The term “hosting” doesn't describe a single service, but a set of services that offer different functions to a domain. Having a site and e-mails, for example, are two separate services although in the general case they come together, so many people consider them as one single service. Actually, each domain name has a number of DNS records called A and MX, which show the server that handles each particular service - the former is a numeric IP address, which defines where the site for the domain is loaded from, while the second one is an alphanumeric string, which shows the server that deals with the e-mails for the domain name. As an illustration, an A record would be 123.123.123.123 and an MX record is mx1.domain.com. Every time you open a website 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. In case you have custom records on their end, the web browser request or the e-mail will then be directed to the correct server. The reasoning behind working with separate records is that the two services use different web protocols and you can have your site hosted by one service provider and the emails by another.
Custom MX and A Records in Shared Hosting
If you have a shared hosting account with our company and you want to direct either your site or your e-mails to an alternative company, it'll take you literally only 2 clicks to do so. Our Hepsia Control Panel provides an easy-to-use DNS Records tool, where all your domain names and subdomains are going to be listed alphabetically and you'll be able to see and edit the A and/or MX records for any of them. If you decide to use a different e-mail provider and they ask you to set up more MX records than the standard 2, it is not going to take more than a couple of mouse clicks either to add them. You can also set different latency for these records and the lower the latency, the higher the priority a certain MX record is going to have. The propagation of any record that you change or create won't take more than several hours and if needed, you will also be able to set the so-called Time-To-Live value, which indicates how long a record will remain active after it is changed or deleted.
Custom MX and A Records in Semi-dedicated Servers
The Hepsia hosting Control Panel, provided with our Linux semi-dedicated plans, will permit you to view the A and MX records for every one of the domain addresses or subdomains in your account and if needed, to change any of them or set up new ones. Managing these records is very easy as all domains/subdomains are going to be listed alphabetically, so updating a record is as easy as entering it in a box and saving the change. Creating a new one takes just a couple of more clicks and in case you experience any difficulties, 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 no previous experience, yet advanced enough to provide you with 100 % control over all records and to enable 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 may choose the priority of each one.