The term “hosting” doesn't describe one service, but several services which provide a variety of functions to a domain name. Having a site and emails, as an example, are two separate services even though in the general case they come together, so most people see them as one single service. The truth is, each and every domain has a several DNS records called A and MX, which show the server that deals with each particular service - the former is a numeric IP address, which specifies where the website for the domain name is loaded from, while the latter is an alphanumeric string, which shows the server that deals with the emails for the domain address. For instance, an A record would be 123.123.123.123 and an MX record can be mx1.domain.com. Whenever you open a site or send an email, the global DNS servers are contacted to check the name servers that a domain address has and the traffic/message is first forwarded to that company. When you have custom records on their end, the web browser request or the e-mail will then be directed to the correct server. The concept behind working with separate records is that the two services work with different web protocols and you may have your website hosted by one company and the emails by another.
Custom MX and A Records in Web Hosting
If you have a web hosting account from our company and you would like to switch either your website or your e-mails to a different provider, it will take you literally just 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 are going to be able to see and edit 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 create more MX records than the default two, it's not going to take more than a couple of mouse clicks either to add them. You can also set different latency for these records and the lower the latency, the higher the priority a particular MX record is going to have. The propagation of each record that you modify or create won't take more than several hours and if necessary, you'll also be able to set the so-called Time-To-Live value, which indicates how long a record will remain active after it is changed or deleted.
Custom MX and A Records in Semi-dedicated Servers
Accessing and editing the A or MX records for any one of your domain names or subdomains is really easy if you get a semi-dedicated server plan through us. The accounts are handled by using our in-house built Hepsia Control Panel, which includes a section devoted to the DNS records of your domain names. The latter is going to be listed alphabetically and you may click on each of them to see both the A and the MX records. Modifying any record is as simple as entering the new one in a text box and saving the change, so even when you have never dealt with such matters before, you will not experience any problems if you wish to switch your site or e-mails to a different provider while keeping the second service with our company. If needed, you can also create additional MX records and set a certain priority depending on the instructions of the new provider.