What happens if my domain/hosting provider has down time?

Cheetah Designs · 16 Nov 2010 at 21:59

Say I have email setup on my domain/hosting provider and somebody sends me an email whilst it's down - what happens?

Does the email just bounce?

Thanks.

Mr-White · 16 Nov 2010 at 22:02

It'll bounce and they'll get an NDR

MW

Beansprout · 16 Nov 2010 at 22:33

It'll either bounce or the sending mailserver will hold it to retry. The latter should occur if the sending mailserver is well-behaved

daz · 17 Nov 2010 at 09:11

As long as at least one nameserver is up and running when the MX is down, the message will be queued at the sending server to be retried periodically over the next ~24 hours.

If all nameservers for the domain are down, then the message will be bounced immediately.

This is why it's important to have multiple nameservers, ideally in different locations (and separate networks).

Cheetah Designs · 17 Nov 2010 at 14:39

Is it possible to have my host handle my website but have the email for the domain managed by gmail?

daz · 17 Nov 2010 at 19:50

Cheetah Designs said:
Is it possible to have my host handle my website but have the email for the domain managed by gmail?

Yes, just point the MX records to Gmail. Most hosting control panels will have an option for editing MX entries.

Cheetah Designs · 17 Nov 2010 at 20:03

daz said:
Yes, just point the MX records to Gmail. Most hosting control panels will have an option for editing MX entries.

Oh...I would have guessed no.

My domain is hosted on namecheap yet my actual hosting is with QiQ. Which do I edit on? And what happens to the email I have already setup with my webhost?

Also, which version of Google Apps should I be getting?

Cheetah Designs · 18 Nov 2010 at 11:01

After talking to NameCheaps support they said that I would have to change the DNS servers from pointing to QiQ to their name servers which I have done.

I have changed Host records so that the www is pointing at my webhosts ip address and my website appears to be working correctly.

What are the repocussions of doing this? Do I loose any usability/accessibility/seo? I don't really understand what I have done tbh.

Whats the difference between having the DNS pointing at QiQ to having it point at NameCheap?