The definition of “hosting” does not describe one service, but a variety of services that offer various functions to a domain. Having a site and emails, for example, are two separate services even though in the general case they come together, so most people consider them as one single service. In fact, every domain name has a couple of DNS records called A and MX, which show the server that deals with each specific service - the first one is a numeric IP address, which defines where the website for the domain name is loaded from, while the second one is an alphanumeric string, which shows the server that manages the e-mails for the domain address. For example, an A record is 123.123.123.123 and an MX record is mx1.domain.com. Each 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 forwarded to that company. In case you have custom records on their end, the Internet browser request or the e-mail will be directed to the correct server. The concept behind using separate records is that the two services work with different web protocols and you can have your website hosted by one service provider and the emails by another.

Custom MX and A Records in Web Hosting

If you have a web hosting account with our company and you want to point either your site or your e-mails to an alternative service provider, it'll take you literally only two clicks to do it. Our Hepsia Control Panel offers an easy-to-use DNS Records tool, where all your domain names and subdomains will be listed alphabetically and you will be able to see and modify the A and/or MX records for any of them. If you decide to use a different e-mail provider and they ask you to create more MX records than the default 2, it is not going to take more than a few clicks either to add them. You can also set different latency for these records and the lower the latency, the bigger the priority a particular MX record is going to have. The propagation of any record that you modify or create won't take more than several hours and if needed, you will also be able to set the so-called Time-To-Live value, which indicates how long a record will stay active after it is modified or deleted.

Custom MX and A Records in Semi-dedicated Servers

Accessing and changing the A or MX records for any one of your domains or subdomains is really easy if you purchase a semi-dedicated server plan through us. The accounts are handled through our in-house built Hepsia CP, which has a section dedicated to the DNS records of your domain names. The latter is going to be listed alphabetically and you could click on each of them to see both the A and the MX records. Modifying any record is as simple as entering the new one in a text box and saving the change, so even when you have never dealt with such matters before, you'll not experience any issues if you want to move your website or e-mails to some other company while keeping the second service with our company. If needed, you could also create additional MX records and set a specific priority depending on the instructions of the new provider.