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MX record

published · September 10, 2026

An MX record is the DNS record naming a host that accepts mail for a domain, with a preference number that orders the candidates.

An MX record is the DNS record naming a host that accepts mail for a domain, with a preference number that orders the candidates — lower is tried first. A domain may publish several, and the set of them is the first thing any verification reads.

What Spaw answers

mx_found says whether a host that can accept mail was found. mx_provider names the operator behind the hosts, recognised from their patterns — Google, Microsoft, Proton, Fastmail, Mimecast and the rest each have a page under email providers.

Three reasons come straight out of this step: no_mx_records when DNS returns neither an MX nor an A record, mx_unresolvable when every published target fails to resolve or points somewhere that cannot receive mail from the internet, and null_mx when the domain publishes the standard "no mail here" record.

What it cannot tell you

An MX record is a claim about the domain, not about a mailbox. It is checked live on every lookup rather than read from a cache, because DNS is the one part of the answer that costs nothing to get right and changes without warning.

Related

markdown version: /glossary/mx-record.md

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