What is MX Records

An MX record tells senders how to send email for your domain. When your domain is registered, it’s assigned several DNS records, which enable it to be located on the Internet. These include MX records, which direct the domain’s mail flow. Each MX record points to an email server that’s configured to process mail for that domain. There’s typically one record that points to a primary server, then additional records that point to one or more backup servers. For users to send and receive email, their domain’s MX records must point to a server that can process their mail.

The Basics

When a server decides to send SMTP mail, the relative priority of an MX server is determined by the preference number present in the DNS MX record of the recipient’s domain. When a remote client (typically another mail server) does an MX lookup for the domain name, it gets a list of servers and their preference numbers. The smallest preference number has the highest priority and any server with the smallest preference number must be tried first.

Where are my MX records?

Your authoritative MX records are on your DNS provider’s server. When you change the MX record on your DNS provider, other servers will make copies of these updated MX records over time.

Where are my MX records?

c:>nslookup
>set type=mx
>yourdomain.co.za