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I've seen articles about "different subdomains for different MX records".

But I want two records for the same domain, @abc.example for example.

Originally, I used Live Mail(MSN) to host my emails, and already have MX setup for it. Now I want to use some of the Google App features, so I need to setup MX for Google Mail.

Can both of the two work together and well?

Patrick Mevzek
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2 Answers2

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While you can set up more than one MX server for a given domain, this is purely a backup function to specify another server to receive mail when one server goes down. It's not possible to let two totally different services both handle your mail for the same domain, and IMHO it doesn't make any sense to even try. If you like Google's features better, switch to Google, otherwise you have to live with what Live Mail offers.

What might work is to forward mail from Live Mail to another domain hosted by Google, but then you would need to manage two separate services.

eebbesen
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Sven
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    Actually, it is. You can have each mailserver *also* checking for any domain mail from each other, in case any senders are using the lower-priority MX when the higher-priority one is available. – mfinni Dec 14 '10 at 15:06
  • Have fun convincing Google and Microsoft that you want to do this with their service... – Sven Dec 14 '10 at 15:19
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    Certainly not something you would do with hosted email. If you were running your own however, that's how it can be done. – mfinni Dec 14 '10 at 15:25
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    @mfinni What a load of bull. Google Mail certainly supports forwarding. – Tom O'Connor Dec 14 '10 at 15:38
  • @Tom - ok, i have little experience with hosted email. I was granting Sven that it might be more complicated, but he was apparently wrong and I shouldn't have humored him. – mfinni Dec 14 '10 at 17:37
  • @mfinni: Where was I wrong? When a mail is delivered, it's delivered, and if you have two MX servers delivering mails for the same domain in their respective mail store, your config is seriously fracked up. As long it's not delivered, you can do quite a lot with different MX servers, but this wouldn't help with the problem at hand. – Sven Dec 14 '10 at 18:31
  • MX servers don't send mail for a domain, they receive it. If you have two MXs receiving mail for a domain, as long as they all end up in one mailstore, what's the problem? – mfinni Dec 14 '10 at 20:15
  • "this is purely a backup function" except if both MX records have the same preference: "MX records contain a preference indication that MUST be used in sorting if more than one such record appears (see below). Lower numbers are more preferred than higher ones. If there are multiple destinations with the same preference and there is no clear reason to favor one (e.g., by recognition of an easily reached address), then the sender-SMTP MUST randomize them to spread the load across multiple mail exchangers for a specific organization." (RFC5321) – Patrick Mevzek Oct 16 '18 at 19:31
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Dual MX records are used for backup purposes, i.e. if you list more than 1 MX record for a domain, any host attempting to deliver email for that domain will only attempt such delivery to 1 MX at a time.

In order to achieve a dual delivery as described in your question you will need an SMTP service that receives email for your domain/s, and that SMTP service would perform delivery to multiple endpoints, e.g. for each message it delivers once to Google Apps and once to Live mail.

This is not common and almost certainly not a good idea, maybe you can clarify what it is you are trying to achieve?

ThatGraemeGuy
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  • Dual delivery is common enough that Google Apps supports it and shows you how you can set it up. It's just not done through MX records. – Lèse majesté Feb 12 '12 at 10:06