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

Custom MX and A Records in Cloud Hosting

If you have a cloud hosting account with our company and you want to direct either your website or your e-mails to a different service provider, it'll take you literally simply two mouse clicks to do so. Our Hepsia Control Panel provides an easy-to-use DNS Records tool, where all your domains and subdomains will be listed alphabetically and you'll be able to see and modify the A and/or MX records for any of them. If you choose to use a different e-mail provider and they ask you to set up more MX records than the standard two, it will not take more than a few clicks either to add them. You could also set different latency for these records and the lower the latency, the higher the priority a certain MX record is going to have. The propagation of each record that you change or create will not 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 remain active after it's changed or deleted.

Custom MX and A Records in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The Hepsia hosting CP, which comes with our Linux semi-dedicated packages, will permit you to see the A and MX records for any of the domain addresses or subdomains in your account and if required, to edit any of them or create new ones. Managing these records is quite easy because all domains/subdomains will be listed alphabetically, so updating a record is as easy as entering it in a box and saving the change. Setting up a new one takes only a few more clicks and in case you experience any issues, you can check out our instructional videos on how to set up A and MX records. Our system is user-friendly enough to be used by people with little or no previous experience, yet advanced enough to provide you with complete control over all records and to allow you to have different A records even for domain.com and www.domain.com. If you are moving your e-mails to a different company and they ask you to create more than 2 different MX records, you may choose the priority of each one.