Backup MX
Your mail waits for you, not the other way around.
When your mail server goes offline — an outage, a move, a maintenance window — sending servers start bouncing after repeated failures. Backup MX catches that mail, queues it, and delivers it to your server the moment it comes back.
How it works
Mail delivery already has a fallback mechanism built in: MX records with priorities. Backup MX adds a ZoneEdit mail exchanger to your zone at a lower priority than your own server. In normal operation, everything is delivered straight to you and the backup sits idle. When your server is unreachable, sending servers fall back to the backup exchanger, which accepts and queues your mail instead of letting it bounce — then hands it all to your server when it is reachable again.
Three steps to set it up
1. Enable Backup MX
Turn on Backup MX for your domain in the control panel.
2. Check your MX records
With your DNS on ZoneEdit the backup exchanger is added to your zone at a lower priority automatically — your own server stays first.
3. Nothing, mostly
The backup only takes traffic when your server is down. When you’re back, queued mail is delivered automatically.
Common questions
Do senders need to do anything?
No. Falling back to a lower-priority MX is standard mail behaviour — every compliant sending server does it automatically.
Does mail get lost during an outage?
That’s the point of Backup MX: instead of senders retrying into a dead server and eventually bouncing, your mail is accepted and queued, then delivered when your server returns.
Do I need ZoneEdit DNS to use it?
Backup MX is designed to work alongside ZoneEdit Managed DNS, where your MX records are managed for you. About Managed DNS →