The word “hosting” doesn't describe a particular service, but a number of services that provide various functions to a domain name. Having a website and emails, for example, are two individual services even though in the general case they come together, so most people think of them as one single service. Actually, each domain name has a several DNS records called A and MX, which show the server that handles each specific service - the former is a numeric IP address, which defines where the site for the domain name is loaded from, while the latter is an alphanumeric string, which shows the server that manages the emails for the domain address. For example, an A record is 123.123.123.123 and an MX record would be 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. When you have custom records on their end, the browser request or the email will then be forwarded to the correct server. The concept behind employing separate records is that the two services employ different web protocols and you can have your website hosted by one provider and the e-mail messages by another.

Custom MX and A Records in Cloud Hosting

If you have a cloud hosting account with our company and you wish to switch either your site or your emails to an alternative provider, it will take you literally only 2 clicks to do it. Our Hepsia Control Panel offers an easy-to-use DNS Records tool, where all your domains and subdomains will be listed alphabetically and you're going to be able to see and change the A and/or MX records for any of them. If you choose to use a different e-mail provider and they ask you to set up more MX records than the default 2, it will not take more than a few clicks either to add them. You may also set different latency for these records and the lower the latency, the greater the priority a particular MX record will have. The propagation of every record that you modify or set up will not take more than a few hours and if required, you'll also be able to set the so-called Time-To-Live value, that reveals how long a record will remain active after it is changed or deleted.

Custom MX and A Records in Semi-dedicated Servers

Accessing and changing the A or MX records for each of your domain addresses or subdomains is very easy if you get a semi-dedicated server plan from our company. The accounts are handled via our in-house built Hepsia CP, which features a section devoted to the DNS records of your domain names. The latter will be listed alphabetically and you can click on any one of them to see both the A and the MX records. Changing any record is as simple as entering the new one in a text box and saving the change, so even though you may have never dealt with such matters before, you won't encounter any difficulties if you choose to move your site or e-mails to some other provider while keeping the second service with our company. If needed, you could also create additional MX records and set a specific priority in accordance with the recommendations of the new provider.