How to Move your Email Service to Web Hosting Hub

There will be times when you plan to move to Web Hosting Hub from another hosting service and you want to immediately move your email ahead of the website. This can be done but requires several changes to your DNS settings. Your DNS settings will need to be changed at your current service and indicate that mail will be delivered to the Web Hosting Hub server. Specifically, this is done through the MX record settings in your DNS. The following article explains the changes that are required and what they should be.

Moving your Email Service to Web Hosting Hub

In order to change the mail service over to Web Hosting Hub, you will need to first make sure that your account is established and active. You can do this by simply going to the temporary URL that you are provided when your accounted is created. If you are able to use the link and then see the Web Hosting Hub "Coming Soon" page, then your account is active. Note, that this doesn't necessarily mean that your domain name is pointing to us. If your old service is still active, your domain name should still be resolving to your old host.

Things to keep in mind when you change your mail service over:

• If you are using an email client you may need to change the settings in order to be able to send and receive emails properly when the change is complete. Click here to find your mail settings.
• The change doesn't occur immediately. DNS changes typically require up to 24 hours to shift- this is known as DNS propagation. Email will continue to deliver to the old host until the DNS changes, so you should keep the old account settings for at least a day.

Changing the MX Records

MX records are the settings that determine how your email is being routed. MX stands for Mail Exchange Server. These settings can be found in the service that saves your DNS settings. If you are unfamiliar with where your DNS settings are saved, then you will need to contact your old host and ask how to make these changes.

1. Obtain the Shared IP in your cPanel - this will be the IP used by the Web Hosting Hub server. It is the location that will be identified as the server for your email.
2. Go to the service that holds your DNS settings and open that interface.

3. Locate your MX record. Your default value may look like this:

   Domain	Record type	Priority	Record value
   domain_name.com	MX	0	mail.domain_name.com

   In the example above, mail.domain_name.com is actually a CNAME that is assigned to the MX record. You may also see several settings for MX records. A common set of settings are those used by Google:

   Domain	Record type	Priority	Record value
   domain_name.com	MX	1	ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM
   domain_name.com	MX	5	ALT1.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM
   domain_name.com	MX	5	ALT2.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM
   domain_name.com	MX	10	ASPMX2.GOOGLEMAIL.COM
   domain_name.com	MX	10	ASPMX3.GOOGLEMAIL.COM

   Priority sets the order in which a server will be used. Large email server systems like Google use multiple servers as you can see in the mail settings above. Web Hosting Hub only uses one mail server, so the priority will be 0. Note: If you have multiple MX records, you will need to delete the other records as there is only one Web Hosting Hub MX record.

4. Take note of the MX record value, then look for it in your DNS settings. If it is a CNAME, then there will be record for it. The CNAME record may appear as follows:

   Domain	Record type	Record name	Record value
   domain_name.com	CNAME	mail	domain_name.com

   This record basically creates an alias for the MX record so that mail goes to your email server on your domain.

5. If you can, change the record type of the CNAME record from CNAME to A record. If you are unable to do this, then you will need to delete the CNAME and simply create a new A record. The value for the record in either case will be the shared IP that you obtained in step 1. The change will look like this:

   Domain	Record type	Record name	Record value
   domain_name.com	A	mail	##.##.##.## (this is the shared IP address from your cPanel)

   After you have completed making that change go back up to your MX record(s) and remove multiple records if you have more than one. Web Hosting Hub uses only one MX record.

6. Look for a setting for your EMAIL ROUTING. This setting will determine if you are using a value on your current server, or if it is going to a remote mail exchange server (which in this case will be the Web Hosting Hub mail server). You will need to set this value to REMOTE. This setting will indicate that mail is not being handled locally.
7. Save your settings and you are done.

DNS changes typically have a short period of delay termed DNS propagation that may require up to 24 hours before the change is complete. When the change has completed propagating, then email will be delivered to the Web Hosting Hub mail server.