Each registered domain has no less than 2 Name Server records which show where it's hosted i.e. by using these records you direct your domain address to the servers of a certain website hosting provider. That way, you've got both your website and your e-mails handled by the very same company. On the lower level of the Domain Name System (DNS), however, there is a variety of other records, for instance A and MX. The first one reveals which server handles the website for a given domain address and is always an IP address (123.123.123.123), while the second one shows which server deals with the e-mails and is always an alphanumeric string (mx1.domain.com). As an illustration, any time you type a domain address in your browser, your request is sent through the global DNS system to the provider whose NS records the domain uses and from there you may be sent to the servers of a different provider if you have set an IP address of the latter as an A record for your domain address. Having different records for the website and the e-mails means that you could have your website and your e-mails with two different providers if you would like.
Custom MX and A Records in Web Hosting
If you have a web hosting account with our company and you would like to switch either your site or your e-mails to an alternative provider, it'll take you literally only two clicks to do it. Our Hepsia CP provides 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 modify 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 clicks either to add them. You could also set different latency for these records and the lower the latency, the higher the priority a particular MX record will have. The propagation of every record that you modify or set up is not going to take more than a few hours and if necessary, you'll also be able to set the so-called Time-To-Live value, that reveals how long a record will stay active after it's modified or deleted.