The word “hosting” does not describe a single service, but a set of services which provide numerous functions to a domain name. Having a website and emails, as an example, are two independent services though in the general case they come together, so most people think of them as one single service. The truth is, every single domain has a number of DNS records called A and MX, which show the server that handles each particular service - the first one is a numeric IP address, which specifies where the website for the domain name is loaded from, while the second one is an alphanumeric string, which shows the server that deals with the emails for the domain name. As an example, an A record would be 123.123.123.123 and an MX record can be 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 browser request or the email will then be directed to the correct server. The idea behind employing separate records is that the two services employ different web protocols and you can have your site hosted by one provider and the e-mail messages by another.
Custom MX and A Records in Shared Web Hosting
If you have a shared web hosting account through our company and you want to point either your site or your emails to a different company, it will take you literally only two mouse clicks to do so. Our Hepsia CP provides an easy-to-use DNS Records tool, where all your domain names and subdomains will be listed alphabetically and you're going to be able to see and change the A and/or MX records for any of them. If you wish to use a different email provider and they ask you to create more MX records than the standard two, it is not going to take more than a few clicks either to add them. Also you can set different latency for these records and the lower the latency, the greater the priority a certain MX record will have. The propagation of each record that you modify or set up won't take more than a few hours and if required, you'll also be able to set the so-called Time-To-Live value, that reveals how long a record will stay active after it's 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 domain addresses or subdomains is extremely easy if you get a semi-dedicated server plan through our company. The accounts are maintained through our in-house built Hepsia Control Panel, which includes a section dedicated to the DNS records of your domain addresses. The latter is going to be listed alphabetically and you can click on any one of them to see both the A and the MX records. Changing any record will be as easy as typing in the new one in a text box and saving the change, so even though you may have never dealt with such matters before, you'll not encounter any difficulties if you want to move your website or e-mails to another service provider while keeping the second service with our company. If necessary, you can also set up additional MX records and set a specific priority based on the recommendations of the new provider.