An Introduction To MX Record
MX (Mail Exchange) records are used to have mail delivered to users on your domain. Your domain must have MX record, primarily because people typically use an E-mail address with your domain name, not a sub domain.
When you send mail to someone, your mail typically goes from your E-mail client to an SMTP server. The SMTP server then checks for the MX record of the domain in the E-mail address.
For example, with "support@accuwebhosting.com", it would look for the MX record for accuwebhosting.com. If a user has an E-mail address ˇ°support@accuwebhosting.com", the SMTP server would look for the MX record for "mail.accuwebhosting.com". The MX record is a domain name, so the SMTP server then gets the A record for that domain name, and connects to the mail server.
Each MX record has 2 pieces of information associated with it. The first is a number "Preference" number; the second is the domain name of the mail server. If there are multiple MX records, the SMTP server will pick one based on the preference level starting with the lowest preference number, working its way up.
An example:"accuwebhosting.com MX 10 mail.accuwebhosting.com", "accuwebhosting.com MX 50 backup.accuwebhosting.com", and "accuwebhosting.com MX 50 some.otherserver.com". An SMTP server would first try mail.accuwebhosting.com, and if that wasn't available, it would try either backup.accuwebhosting.com or some.otherserver.com.
Your MX records must not point to a CNAME record. For example, "accuwebhosting.com MX 10 mail.accuwebhosting.com" can not have a corresponding record "mail.accuwebhosting.com CNAME smtp.accuwebhosting.com".
You should know the facts about setting up MX records for your domain.
Your MX records must not point to an IP address. If so, some mail servers will not deliver mail to you!
Do not use wildcards unless you are positive you know what you are doing. In most cases, they provide unexpected results
Make sure your mail server/s accept mail by:
ˇ¤ Use a free mail service such as Yahoo or Hotmail & try sending you a message.
ˇ¤ Using Telnet to send you message.
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