Each registered domain has a minimum of 2 Name Server records which show where it is hosted i.e. by using these records you point your domain to the servers of a specific web hosting provider. This way, you've got both your website and your e-mails handled by the exact same service provider. On the lower level of the Domain Name System (DNS), however, there are a number of other records, for example A and MX. The former shows which server manages the site for a given Internet domain and is always an IP address (123.123.123.123), while the second one shows which server handles the emails and is always an alphanumeric string (mx1.domain.com). For instance, when you enter a domain address in your Internet browser, your request is directed through the global DNS system to the provider whose NS records the domain uses and from there you could be directed to the servers of a different company if you have set an IP address of the latter as an A record for your domain address. Having independent records for the website and the emails means you could have your site and your emails with 2 different providers if you'd like.
Custom MX and A Records in Cloud Hosting
If you have a cloud hosting account with our company and you would like to point either your website or your e-mails to a different company, it's going to take you literally only two clicks to do this. Our Hepsia CP comes with an easy-to-use DNS Records tool, where all your domains and subdomains are going to 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 wish 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 mouse clicks either to add them. You can even 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 several hours and if required, you'll also be able to set the so-called Time-To-Live value, that indicates how long a record will stay active after it's changed or deleted.