Every registered domain name has no less than 2 Name Server records which show where it's hosted i.e. by using these records you direct your domain name to the servers of a particular website hosting provider. In this way, you have got both your website and your e-mails managed by the same provider. On the lower level of the Domain Name System (DNS), however, there are lots of other records, for example A and MX. The first one reveals which server deals with the website for a given domain address and is always an IP address (123.123.123.123), while the second one indicates which server handles the e-mails and is always an alphanumeric string (mx1.domain.com). For instance, when you enter a domain 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 forwarded 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 separate records for the site and the e-mails means you could have your site and your e-mails with two different providers if you'd like.
Custom MX and A Records in Website Hosting
If you have a website hosting account with our company and you would like to switch either your website or your emails to an alternative company, it is going to take you literally just 2 mouse clicks to do this. Our Hepsia CP provides an easy-to-use DNS Records tool, where all your domain names 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 email provider and they ask you to set up more MX records than the standard 2, it's not going to take more than a few clicks either to add them. You could also set different latency for these records and the lower the latency, the greater the priority a certain MX record is going to have. The propagation of every record that you change or create is not going to take more than a few hours and if necessary, you will also be able to set the so-called Time-To-Live value, which reveals how long a record will remain active after it's modified or deleted.