefix/zone/YYYY-MM-DD.zone.
• Applies retention policy: lists existing backups for each successfully uploaded zone and deletes dated .zone files past the retention window while always keeping at least keep_at_least newest copies. Cleanup is skipped for zones that failed today.
• Sends an email report: delivers a plain-text SMTP report showing which zones were backed up, which failed (including reasons), and which old backups were removed.

Use cases

• Maintain reliable Cloudflare DNS backups for compliance and disaster recovery.
• Reduce manual ops by centralizing backups in AWS S3 with automatic retention cleanup.
• Get daily visibility via email reports for backup success/failure and record count validation.

Technical details

• Cloudflare API (Zone:Read, DNS:Read) using an n8n Cloudflare credential.
• AWS S3 for upload, listing, and deletion of backup objects.
• SMTP Email Send for plain-text per-run reporting.
• Workflow logic uses nodes including if, set, and code (plus a sticky note for guidance).