How-to · Intermediate · 10 minutes plus propagation
How to Set Up MX Records
Send your domain's email to whichever mail service is meant to receive it — a practical, jargon-free walkthrough with the classic mistake flagged before you make it.
Straight answer first
In a line: send your domain's email to whichever mail service is meant to receive it — a intermediate-level task that takes 10 minutes plus propagation.
Below you get the exact steps, the classic snag, and a tip from the support desk. Where our platform handles a step for you, the guide says so rather than making you do the robot's work.
Written by the Hosting Seller staff · Checked 1 August 2026
Intermediate
Difficulty level
Quick
Time to allow
4
Stages
24/7
Help at any hour
You do not need to be technical for this. The walkthrough is written for first-timers, tested on our own platform, and honest about which parts are genuinely fiddly and which are merely unfamiliar.
Rule of the road: read the snag section before you begin rather than after. It is harvested from the tickets of people who did it the other way round.
The overview before the detail
The job breaks into a few clear stages: get the exact target hostnames, clear out the old records before anything else, add each record with its priority number and look it up, then send a real test message.
Each stage is a few minutes of steady clicking — the time it takes depends mostly on how familiar the control panel already feels. The detailed steps sit further down this page; skim the whole route once before you begin.
Where this goes wrong, and how not to
Pointing MX at an IP address or at a CNAME. Both break the mail standards, and both produce the special sort of delivery failure that works for most senders and fails for a few, which takes weeks to pin down.
Forewarned really is forearmed here. This one mistake accounts for most of the frustration the subject produces, and it is entirely avoidable once somebody names it.
The tip we hand out to everybody
Change MX records at a quiet hour and leave the old service switched on for a day. Sending servers retry for hours, so a period where both ends can receive means nothing falls between the two.
Small habits like this are the real difference between people who find hosting easy and people who find it stressful. The tools are identical; the working method is not.
How our platform shortens this
Several steps in this guide exist only because hosting historically made you do them. On our plans SSL issues itself, backups run daily without being asked, and one-click installers replace the manual setup entirely. What is left is the part that is genuinely yours.
And when a step misbehaves anyway, support answers at any hour with the actual fix, not a knowledge-base link and a shrug. Half our best guides began life as a pattern in the ticket queue.
A good platform makes every guide shorter
Every walkthrough on our how-to shelf is tested on the platform we actually run — cPanel, LiteSpeed, NVMe, one-click installs — so the instructions match your screen instead of gesturing vaguely at it.
What you pay on day one is what you pay at renewal, so the year-two invoice holds no surprises worth opening early.
- Step by step, tested exactly as printed
- The snag flagged before you reach it
- The dull steps are already automated
- People on hand at any hour if you stall
Why Hosting Seller
On every plan, as standard
The snag, named early
The classic mistake for this exact job is flagged before step one, so 10 minutes plus propagation stays 10 minutes plus propagation.
Scoped honestly
Send your domain's email to whichever mail service is meant to receive it is a intermediate-level task — this guide budgets 10 minutes plus propagation and says which steps the platform absorbs.
Automation where it belongs
SSL, backups and installs run themselves here, so the guide covers only what is genuinely yours to do.
Works exactly as written
Every step tested on the platform we run — no 'your host may differ' hand-waving anywhere.
The undo is always named
Where a step could bite, the guide says so and tells you how to put it back again.
No jargon toll
Terms are explained where they appear or linked to the glossary — nothing assumes you already know.
First Steps
From choosing to live
- 1
Get the exact target hostnames
Your mail provider publishes the MX hostnames and the priority number for each one. Copy them word for word. An MX value is always a hostname — never an IP address, no matter how tempting.
- 2
Clear out the old records before anything else
Open Zone Editor and note or remove whatever MX records are already there. Entries left behind by a previous provider split delivery between two services in a way nobody can predict.
- 3
Add each record with its priority number
The lowest priority number is tried first and equal numbers share the load. Enter the full set your provider lists, not just the first line — the spares are the ones that catch mail when the primary is busy.
- 4
Look it up, then send a real test message
Check the domain's MX from outside with any lookup tool, then send a message from an unrelated account and confirm it arrives. Both checks together take two minutes.
In the Box
Packed with every plan
- Spam and virus filtering fitted to every mailbox
- The renewal price printed on the tag matches the order price
- WebP image optimisation built in and costing nothing
- cPanel, the panel the rest of the trade already knows
- A free SSL certificate on every plan, reissued before it lapses
- A domain free for year one when you order annually
- Staging copies so changes get tested before they go live
- Mailboxes that carry your own domain name
- Real people on the counter, every hour of every day
- The Softaculous installer for one-click application setup
Across the Counter
The questions we get asked most
What is the MX priority number actually there for?
It sets the order of attempts. A sending server tries the lowest number first and works upwards if that one will not answer. Two records sharing a number share the traffic. A single record on priority 10, or 0, is completely valid.
Email died the moment I changed nameservers — why is that?
The new zone almost certainly has no MX records in it. Recreate them, along with the SPF and DKIM TXT records, at whichever provider now answers for the domain. A nameserver move carries across only what somebody types in again.
What uptime do you commit to, and who is watching?
We commit to 99.9% uptime and watch it continuously. That figure is an operational target rather than a poster line, and the alerting behind it usually has an engineer on a problem before the first customer notices anything is wrong.
Is there a refund if it does not suit?
Yes — thirty days. Put the hosting through real work, and if it is not right, ask for the money back and you get it; there is no retention script to survive first. Domain registrations are the one carve-out, because registries take that fee the moment the name is placed.
What does round-the-clock support actually stretch to?
People at the counter at every hour, and a scope that takes in the practical work: mailbox setup, DNS records, WordPress trouble, restores. Not 'the server responds, ticket closed'. Ask us something hard before you order — the reply is a fair sample of what you would get afterwards.
Is the SSL certificate genuinely free?
On every plan, with nothing held back. The certificate is issued the moment your domain points here and reissues itself well before expiry. The encryption is the same as a paid DV certificate — paid tiers exist only for wildcard coverage or organisation validation, which most sites never need.
How do I pay, and does it bill again on its own?
Orders go through a secure checkout by credit or debit card, and the renewal is taken at the same price you first paid. Every invoice sits in the client area for you to read, and switching auto-renewal off is a toggle in your account rather than a phone call.
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