Weird email question for your Server/DNS Pros
 

I work for a mainstream company, and the webhost we use does not offer email services. For contractual reasons we cannot at this time switch to another host, so we've been paying a third party company simply to 'host' our email.

My question is ...

#1 How is this even possible, when our dns points to our webhost, which is not associated in any way with our email host.

#2 We want to switch email hosts, but I have no idea how to go about doing this without updating our dns servers (which I of course can't do).

Pretty weird that we receive email at all now that I think about it lol ...

Any ideas / insites would be greatly appreciate.

Thanks,

-Phil

bumpety bump ... any help greatly appreciated :)

Whoever currently host your DNS must have a MX record pointing toward your email host. If you can't leave your current host and must have third
party email hosting I reccommend www.dnsmadeeasy.com. You can also
manage your dns there. They are great. But to move your email to a new
email host you will have to edit your dns MX record. If your current host
will not edit this for you, you can use Dnsmadeeasy as your dns. Then you
can just edit your registrar to use Dnsmadeeasy and control everything
yourself.

#1: The DNS entry for your webpage, eg www.yoursite.com is probably hosted at your ISP, and is in their DNS record (zone file). Your e-mail is remotely hosted. So, at the company that hosts your e-mail, in their DNS (zone files) mail.yourhost.com is pointed to the IP of of your domain.

#2: As long as you don't switch hosting companies, and you keep the same IP address that mail.yourdomain.com points to, it doesn't matter where you host your mail as the company that hosts your e-mail just has to update their DNS so mail.yourdomain.com points to your current IP address at your current hosting company.

I hope that helps, it is difficult for me to explain as I am not a techno guru. But it makes sense what you are doing and isn't that complicated. :upsidedow

its all based on your MX records on the DNS server, its very easy to move to a new host but you have to be able to make the edits.

Thanks a lot, guys. Very helpful!

:thumbsup:

-Phil