What is an MX record?

MX (Mail Exchanger) records specify where incoming mail should be delivered on behalf of a domain. Every MX value has a unique priority (also known as preference) value. The lower the number, the higher the priority.

Resend requires that you setup an MX record on send.yourdomain.com to establish a return-path for bounce/complaint reports from Inbox Providers. We set this return path in the email headers of every email you send through Resend.

Won’t this conflict with my existing Inbox Provider?

Let’s look at an example. Say you’re using G Suite for your email. You’ll have an MX record that looks something like this:

resend.com     MX    1 alt3.aspmx.l.google.com.

The records specifies that incoming mail to any address on the @resend.com domain should be delivered to the google servers.

Now, let’s say you want to use Resend to send emails from @yourdomain.com. You’ll need to add an MX record for send.yourdomain.com that looks something like this:

send.resend.com     MX    10 feedback-smtp.us-east-1.amazonses.com

Two things to note here:

  • The MX record is for send.yourdomain.com, not yourdomain.com. MX records only impact the subdomain they are associated to, so the Resend MX record will not affect your existing records on the root domain.
  • The priority value is 10. Though we suggest a priority of 10, this can be changed to lower or higher as needed to avoid conflicts.

Solving common conflicts