MX Records, do i ? don't i ?

Posted by John
on Sunday, 17 February 2008

Note to self...

You don't need an MX entry in your DNS records if your only sending mail. An MX record is only used to broadcast to others about where mail should go when it's sent to you.

Leave a response Comments
  1. Alistair MacDonald – Thursday, 21 February 2008
    Theoretically true, but it might be more hassle not to set up a mail server in the long run. The problem is that many spam prevention systems use the MX record to check that the email is valid. Some will even connect to the server to check that it is real. My favorite spam filtering software does use this technique to identify spam, but it is up to the administrator as to what importance this has with respects to identifying mail as spam.

    My suggestion is to sigh up for a free Google Hosted account and then you have an MX record, a server, and you do not need to use it.
  2. John – Thursday, 21 February 2008
    valid point, i'm learning how to setup an email server so eventually get around to adding the appropriate MX records.
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