An A record is the actual record. The name is resolved to the corresponding IP address.
An example of this is:
www.no-ip.com resolves to 204.16.252.112
CNAME records (short for Canonical Name) map your hostname to another hostname. It is useful for pointing many hosts to the same place and updating them easily.
An example of this is:
www.no-ip.com to www.noip.com
This is a CNAME record because even though the domains are different, they still go to exactly the same place and follow the same DNS rules that are in place.
Redirects are like CNAME records in a way, but different. Use a redirect if you want one domain to redirect to another.
An example of this is:
www.yourwebsite.com redirects to yourblog.blog.com, or by redirecting a short URL to one that is long.
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