Mail Exchange (MX) records tell the Internet where to deliver your emails. These records allow mail servers to know which mail servers are responsible for accepting incoming messages for a given domain.
If you use Gmail with your domain through Google Workspace, Google provides a set of MX records in the form ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM that you need to add to your domain. These MX records have different URLs and route incoming emails to Google's mail servers, which then deliver the emails to your Gmail inbox.
These MX records determine the priority and destination of email messages. The priority numbers indicate the order in which the mail servers should run.
Below are the old Google MFs
| Name/Host/Alias* | Priority | Value/Answer/Destination |
|---|---|---|
| Blank or @ | 1 | ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM |
| Blank or @ | 5 | ALT1.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM |
| Blank or @ | 5 | ALT2.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM |
| Blank or @ | 10 | ALT3.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM |
| Blank or @ | 10 | ALT4.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM |
When a sender sends an email to your domain, their mail server looks up your domain's MX records to determine where to deliver the email.
The server will try the first mail server listed (priority 1), and if that server is unavailable or unreachable, it will try the next mail server listed (priority 5), until the email message is successfully delivered.
Google simplified these MX records for new Google Workspace accounts. Specifically, the new feature is available to those who started the service after April 2023. Now you only need to add one MX record to your domain. The priority value is always 1 and the destination is SMTP.GOOGLE.COM.
| Name/Host/Alias* | Priority | Value/Answer/Destination |
|---|---|---|
| Blank or @ | 1 | SMTP.GOOGLE.COM |
You can find the updated MX records here.
Google recommends that new MX records should only be used for new Google Workspace accounts and that you do not need to change DNS records for existing Workspace domains.
