Hi, ihostasp host my website on my domain but I don't use their email services. My MX records point to another email host, Gmail for Domains specifically. It works well. The catch is that ihostasp's smtp server assumes because they host my website they also host my email. This means that when another ihostasp customer sends me an email (with the ihostasp smtp server configured for their outgoing mail) instead of checking my domain's MX records and routing to Gmail, the mail just gets dropped in the local ihostasp mailbox for my account. How do I get the ihostasp mail servers configured to honour my MX records instead of assuming that they host my email just because they host my website? Regards, Jason Stangroome

Hi Jason,

 The behavior you have described is caused by how MTA service resolves the delivery path. Basically, when you send an email the mail service first looks up local database of the domains on the server. If the destination domain is not found in the local database, a full DNS query is performed to resolve proper MX records for the recipient server. This saves a great deal of time and I/O cycles since DNS queries for intra-domain or local server deliveries would not only increase load on MTA but also on our own DNS servers that would have to constantly resolve local domains.

Obviously, in rare cases like yours this poses a unique problem. The MTA locates local domain and never bothers to do proper NS lookup, which in your case would lead to a different destination. To rectify this, we need to simply remove your domain from the local mail server. This will force MTA to do proper DNS lookups and other domains hosted with us will be able to deliver to your third party mail server.

Please open a support ticket here https://support.ihostllc.net/index.php?_m=tickets&_a=submit and will correct this behavior for domains that are not using our mail service.