Among all DNS record types, MX stands apart because it handles only mail. MX stands for Mail Exchanger and literally means a mail exchange point. Every message addressed to your domain consults the MX record to find the destination server. If the MX record is wrong, no mail arrives and your business is left without communication.
What many users do not realise is that the MX record lives in your domain DNS independently of where your website is hosted. Your site can run on one provider while your mail runs on another such as Google Workspace. That flexibility is precisely why professional mail services rely on MX.
Structure and priority
An MX record has two parts: a server address and a priority number. The address is the fully qualified name of the mail server, such as mail.mysayt.uz or aspmx.l.google.com. The priority is a number where lower values mean higher importance. The system always contacts the lowest priority server first.
Multiple MX records provide redundancy. If the primary server fails, the next one in priority order is used automatically. Google Workspace usually publishes five MX records: one at priority 1, two at priority 5 and two at priority 10. Thanks to this, a temporary outage of one Google node does not break mail delivery.
Google Workspace setup
Google Workspace is the most popular business mail provider today. Setup is straightforward: create the Workspace account, verify domain ownership, remove old MX records and add the new ones supplied by Google.
Google Workspace requires aspmx.l.google.com at priority 1, alt1 and alt2 at priority 5 and alt3 and alt4 at priority 10. After saving the records you wait for DNS propagation, which typically takes 4 to 24 hours depending on TTL. Once propagation finishes, mail starts arriving in Google inboxes.
Setting up other providers
Zoho Mail offers free tiers and suits small businesses. Its MX records are mx.zoho.com at priority 10, mx2.zoho.com at priority 20 and mx3.zoho.com at priority 50. Yandex360 (formerly Yandex.Connect) is popular in the CIS region, with mx.yandex.net at priority 10.
Microsoft 365 leads the enterprise segment and requires a per-tenant MX value such as mysayt-uz.mail.protection.outlook.com. The exact host is shown in the Microsoft admin centre. ProtonMail focuses on encryption and uses mailsec.protonmail.ch for its MX records.
SPF, DKIM and DMARC alongside MX
MX alone is not enough. SPF, a TXT record that lists authorized senders, is essential to keep your outbound mail out of spam folders. DKIM signs outgoing messages so recipients can verify authenticity. DMARC ties SPF and DKIM together with a policy that tells receivers how to handle failures.
Configuring all three records protects your reputation and ensures that real customers see your messages in the inbox rather than in a junk folder. Many deliverability issues are simply MX or SPF mistakes left uncorrected for months.
Sayt.uz practice
About 64 percent of Sayt.uz clients connect an external mail provider after registering a domain. Google Workspace leads at 41 percent, followed by Zoho Mail at 15 percent and Yandex360 at 8 percent. Adding MX records in the Sayt.uz dashboard takes only a few clicks and each provider comes with a step-by-step guide.
Internal statistics show that 70 percent of MX issues stem from wrong priorities or missing trailing dots. We therefore run an automatic validator after every save and notify the customer immediately on errors. Sayt.uz mail starts at 25 000 soums per year and SPF/DKIM/DMARC setup is included free of charge. Even if your mail runs on Google, keeping DNS on Sayt.uz keeps everything in one convenient panel.