: Point email records to server without domain name? I have a Shopify site and have my www CNAME pointing to it. However, I need to point my mail records to my VPS where I have set up webmail.

@Kevin317

There are a few steps to get this to work.

Setup Email Hosting on Your Server

Make sure your server is setup to receive email at your domain name.

DNS Settings

This is where most people make the error. You need a MX record and an A record.

For example

example.com MX 10 mail.example.com

mail.example.com A 192.168.1.0


The MX records says that mail destined for user@example.com should be sent to the mail.example.com server.

MX records always have 3 parts:

example.com - the domain where the email is going to (user@domain.com)

10 - the priority level (useful when you have multiple SMTP servers)

mail server - the FQDN of the mail server


The A records says that mail.example.com is at 192.168.1.0

Common Errors

Using the mail server name as the MX record:

mail.example.com MX 10 mail.example.com


This would be correct only for user@mail.example.com not for user@example.com.

Not supplying an A record for the email server mail.example.com.

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