MX Records

Mail Exchange (MX) records are DNS records that are necessary for delivering email to your address.

An MX record is used to tell the world which mail servers accept incoming mail for your domain and where emails sent to your domain should be routed. Assigning multiple MX records is a fail-safe measure you can use in the event your default mail server is down. If your MX records do not point to the correct location you will not receive email.

Mail Assure's MX records are signed with DNSSEC.

To route incoming email for your domain through the Mail Assure filter you need to update the MX records in your domain provider's DNS settings.

The default MX records are listed in the Default MX host names section in the General > Settings page accessible from the Admin Level Control Panel, see the full documentation for information on Managing Server Settings.

You can check whether your domains have the correct MX Records configured using the MX Verification Tool.

Update Your MX Records in Your Domain Provider's DNS Settings

  1. In your domain provider's DNS control panel add the appropriate MX records:

    2. MX records consist of two parts: the domain name and the priority: the lowest number is the highest priority and is the first one attempted for delivery. Be sure to include the priority when adding the MX records

  2. Remove the original MX records

    3. You must make sure you remove old MX records so that all emails are filtered through the Mail Assure cloud. Spammers actively try different MX records (such as the highest numbered priority) to bypass spam filters.

    DNS changes can take some time to propagate to DNS resolvers world-wide, meaning email may continue to deliver directly to the previous MX records without filtering for some time, depending on the TTL value for the MX records

  3. Check, using the Log Search, that the message has passed through the Mail Assure filtering nodes

    4. Global MX Records (Recommended)

    For redundancy reasons we recommend using our global records. Our up-time and service level guarantees do not apply to the EU/US-only records:

    • mx1.mtaroutes.com (priority 10)
    • mx2.mtaroutes.com (priority 20)
    • mx3.mtaroutes.com (priority 30)
    • mx4.mtaroutes.com (priority 40)

    Region-Specific MX Records

    However, where there is a requirement to route data through a specific geographic territory, the below region-specific MX records may be used:

    Region Priority TTL (recommended)   Region Priority TTL (recommended)
    European Union (EU)       United States (US)    
    mx1-eu.mtaroutes.com 10 300   mx1-us.mtaroutes.com 10 300
    mx2-eu.mtaroutes.com 20 300   mx2-us.mtaroutes.com 20 300
    mx3-eu.mtaroutes.com 30 300   mx3-us.mtaroutes.com 30 300
    mx4-eu.mtaroutes.com 40 300   mx4-us.mtaroutes.com 40 300
    United Kingdom (UK)       Australia (AU)    
    mx1-uk.mtaroutes.com 10 300   mx1-au.mtaroutes.com 10 300
    mx2-uk.mtaroutes.com 20 300   mx2-au.mtaroutes.com 20 300
    mx3-uk.mtaroutes.com 30 300   mx3-au.mtaroutes.com 30 300
    mx4-uk.mtaroutes.com 40 300   mx4-au.mtaroutes.com 40 300
    Canada (CA) Region       South Africa (ZA) Region    
    mx1-ca.mtaroutes.com 10 300   mx1-za.mtaroutes.com 10 300
    mx2-ca.mtaroutes.com 20 300   mx2-za.mtaroutes.com 20 300
    mx3-ca.mtaroutes.com 30 300   mx3-za.mtaroutes.com 30 300
    mx4-ca.mtaroutes.com 40 300   mx4-za.mtaroutes.com 40 300