The definition of “hosting” does not describe just one service, but several services which provide various functions to a domain name. Having a website and emails, as an example, are two independent services although in the general case they come together, so many people see them as one single service. In fact, every domain name has a number of DNS records called A and MX, which show the server that handles each specific service - the first one is a numeric IP address, that defines where the site for the domain address is loaded from, while the latter is an alphanumeric string, which shows the server that manages the emails for the domain address. For instance, an A record is 123.123.123.123 and an MX record is 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 has and the traffic/message is first forwarded to that company. If you have custom records on their end, the browser request or the e-mail will be directed to the correct server. The concept behind employing separate records is that the two services use different web protocols and you could have your site hosted by one service provider and the emails by another.

Custom MX and A Records in Shared Web Hosting

If you have a shared web hosting account from our company and you wish to switch either your website or your emails to a different provider, it's going to take you literally just two clicks to do this. Our Hepsia CP provides an easy-to-use DNS Records tool, where all your domain names and subdomains will be listed alphabetically and you will be able to see and change the A and/or MX records for any of them. If you decide to use a different email provider and they ask you to set up more MX records than the default 2, it's not going to take more than a few mouse clicks either to add them. You could also set different latency for these records and the lower the latency, the higher the priority a given MX record will have. The propagation of each record that you modify or create is not going to take more than a few hours and if necessary, you will also be able to set the so-called Time-To-Live value, that indicates how long a record will remain active after it's changed or deleted.

Custom MX and A Records in Semi-dedicated Servers

The Hepsia hosting Control Panel, which comes with our semi-dedicated plans, allows you to view the A and MX records for each of the domain names or subdomains in your account and if needed, to change any of them or create new ones. Managing these records is quite easy because all domains/subdomains will be listed alphabetically, so editing a record is as simple as entering it in a box and saving the change. Setting up a new one takes a few more clicks and if you experience any troubles, you can check out our educational videos on how to set up A and MX records. Our system is intuitive enough to be used by individuals with little or no previous experience, yet advanced enough to provide you with complete control over all records and to allow you to have different A records even for domain.com and www.domain.com. If you are pointing your emails to a different company and they ask you to set up more than 2 different MX records, you can select the priority of each one.