The word “hosting” doesn't describe just one service, but a variety of services which provide a variety of functions to a domain name. Having a website and e-mails, as an example, are two separate services even though in the general case they come together, so many people consider them as one single service. Actually, each domain name has a couple of DNS records called A and MX, which show the server that manages each specific service - the former is a numeric IP address, that defines where the site for the domain is loaded from, while the latter is an alphanumeric string, which shows the server that manages the emails for the domain address. As an illustration, 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 name has and the traffic/message is first directed to that company. In case you have custom records on their end, the web browser request or the e-mail will then be sent to the correct server. The concept behind using separate records is that the two services employ 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 wish to point either your website or your emails to another company, it will take you literally just two mouse clicks to do this. Our Hepsia CP comes with an easy-to-use DNS Records tool, where all your domain names and subdomains are going to be listed alphabetically and you will be able to see and modify the A and/or MX records for any of them. If you wish to use a different e-mail provider and they ask you to create more MX records than the default two, it is not going to take more than a few clicks either to add them. You can also set different latency for these records and the lower the latency, the greater the priority a certain MX record is going to have. The propagation of each record that you modify or set up isn't going to take more than several hours and if necessary, you'll also be able to set the so-called Time-To-Live value, that indicates how long a record will remain active after it is changed or deleted.
Custom MX and A Records in Semi-dedicated Hosting
The Hepsia hosting CP, which comes with our Linux semi-dedicated hosting packages, will allow you to see the A and MX records for any of the domains 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 will be listed alphabetically, so editing a record is as easy as entering it in a box and saving the change. Creating a new one takes only a few more clicks and if you experience any troubles, you can check out our video tutorials on how to create A and MX records. Our system is user-friendly enough to be used by individuals with no previous experience, yet sophisticated enough to provide you with 100 % control over all records and to permit you to have different A records even for domain.com and www.domain.com. If you're switching your emails to a different service provider and they ask you to set up more than 2 different MX records, you can choose the priority of each one.