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Walkthrough · Intermediate · 10 minutes plus propagation

How to Set Up MX Records

Direct your domain's inbound email to the mail service that should handle it — a hands-on walkthrough in plain words that names the classic mistake before you reach it.

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The short answer

One line covers it: direct your domain's inbound email to the mail service that should handle it — a intermediate-level job of roughly 10 minutes plus propagation.

Below are the precise steps, the classic stumble, and one tip from the support desk. Wherever the platform already does a step for you, the guide says so rather than handing you a machine's chores.

By the Hosting & Domains team · Reviewed 18 August 2026

Intermediate

Skill rating

Quick

Time budget

4

Steps in total

24/7

Support on call

No technical background needed. This walkthrough was written for first-timers, proven on our own hardware, and honest about which parts are genuinely tricky rather than merely unfamiliar.

First rule: read the snag section before you start, not afterwards. It was distilled from the tickets of everyone who tried the other order.

The outline first, then the detail

The work falls into a few clean stages: collect the provider's hostnames, clear the old records out first, enter the whole set with priorities and check it, then send real mail.

Every stage is a few minutes of unhurried clicking — the total depends mostly on how well you already know the control panel. The detailed instructions are further down; read the whole path once before you begin.

Where it comes off, and how to stay on

Pointing MX at an IP address or a CNAME. Both break the mail standards, and both produce the infuriating case where most senders deliver and a handful do not, which can take weeks to pin down.

Forewarned is genuinely forearmed here. This one mistake accounts for most of the frustration the topic ever causes — and it disappears entirely once somebody points it out.

What we tell every customer

Make MX changes during a quiet hour and leave the old service running for another day. Sending servers retry for hours, so a window in which either endpoint will accept mail means nothing falls through it.

Habits this small are what separate the people who find hosting effortless from the people who find it draining. The same tools on both sides — a different way of working.

Where this platform takes work off you

Some steps in this guide exist only because hosting traditionally forced them on you. Here the SSL issues itself, the copy is taken daily without being asked, and one-click installers remove the manual setup. What is left is the part that was always genuinely yours.

Should a step still misfire, support answers at any hour with an actual fix rather than a knowledge-base link and a shrug. Half the guides on this site began as repeat patterns in our ticket queue.

Mail landing at an address that carries the domain rather than a free provider

The hosting these steps were tested on

Every walkthrough in this library is run on the platform we actually operate — cPanel, LiteSpeed, NVMe, one-click installs — so the instructions match your screen rather than gesturing at it from a distance.

A free SSL certificate comes with every plan and reissues itself before the old one lapses — the padlock is never yours to diarise.

  • Every step checked exactly as published
  • The snag named before it arrives
  • The dull steps taken out of your way
  • People reachable at any hour you stall

Why Hosting & Domains

Standard on every plan

The snag, flagged up front

The classic error for this particular task is named before step one, which is how 10 minutes plus propagation stays 10 minutes plus propagation.

Honest about how big it is

Direct your domain's inbound email to the mail service that should handle it is a intermediate-level job — set aside 10 minutes plus propagation, with the platform-absorbed steps marked.

The dull parts automated

SSL, backups and installs look after themselves here, leaving the guide to cover only what is genuinely yours.

Works exactly as printed

Every step is proven on the platform we run — none of the 'your host may vary' hedging.

Every undo written out

Any step that could bite is marked, together with the exact way to wind it back.

Jargon never charges you

Every term is defined on the spot or linked to the jargon buster — nothing assumes prior knowledge.

Quick Start

Order placed to site online

  1. 1

    Collect the provider's hostnames

    Your mail service publishes MX hostnames with a priority against each. Copy them exactly as printed. An MX target is always a hostname; an IP address is never valid there, however convenient it looks.

  2. 2

    Clear the old records out first

    In Zone Editor, write down and then remove whatever MX entries are already present. Rows left behind by a previous provider split delivery unpredictably between two services.

  3. 3

    Enter the whole set with priorities

    Delivery starts at the lowest priority number, and hosts on matching numbers divide the load. Add every host the provider lists rather than only the first, because the backups exist to catch mail whenever the primary is unavailable.

  4. 4

    Check it, then send real mail

    Run an external MX lookup against the domain, then send a message in from an unrelated account and watch it arrive. Both checks together take about two minutes.

Built In

Fitted to every plan

  • Mailboxes that answer at the name you hold
  • Free SSL on every plan, reissued before the old one lapses
  • No set-up charge at any point, and no joining fee
  • Money back within 30 days on hosting plans, 7 on reseller
  • 99.9% uptime as the target, watched around the clock
  • WebP image optimisation built in, at no extra charge
  • cPanel, which is what most of the industry already runs
  • Your existing site brought across by our engineers, at no charge
  • A renewal figure identical to the one you registered at
  • WordPress Toolkit, with the updates seen to for you

Frequently Asked

The questions that come up most

What is the priority number on an MX record for?

It sets the order of delivery attempts. Senders try the lowest number first and work up the list when a host does not answer. Matching numbers divide the traffic. A single record at priority 10, or at 0, is perfectly proper.

Why did mail stop after a nameserver change?

The new zone is almost certainly short of its MX records. Rebuild them, along with the SPF and DKIM TXT entries, wherever DNS now answers for the name. A nameserver move only brings across what somebody re-enters by hand.

What is the uptime commitment, and what happens in a month that misses it?

99.9% — and if a month falls below that through a fault on our side, our terms entitle you to a pro-rated credit; ask and we apply it. Calling it a target rather than a contractual SLA is a deliberate choice. Hardware and network faults surface through platform monitoring, usually before the first customer notices.

What is the refund position if I change my mind?

Shared, business, WordPress and WooCommerce hosting get thirty days, and reseller gets seven. VPS and dedicated servers are built to order the moment payment lands, so they sit outside the guarantee — as do domain registrations, where the registry charges the instant the name is secured. Inside the window one request returns the hosting fee, with no retention script to sit through.

Keep reading

Changing hosts? Run through our checklist first.

A plain order of work for a move nobody visiting will notice: which files go over first, how to carry the mail across without losing a message, when exactly to repoint DNS, and the two mistakes behind nearly every outage we are asked to rescue.

What arrives is the checklist, and then the occasional note on keeping a site quick. Leave whenever you like; the privacy policy covers the rest.

Start on a plan priced without games.

NVMe hosting with SSL and the migration included, people answering at any hour, and a price that stays where it was.

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