Donaldson R F
Email & SMTP
Check & Fix MX Records
Make sure your MX records point mail to the right place, with the right priority, and fix them if they don't.
The Problem
Mail is going missing, arriving at the wrong mailbox provider, or you've just migrated email hosting and aren't sure the MX records followed properly — a wrong priority value or a leftover old record can silently split your mail flow.
About this problem
MX records don't just need to exist — the priority values matter, since mail servers try the lowest-priority-number record first, and a leftover record from a previous provider (common after a migration) can quietly split mail flow between old and new systems without an obvious error anywhere.
This comes up most often right after switching email providers, when mail seems to arrive inconsistently, or when setting up email for a domain for the first time.
What's Included
- Checking current MX records and their priority values
- Comparing against what your actual mail provider expects
- Correcting records and removing stale/conflicting entries
- Confirming mail flow is landing in the right place after the change
What's NOT Included
- Migrating mailboxes or mail content between providers
- Setting up a new mail provider from scratch
- Changes to providers that manage MX records outside of normal DNS (fully managed platforms)
How It Works
- Retrieve the current MX records and their priority values directly from DNS.
- Compare them against exactly what your actual mail provider specifies you should have.
- Identify any stale records left over from a previous provider that shouldn't still be there.
- Correct priorities and remove conflicting or duplicate entries.
- Send test mail and confirm it lands in the correct mailbox after the change propagates.
In practice: you buy the service, send over whatever access or details the job needs, I investigate and do the work, and you confirm it's resolved before we call it done.
Frequently Asked Questions
- What does MX record priority mean?
- Lower numbers are tried first — mail servers attempt delivery to the lowest-priority MX record, falling back to higher-priority-number records only if that one is unreachable.
- Why is some of my email going missing after switching providers?
- A leftover MX record from the old provider can cause some mail to route to a mailbox that no longer gets checked, splitting delivery between old and new systems.
- Can I have multiple MX records?
- Yes, that's normal and often intentional — for redundancy or load distribution — as long as the priorities and destinations are all correct for your actual mail setup.
- How do I check my current MX records?
- A DNS lookup tool shows the MX records and priorities for your domain, but confirming they match what your provider actually expects takes comparing against their documentation.
- Will fixing MX records cause downtime?
- Done correctly with a low TTL beforehand, disruption is minimal — mail servers generally handle a brief transition gracefully by retrying if a server is temporarily unreachable.
- How long after fixing MX records does mail start working correctly?
- Propagation depends on the record's TTL — often resolved within a few hours, sometimes up to 24-48 hours on records with a long previous TTL.