MX lookup
Who actually receives your email? One lookup tells you.
Your MX records name the servers that accept mail for your domain. We list them in priority order, in plain words — and tell you whether anyone can forge mail from the same address.
Instant, and read straight from public DNS. We never touch your mailbox or your hosting.
Checking
Reading your domain
Your result
Rather not do it yourself?
We will publish all three records for you.
Everything above is yours to use — the records are public and every step is on this page. This is only for when you would rather not edit DNS yourself.
Written scope and a price in writing before anything is touched. Your records, your DNS, your control.
Reading your result
Three things worth looking at twice.
MX rarely needs fixing. It needs recognising — these are the three results that mean something is wrong.
Before you change an MX record
Unlike the records on our other pages, MX is live infrastructure. Adding a DMARC record is safe because nothing depends on it yet. Editing MX redirects every email your business receives, immediately. Change it only when you know exactly which provider should be receiving your mail, and never to "tidy up".
What happens next
“These are right. So why is mail still going missing?”
Because MX only governs mail coming in. Whether mail going out in your name is trusted is decided by three completely different records — and those are usually the broken ones.
The two things people confuse
"Our mail goes to spam." That is almost never MX. It is usually SPF ending in a soft fail, or no DKIM signature, so receiving servers have no reason to trust you.
"Someone is sending emails as us." Also not MX. That is DMARC — or rather, the absence of one.
MX being correct is necessary and not sufficient. It is the first thing to rule out, which is why this page reads all four at once.
If your result says the domain can be forged, the fix is one DNS record and it is free — the DMARC page walks through it step by step.
Why it matters
Mail that vanishes usually vanishes here.
Nothing in email tells you when delivery has been quietly re-routed. There is no error, no bounce, no warning — the messages simply arrive somewhere else.
What actually happens
A business moves to a new web host. The new host helpfully publishes its own mail records as part of the setup.
From that afternoon, everything customers send goes to a mailbox on that host — one nobody has ever opened. The old inbox just goes quiet, and quiet looks like a slow week.
How long it usually runs
Until somebody phones and says "I sent that three weeks ago". By then the enquiries, the invoices and the complaints are all sitting in a mailbox nobody has the password to.
Checking takes a second. That is the whole reason this page exists.
What is an MX record
The forwarding address pinned to your domain.
When anyone in the world sends a message to your address, their mail server has to ask a question first: where does mail for this domain actually go?
Your MX records are the answer. They name the servers that accept mail on your behalf. Without them, your domain receives nothing at all.
Each one carries a number. Lower is tried first. The rest are standbys, used only when the one above is unreachable — so having several is normal and healthy, not a sign of a problem.
Reading the numbers
The numbers themselves mean nothing in isolation — only their order matters. 1, 5 and 9 would behave identically to 10, 20 and 50.
What it reads
Where mail arrives, and whether it can be faked.
MX answers one half of the question. The same lookup reads the three records that decide the other half, because a domain that receives mail perfectly can still be forged perfectly.
Every MX record
All of them, in the order mail servers will actually try them, exactly as published.
Their priority
Which one takes your mail today, and which are only standbys.
Who runs your mail
The server name tells you your provider — useful when you have inherited a domain and nobody remembers.
No MX at all
The domain receives nothing. Sometimes correct, sometimes the reason mail disappeared.
SPF
Who is allowed to send as you, and what happens to everyone else.
DKIM
Whether your outgoing mail carries a signature proving it is really yours.
DMARC
What receiving servers are told to do with a forgery. The only record with teeth.
The verdict
One sentence: can someone send email as this domain right now, yes or no.
See it working
Type a domain — and watch the servers arrive.
No account, no verification email. MX records are public information; the only reason you have not seen yours is that nobody reads DNS by hand.
What you get back
Every server, in the order they are tried, with the raw record underneath. Then one sentence on whether the same address can be forged.
The sentence
“Two servers accept mail for this domain — but anyone can also send email pretending to be it.”
Plus the command to check it yourself, so you never have to take our word for any of it.
A real result
Our own domain, read live.
Every line checkable — the command is printed underneath.
p=none, which enforces nothing. A forged message from this address is delivered normally.dig ihayz.com MXreceives fine, forgeableHow it goes from here
Four steps, and only one of them is ours.
Look it up
You type a domain. We list every mail server in priority order, and read the three sending records too. Seconds, free, no account.
Recognise it
Check each server is a provider you chose. Anything unfamiliar gets investigated before it gets edited.
Leave MX alone
If mail is arriving, incoming is working. Editing live MX records is how businesses lose a week of email.
Fix the sending side
That is where the real problem usually is. The DMARC record is free, safe to add, and takes five minutes.
Questions
Before you ask.
What does the number next to each server mean?
It is the order of preference, and only the order matters. The lowest number is tried first; the others are used when the one above is unreachable. Values of 10, 20 and 50 behave exactly the same as 1, 2 and 5.
I have three MX records. Is that a problem?
No, that is normal and healthy. Mail providers publish several so that mail still arrives if one server is down. What matters is that you recognise all of them as belonging to the provider you actually use.
My domain has no MX records at all.
Then it cannot receive email. That is correct for a domain you only use for a website, and an emergency for one you take enquiries on. It most often happens after a website move, when a new host publishes its own DNS and the mail records are not carried across.
Will changing MX records fix mail going to spam?
Almost certainly not. Spam placement is about your outgoing mail — usually an SPF record ending in a soft fail, or no DKIM signature. MX only tells the world where to deliver mail coming to you. This lookup reads all four records so you can tell the two apart.
Can someone forge email from my domain even if MX is correct?
Yes, easily, and that is the most common result we see. Receiving and sending are governed by entirely separate records. A domain can accept mail perfectly while anyone on the internet sends messages in its name.
Is it safe to delete an MX record I do not recognise?
Not without finding out what it is first. MX is live infrastructure — removing the wrong one stops mail from arriving immediately, with no warning and no bounce to tell you. Identify the server, confirm nothing uses it, and only then remove it.
Guardrails
We read. We never change.
This tool touches nothing. Everything it reports comes from public DNS, and every change is one you make yourself, at your own host, in your own time.
We ran it on ourselves
Fourteen domains. Eleven had nothing.
Before publishing this we pointed it at every domain we own. It is not a flattering result, and that is rather the point — nobody checks, including the people who should.
| What we found | Domains |
|---|---|
| No DMARC record at all — anyone could forge them | 11 |
DMARC published but p=none — enforcing nothing | 2 |
| Actually protected | 0 |
Find out in a second. Fix it in five minutes.
No sign-up, no mailbox access, no obligation. If it turns out you are already protected, we will tell you that too.
Check my domain