Free MX Record Lookup & Checker
| Domain | Type | Primary NS | Responsible Person | Serial | Refresh | Retry | Expire | Minimum | TTL |
|---|
| Name Server | IP Address | TTL |
|---|
| Domain | Type | TTL | Record Value |
|---|
| Trace Result |
|---|
| Domain | Type | Record | Status |
|---|
| Domain | Type | Record | Status |
|---|
Check live MX DNS records, TTL values, and trace the full root-to-authoritative resolution path.
MX (Mail Exchange) Records Overview
What is an MX record?
An MX record specifies the mail servers responsible for receiving email on behalf of a domain.
Why do you need an MX record?
MX records ensure that emails sent to your domain are correctly routed to your mail server.
MX record structure
An MX record includes the domain name, TTL, record type (MX), priority, and the mail server's address. Example: example.com. 3600 IN MX 10 mail.example.com.
How to create an MX record?
Add an MX record pointing at your mail host's fully-qualified hostname (the value your email provider supplies), and set a priority - lower numbers are tried first. Use one MX record per server for redundancy, and never point an MX at a CNAME or a bare IP address, which breaks mail delivery.
FAQs
MX Record Troubleshooting & Common Fixes
Emails bounce with “550 Relay Access Denied” or “Mailbox Not Found”
When migrating from standard cPanel hosting to Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, administrators often leave the old hosting company's default MX records active alongside the new records. External mail servers will pick whichever server they reach first, causing half of your incoming messages to bounce or land in an abandoned inbox.
mail.yourdomain.com). Verify that only your active provider's MX records are published. In cPanel or Plesk, also ensure the “Email Routing” setting is switched from “Local Mail Exchanger” to “Remote Mail Exchanger”.
Mail servers reject your MX record as a protocol violation
Internet mail standards (RFC 2181 and RFC 5321) strictly prohibit pointing an MX record to an IPv4/IPv6 address or to a CNAME alias. The MX record target must be a valid, directly resolvable hostname (an A or AAAA record).
mail.example.com → 198.51.100.25). Then set your domain's MX record target to mail.example.com, never directly to the IP address or to a CNAME.
Priority order confusion causing delayed or lost emails
In MX records, a lower priority number means higher precedence. A record with priority 1 or 10 will always receive mail before a backup server with priority 20 or 50.
ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM should have priority 1, and secondary servers should have priority 5 and 10. If you have equal-priority records, mail traffic will be load-balanced evenly between them.
DNS manager appends domain name to MX destination (trailing dot error)
Some DNS control panels (such as BIND, AWS Route 53, or cPanel Advanced Zone Editor) expect a trailing dot at the end of fully qualified hostnames. Without the trailing dot, the system automatically appends your domain, turning smtp.google.com into smtp.google.com.yourdomain.com.
smtp.google.com.).
