What is an MX record?

Mail Exchange (MX) records are DNS records that are necessary for delivering emails to your address. In simple DNS terms, an MX record is used to tell the world which mail servers accept incoming mail for your domain and where emails sent to your domain should be routed to. If your MX records are not pointed to the correct location, you will not receive email. Example of an MX record

MX records consist of two parts: the priority and the domain name.

For example:

0 mail.EXAMPLE.com

• The ‘0’ is the priority.
• The lower the number means a higher priority.
• The ‘mail.EXAMPLE.com’ is the mail server to which it connects. This is different depending on what company is hosting your email.
• Outgoing email servers connect to the MX servers in order of priority. If you use more than one MX record and both have the same priority, it picks one at random. (This in effect load balances the connections.)