Changing Your MX Records

When you use an email security service such as MX Guarddog, you point your MX records to our servers. That directs your email to our servers where it is cleaned and then delivered to your regular email server. For a lot of people their server is a shared hosting server.

A shared hosting server is managed by a website hosting company and you pay a small fee to use a part of that server every month.

Hey! You can't do that

Some hosting companies do not permit their customers to use a 3rd party email security service. They have systems in place that detect if you change the MX records for your domain. If you modify the MX records for your domain, they assume your email is not hosted with them anymore and will refuse to accept any of your mail.

Messages sent to your domain will start to be rejected by their servers and returned to the original sender with a delivery failure notice.

Yes! You Can Do That, Partly Anyway

Most of these hosting companies that do not permit their customers to change their MX records can be tricked. By keeping one MX record that still points to their server they will continue to accept your mail. The setup we describe below is not ideal, but if your hosting company does not allow the use of a 3rd party email security system and you are unable to change hosting companies this system may still help to reduce your spam.

Keeping One MX Record

MX Guarddog assigns all domains three unique MX records to use, they provide your domain with a geographically redundant network of email security servers to accept your email. By placing one of your hosting companies' servers on the list - in the 3rd position - you can trick their systems and minimize the amount of spam you receive.

Here is what your MX records might look like:

From the example above, you want to use the actual MX records assigned to your domain by MX Guarddog and replace mx1.yourhostingcompany.com with one of the MX records assigned to you by your hosting company. It is important to place their MX record in the 3rd priority level, so MX Guarddog has both the highest and lowest priority levels. This will deliver the best spam protection, even under these less than ideal conditions.

Hosting Companies That Can Be Tricked

This is a list of hosting companies that do not permit their customers to use a 3rd party email security system, along with the date we last verified that using this custom MX record setup will work.

Found One?

If you find a hosting company that requires this tweak to make MX Guarddog compatible with their systems, please let us know.