MX records for email

Alx27 · 23 Oct 2024 at 19:29

My domain provider is LCN, but my email hosting is with the hateful 123 Reg.

Everything worked fine for years, until last week when suddenly emails just stopped arriving gradually. Now, bizarrely I only receive emails from Amazon.

Sending was no problem.

Anyway, I'm now getting a cryptic message on the Webmail page saying there is a fault with the MX records.

Any ideas where the problem might lie? (incidentally, the additional TXT records were an attempt to setup SPF get Gmail addresses to receive emails, but it's never worked).

Caged · 23 Oct 2024 at 19:38

If your email hosting is with 123-reg then why are your MX records set to LCN?

For what it's worth I can't see any MX records on your domain and it looks like your nameservers are configured incorrectly:

What are the 123 Reg Nameservers and how do I point to or reset them? - 123 Reg Support

Glanza · 23 Oct 2024 at 19:45

Your domain isn't bringing any records back, what are your nameservers set to currently?

Your SPF didn't work because you can only have one valid record that includes servers your emails are sent from, if your email are with 123-Reg you'll only need the record that contains their settings.

Alx27 · 23 Oct 2024 at 20:09

Thanks. 123 Reg migrated everything to a new system about 2 months ago and I'm on some legacy setup that worked until they pulled the plug this week it seems.

Right, found the settings that 123 Reg say i should be using, but LCN are saying I need an IP address for the first two TXT values...

screenshot

Steveocee · 23 Oct 2024 at 20:41

Do what you can to get it up and running and then look into migrating away. 123-reg are a shower of unpleasantness. LCN I'm sure would be happy to help you migrate.

Caged · 23 Oct 2024 at 21:12

Alx27 said:
Thanks. 123 Reg migrated everything to a new system about 2 months ago and I'm on some legacy setup that worked until they pulled the plug this week it seems.

Right, found the settings that 123 Reg say i should be using, but LCN are saying I need an IP address for the first two TXT values...

screenshot

That's because you're trying to configure them as A records

visibleman · 24 Oct 2024 at 15:49

You may be able to find out the correct MX record(s) from your 123-Reg dashboard, or this article may help especially with determining what generation you're on, but otherwise contact 123-Reg and get the current records you need to publish.
If 123-Reg are handling your emails then it won't a LCN domained record, rather a 123-Reg, eg - 'mx0.123-reg.co.uk'.

And as @Glanza mentioned, you can only publish a single SPF (txt) record whereas you're currently publishing three so it needs to be condensed to something like -

Code:

v=spf1 a mx include:spf.123-reg.co.uk include:secureserver.net include:spf.lcn.com ~all

Given emails aren't being sent through LCN, you probably could get rid of that LCN include and similarly, it seems you only include 'spf.123-reg.co.uk' for Gen1 email systems or 'secureserver.net' for Gen2 - read this.

Edit - just to add, https://mxtoolbox.com is a decent tool for checking various aspects, like MX, SPF records, of email delivery with a domain/host.

Edit 2 - Ignore some of the above; just seen your reply (#4) and screenshot. Your 'A, CNAME records' section should be -

Code:

<blank>.domain      A        85.233.160.215
www.domain          A        85.233.160.215
email.domain        CNAME    email.secureserver.net
<blank>.domain      TXT      D5860559
<blank>.domain      TXT      v=spf1 include:secureserver.net -all

The 'Mail exchange records' section should be (seems ok on your screenshot) -

Code:

<blank>.domain        0        smtp.secureserver.net
<blank>.domain        10       mailstore1.secureserver.net

The 'Service records' should be (seems ok on your screenshot) -

Code:

_autodiscover._tcp        100        1        autodiscover.secureserver.net

'<blank>' equates to leaving the text field blank/empty.
'85.233.160.215' being your web hosting IP address (i assume LCN); if this is different then change it.

Just to complicate things slightly further, your SPF may need changing from the above if your web hosting/website sends email from your domain name, ie - contact forms etc.
If that's the case then you may need to change it to something like 'v=spf1 a include:secureserver.net include:spf.lcn.com -all'. But i would confirm this with LCN/your web host.