Set MX to another server than digital ocean

July 1, 2014 4.5k views
josecostamartins
By:
josecostamartins

I have a client that have a managed host with cpanel. Now he wants to migrate his web application from his managed host to DO; but he wishes to maintain the managed host in order to receive emails.

I thought that passing the DNS to DO and setting the MX in DO would do the trick, but that didn't happened.

Can i set MX record to another server ip?

If so, how?
if not, what are my options?

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5 Answers
admin266910 July 2, 2014

Yes.
Where will your nameservers be, pointed at DO's hosted dns, a dropplet running a dns server, or a cpanel/other web host/dns provider?

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josecostamartins July 2, 2014

Right now i'm pointing to the CPANEL and the CPANEL points to a droplet.
The idea was to "redirect" every request to DO, except email.

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josecostamartins July 3, 2014

I figured out.
For posterity, in case someone needs:

  1. In CPANEL/host i changed the A record to point to my droplet
  2. changed the mail CNAME record, first changing it to a type A record and then setting the ip with the one for my CPANEL/host
  3. then i set the mx to mail.mydomain.com. (don't forget the final dot) with priority 0 (can be from 0 to 65,535; lower number means higher priority)
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craig1060352 March 25, 2015

@josecostamartins I am actually facing the same issue. Did you end up changing your name servers to the Digital Ocean, or leaving them as the CPANEL?

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  • josecostamartins March 25, 2015

    Hi @craig1060352 , my DNS points to the CPanel Server.

    My Architecture:

    if not email:
    request mydomain.com ---> DNS --> CPanel server ----> DO droplet

    if email:
    request mydomain.com ----> DNS ---> CPanel server

josecostamartins March 25, 2015
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