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Email3 min read
Keeping your company email alive during the move
The most common problem when a new site goes live. Here's exactly what you must not touch.
Your website and your email run completely separately, even though they share a domain. Where your mail goes is decided by different DNS records than the ones pointing the website. That's why a site can move without affecting mail at all — you just need to know what to leave alone.
Records we never touch
| Type | What it does |
|---|---|
| MX | Decides which server your mail is delivered to. Without it, no email arrives at all. |
| TXT — SPF | Tells the world who is allowed to send mail on your behalf. |
| TXT — DKIM | A digital signature on your mail. Protects against forgery. |
| TXT — DMARC | The rule for what to do with mail that fails the checks. |
| CNAME — autodiscover / autoconfig | Lets Outlook and phones configure the mailbox automatically. |
If an MX record is deleted by mistake, mail doesn't vanish instantly — senders keep retrying delivery for a while. So if you suspect something's wrong, act immediately; most messages can still be saved.
The always-safe procedure
- 1Before changing anything, screenshot the entire list of DNS records.
- 2Change only the A and CNAME records for
@andwww— those are the website ones. - 3Leave everything else exactly as it is.
- 4After saving, send a test email to your company address from another mailbox (a personal one, say) and check it arrives.
We want to move our email too. Is that possible?
Yes, but it's a separate project with its own process, including migrating mailbox contents. We never do it at the same time as a site launch, so problems don't get tangled together.
Mail stopped arriving after the DNS change. What now?
Contact us straight away. Using the zone backup we can restore the MX and TXT records, usually within minutes.