Whenever you add a domain name as hosted in some account, you typically set a pair of Name Servers to point it to that specific company. On their end, 3 records are set up automatically as soon as the domain is added - one A record and two MX records. The former is a numeric address, or IP address, which “tells” the Internet domain where its website is, while the other two are alphanumeric and they show the server that deals with the e-mails for that particular Internet domain. The site and the e-mail hosting are often perceived as one thing, while they are actually two different services. Having independent records for them will enable you to have them with different companies if you wish. As an example, some new provider might have outstanding uptime for your site, but you may not want to switch your e-mail messages from your current host and by employing an A record to point the domain address to the first and MX records to have the emails with the latter, you can get the best of both providers. These records are checked when you wish to open a website or send an e-mail - in either case, the provider whose name servers are used for the Internet domain will be contacted to retrieve the A and MX records and if you've set records different from their own, the right web/mail server will then be contacted and you're going to see the needed website or your e-mail will be delivered.
Custom MX and A Records in Cloud Hosting
If you have a cloud hosting account through our company and you want to switch either your site or your emails to another service provider, it is going to take you literally only two clicks to do it. Our Hepsia CP offers an easy-to-use DNS Records tool, where all your domains and subdomains will 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 decide to use a different e-mail provider and they ask you to set up more MX records than the standard 2, it won't take more than a few mouse clicks either to add them. Also you can set different latency for these records and the lower the latency, the bigger the priority a given MX record is going to have. The propagation of any record that you change or set up won't take more than several hours and if required, you will also be able to set the so-called Time-To-Live value, which reveals how long a record will stay active after it's changed or deleted.