The word “hosting” doesn't describe only one service, but a number of services which provide a variety of functions to a domain name. Having a site and e-mails, as an illustration, are two individual services although in the general case they come together, so many people think of them as one single service. In fact, every domain has a number of DNS records called A and MX, which show the server that handles each particular service - the former is a numeric IP address, that defines where the website for the domain name is loaded from, while the latter is an alphanumeric string, which shows the server that manages the emails for the domain name. As an illustration, an A record is 123.123.123.123 and an MX record can be mx1.domain.com. Every time you open a site or send an email, the global DNS servers are contacted to check the name servers that a domain name has and the traffic/message is first directed to that company. In case you have custom records on their end, the web browser request or the e-mail will then be sent to the correct server. The reasoning behind using separate records is that the two services use different web protocols and you can have your website hosted by one company and the e-mails by another.

Custom MX and A Records in Cloud Website Hosting

If you have a cloud website hosting account through our company and you wish to point either your website or your e-mails to a different service provider, it'll take you literally simply 2 clicks to do it. Our Hepsia Control Panel offers an easy-to-use DNS Records tool, where all your domain names and subdomains are going to be listed alphabetically and you are going to be able to see and edit the A and/or MX records for any of them. If you wish to use a different email provider and they ask you to create more MX records than the default 2, it will not take more than a couple of mouse clicks either to add them. You may also set different latency for these records and the lower the latency, the higher the priority a given MX record will have. The propagation of any record that you modify or set up isn't going to take more than several hours and if required, you'll also be able to set the so-called Time-To-Live value, which shows how long a record will stay active after it's changed or deleted.

Custom MX and A Records in Semi-dedicated Hosting

Accessing and modifying the A or MX records for any of your domains or subdomains is really easy if you buy a semi-dedicated server plan from our company. The accounts are maintained via our in-house built Hepsia CP, which features a section dedicated to the DNS records of your domains. The latter will be listed alphabetically and you can click on every one of them to see both the A and the MX records. Changing any record is as simple as typing in the new one in a text box and saving the change, so even if you have never dealt with such matters before, you will not encounter any issues if you want to switch your website or e-mails to an alternative company while keeping the second service with our company. If needed, you may also set up additional MX records and set a specific priority based on the recommendations of the new provider.