Validate MX Records - Check Your DNS MX Records Against Global DNS Standards

The DNS MX records are the Mail Exchange Records used to determine the MX records associated with the domain.

In other words, these are DNS record types used to determine which mail server should use for sending the emails to a domain's email address.

These records determine how email messages should route following the SMTP.

An example of an MX record is

• example.com record type: priority: value: TTL
• @ MX 10 mailhost1.example.com 45000
• @ MX 20 mailhost2.example.com 45000

The priority number defines the preference. The lower number will be preferred first.

If the MX records have the same priority value, they will distribute an equal load, and email servers will have an equal amount of emails.

The MTA (Mail Transfer Agent) is responsible for querying the MX record. When the user sends an email, the MTA goes for a DNS query to look up the MX records for the recipient's email. Getting the MX records establishes an SMTP connection with those email servers as per their priority value.

The MX record validation tool finds any errors and warnings in your DNS MX records.

Just enter a domain and click on the "Validate MX Record" button. The tool first fetches MX Records from the Domain's DNS Records and performs various checks on each MX Record to validate them against the best practices of Global DNS Standards.

The errors and warnings are detected based on whether the fetched MX Records follow the best practices of Global DNS Standards or not.

According to RFC 2181, you cannot point an MX record at a domain with a CNAME alias. To create a proper MX record, you must direct it to a domain with a valid A record. The MX records contain the hostname that manages the emails for that particular domain that the records are for.