The term “hosting” does not describe a single service, but a number of services which offer different functions to a domain. Having a website and e-mails, as an illustration, are two individual services although in the general case they come together, so most people see them as one single service. In fact, each domain has a several DNS records called A and MX, which show the server that manages each specific service - the first one is a numeric IP address, that specifies where the website for the domain name is loaded from, while the second one is an alphanumeric string, which shows the server that handles the e-mails for the domain address. For example, an A record is 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 Internet domain has and the traffic/message is first directed to that company. If you have custom records on their end, the web browser request or the email will be forwarded to the correct server. The reasoning behind employing separate records is that the two services use different web protocols and you may have your website hosted by one service provider and the emails by another.

Custom MX and A Records in Website Hosting

If you have a website hosting account from our company and you would like to move either your website or your emails to a different company, it is going to take you literally just 2 mouse clicks to do this. Our Hepsia CP comes with an easy-to-use DNS Records tool, where all your domain names and subdomains are going to 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 email provider and they ask you to create more MX records than the default 2, it will not take more than a few clicks either to add them. You may 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 every record that you change or create is not going to take more than several hours and if needed, you will also be able to set the so-called Time-To-Live value, that indicates how long a record will stay active after it is modified or deleted.

Custom MX and A Records in Semi-dedicated Servers

If you buy a semi-dedicated server plan from us, you will be able to see and edit the A and MX records for each of the domain addresses or subdomains which you host in the account. The Hepsia CP, which you will get to handle the account, offers an state-of-the-art, although easy-to-use tool in which all hosts are going to be listed in alphabetical order and you'll be able to edit their records with no more than a couple of mouse clicks. If you have to set up a new record, it's going to be just as simple - pick the domain/subdomain, enter the IP address or mail server record and you are going to be ready. Additionally, you'll be able to set different priority for the MX records you create in case that you choose to use a third-party email provider and they ask you to set up additional records other than the two default ones. If you experience any troubles, we have a detailed Help section with videos in which you can see first-hand how to create or modify any record.