Inbound Mail Delivery Servers

Inbound Mail Servers (Delivery Mailservers)

After we accept and filter your email, we need to know where to send it. The Inbound Servers tab is where you specify your mailserver(s).

You may have more than one server for delivery of email. MailRoute allows you to set up redundant servers for failover, or to balance the load amongst multiple servers.

The MailRoute inbound server configuration is modeled on the standard way that MX records are specified for email delivery.

Each mailserver has an assigned "preference". The lower the "preference", the higher the priority of the mailserver. We will try the highest priority mailserver first, and if it doesn't respond, we'll then go to the next in the list. If you have multiple mailservers with the same preference, we will distribute traffic equally over them.

Huh? I don't understand what you mean by "preference".

The standards for MX records are defined in RFC 5321, and according to this document, the lowest numbered records are more preferable. So sometimes people think of "preference" as "distance" - because shorter distances are better than long ones, right?

Just show me how to set this up!

When you're viewing a Domain's details, select the Delivery tab, and then choose Inbound Servers.

To add a mailserver, click the "Add" button, and enter the mailserver name or IP address, and select a preference.

Can you give me some examples?

I have just one mailserver.

Ok, just list the one mailserver. The priority doesn't really matter, so just leave it as the default.

I have two mailservers. One is the primary, and the other is the backup. The primary should get all the email, but the backup should take over if the primary is down

Ok, list two mailservers. Give the primary one the lower preference, and the secondary the higher preference. Then we'll deliver all email to the primary, but if it's down, we'll instantly switch to delivering to your secondary.

• Note: You can have more than two servers set up this way - indeed, you can have as many as you want.

I have two mailservers, and I want to balance the traffic equally over the two mailservers.

Ok, list two mailservers and give them the same preference. We will balance the deliver across the two mailservers.

• Note: You can have more than two servers set up this way - indeed, you can have as many as you want.

I have three mailservers, I want to balance traffic across the first two, and failover to a third if both of those are down.

Ok, list three mailservers. Give the two primary servers the same preference. Give the failover server a higher preference. We will balance the deliver across the two primary mailservers, but failover to the backup server if both are down.

• Note: You can have more than two servers set up this way - indeed, you can have as many as you want.

I have 8 mailservers, and I want three to share the primary traffic, then two backup servers, and then three tertiary servers that should balance the traffic

Ok. Here goes.

List all 8 mailservers. Give the first three the same preference. Then the next two a higher preference. Then give the tertiary servers a higher preference still. Here are the settings you might use:

• Server NamePreference

  mail.mailroutedemo.com	10
  mail2.mailroutedemo.com	10
  mail3.mailroutedemo.com	10
  backup1.mailroutedemo.com	20
  backup2.mailroutedemo.com	20
  lastresort1.mailroutedemo.com	30
  lastresort2.mailroutedemo.com	30
  lastresort3.mailroutedemo.com	30

Note:  Be sure to disable SPF checks, greylisting, and blocklisting on your email server.  We do all that for you, so you're not going to lose any filtering ability but having those enabled may cause email that we relay to you to be bounced or lost.

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Contact sales@mailroute.net or support@mailroute.net for more information. 

888.485.7726