In this guide we will help you to understand what exactly an "MX Record" is.
For more information on how to manage your DNS settings, please see our article on "How To Change DNS Settings."
What's An MX Record?
An MX record tells email delivery agents where your emails should be delivered to, meaning "MX" stands for "Mail Exchange". Any domain can have several MX records, giving you plenty of redundancy to use, and they mean your emails will always make it through to your website.
Google Apps is a prime example of how you can use MX records to send and deliver emails. When you create a Google account for yourself and email someone with another Google Apps account, Google themselves create a set of MX records for their domain address. These MX records include:
aspmx.l.google.com 1
alt1.aspmx.l.google.com 5
alt2.aspmx.l.google.com 5
aspmx2.googlemail.com 10
aspmx3.googlemail.com 10
These five separate servers can all accept different emails from different Google accounts. There are different priority values placed on each one, meaning you can prioritise the value of the MX records for domains that you own. Any addresses you have with a lower value will be used first in your MX records.
This means that when a mail agent wishes to deliver an email to your domain, it will first try to send it to the lowest-valued MX record. If that server is too busy or cannot handle the delivery, it will attempt to deliver the email to the next-lowest record. If that one cannot handle the delivery, it will move to the next and so on.
Need help?
If you have any problems following this guide or modifying your DNS settings, please contact our team here.