What is an MX record? Mail exchanger records explained

An MX (mail exchanger) record is a DNS entry that names the server that receives email for a domain.

When someone sends a message to jane@example.com, the sending server looks up the MX records of example.com to find out where to deliver it. A domain can publish several MX records, each with a priority number: the lowest number is tried first, and the others are backups.

The email standard allows a fallback to the domain's main address record when no MX exists, but domains that are meant to receive email publish MX records. A domain without one is usually a website-only domain or a domain whose email was never set up.

You can see a domain's MX records with nslookup -type=mx example.com or dig mx example.com.

With Easy Email Verification

Easy Email Verification looks up the MX record of every address and returns it in mx_record and mx_domain. Addresses on domains without MX records come back as no_mx_record. Look up any domain's MX records with the free MX lookup.

Fields of an API response related to this term:

{
    "email": "jane@example.com",
    "mx_record": "mx1.example.com",
    "mx_domain": "example.com"
}

Check an address for freeClean a whole list