Domains & Authentication

How do I avoid conflicts with my MX records?

The MX record MailBlastr adds lives on the send. MAIL FROM subdomain and only routes bounce/complaint feedback — it is separate from your inbound MX. Never remove your real MX records.

A common worry when adding a sending domain is: "Will this break my email? I already have MX records pointing at Gmail / Microsoft 365." The answer is no — the MX record MailBlastr generates lives on a different hostname than your inbound MX, so the two never collide.

The key idea is that there are two completely separate MX records doing two unrelated jobs.

An MX (Mail Exchanger) record tells the world where to deliver incoming mail for a host. Each MX has a priority (a.k.a. preference): the lower the number, the higher the priority, and 0 is the highest priority possible. MX records only affect the exact host they are set on — send.yourdomain.com and yourdomain.com are independent.

Two different MX records

MX recordHostPurpose
Your inbound MXyourdomain.comRoutes incoming mail to your inbox provider (Gmail, Microsoft 365, etc.). MailBlastr never touches this.
The MAIL FROM MXsend.yourdomain.comRoutes bounce and complaint feedback for outbound mail. This is the only MX MailBlastr asks you to add.

Because the MailBlastr MX sits on the send. subdomain — a host you (almost certainly) have no records on today — it does not overwrite or interfere with the MX on your root domain that receives your mail.

SPF — MX (the MAIL FROM subdomain only)
TypeMXoptional

Receives bounce and complaint feedback for the MAIL FROM subdomain.

Namesend.yourdomain.comoptional

The custom MAIL FROM subdomain — NOT your root domain.

Valuefeedback-smtp.us-east-1.amazonses.comoptional

Region-specific feedback host (the region matches your domain’s sending region).

Priority10optional

MX priority.

TTLAutooptional

Provider default.

Do not remove, replace, or re-point the MX records on your root domain — those are how you receive email. Add the send.yourdomain.com MX as a brand-new record alongside everything you already have.

Things to watch for

  • Add, don’t replace. Create the send. MX as a new record. Some DNS UIs prompt to "replace existing records" — make sure you’re adding to the send. host, not editing your root MX.
  • Don’t put an MX on the root for MailBlastr. The MAIL FROM MX belongs only on send.yourdomain.com. There is no MailBlastr MX record on yourdomain.com.
  • Keep the SPF TXT on the same `send.` host. The v=spf1 include:amazonses.com ~all TXT and the MX share the send.yourdomain.com name — that’s expected, and separate from any SPF TXT on your root.

Resolving an existing conflict

If you do hit a clash, it is one of two kinds:

  • An existing MX already on `send.yourdomain.com`. A host can’t carry two unrelated MX setups cleanly, so remove the old send. MX before adding the MailBlastr one. If you must keep the old record, verify a *subdomain* in MailBlastr instead (e.g. sub.yourdomain.com), which moves the MAIL FROM MX to send.sub.yourdomain.com and sidesteps the collision.
  • A priority collision. Each MX on a host should have a unique priority. MailBlastr suggests 10 for the send. MX; if 10 is taken, pick any other unused value. Remember 0 is the lowest value (highest priority) — if something already uses 0 you’d have to free it up to outrank it, which you don’t need to do here since the send. MX lives on its own host.
If two MX records on the same host share a priority value, mail is not sent to both — one server is chosen at random per delivery attempt. Keep priorities unique to make routing deterministic.

The other MX case: receiving mail

The discussion above is about sending, where the MAIL FROM MX only carries delivery feedback. If you also enable MailBlastr inbound (receiving mail), that uses a *separate* inbound MX, and here the conflict with your existing inbox provider is real — because an inbound MX on a host genuinely routes that host’s incoming mail.

You have two safe options:

  1. [Recommended] Receive on a subdomain. Put the inbound MX on a dedicated host (e.g. inbox.yourdomain.com). Mail to you@yourdomain.com keeps flowing to Gmail / Microsoft 365, while mail to you@inbox.yourdomain.com is routed to MailBlastr. No conflict with your primary inbox.
  2. Receive on the root with a higher-priority record. Adding an inbound MX on yourdomain.com with a lower priority number than your current provider will route all mail for the root to MailBlastr instead of your existing inbox — only do this if that is genuinely what you want.
MailBlastr inbound is off by default and requires explicit setup (an inbound MX plus a configured store). Sending alone never adds a receiving MX to your root, so it can’t hijack your inbox.
See DNS records for the full record set and Choosing a region for why the MX value embeds the sending region.