Question regarding Reliablity of Mail coming along with paid hosting...

[akersche]

Hi,

I know this question is only a bit linked to paid hosting, but I am curious about that...

For me it's very important to have a reliable email account with my web-space (paid hosting).

So I am trying to find out, how reliable mailaccounts are and even think of setting up my own mailserver for testing...

I want to set up a mailserver for my domain and i got a permanent connection and static ip.
so i wanna point the mx-record to my ip. (nameserver not on my pc) (think of using Pegasus- or Mercury- Mail Server on WinME)

what happens now, if the mailserver or my pc crashes, or my connection is down.
Would all emails be lost:-(( And would the sender get a message, that the mail-server is down?
Can I set up a Secondary MX-Record in case, my mail-server is down?? Or how could I solve that problem?

NOW HERE COMES WHAT'S IMPPORTANT:
How is that problem handeled at the quality web-hosts that offer domain email?
Is it just the multiple connection that they use for reliability?
I guess if I know the answer of how I can set it up reliable, I would find out how hosts are doing it and how reliable it is.

looking forward to your response.
Greetings Arno

[jw]

MX records have priority numbers attached with them, so make your record like this:

mydomain.com. IN MX 10 home.computer
mydomain.com. IN MX 9 web.host

[akersche]

thanks a lot.
great to hear that i can give priorities to MX-record!!

still wonder, if i should worry about email reliability when i choose a cheap host like wzpro.
or is it anyway a good idea to set up a second priority MX-record that points to another email-server
or does this usually set up the paid hosting provider?
(if i don't have/or use my own mail server as primary or backup mail-server)
(e.g. everyone.net is offering this for free)

Greetings Arno

[jw]

Well, I don't have experience with Worldzone Pro, but Webdude is a great guy, and his other service, worldzone, has great uptime, so I don't think you need to worry about that much. Also, if a mail server is down, all mail will be delievered when the mail server comes back up as long as its within the server's setting which is usually like 7 or 30 days, depending.

[akersche]

quote jw:
>all mail will be delievered when the mail server comes back up as long as its within the
>server's setting which is usually like 7 or 30 days, depending.

Thanks again. Didn't know that. I learned now a lot and know that I don't have to worry to much about that. Delayed is also not great, but it's ok:-)

Now I understand, why I sometimes got a notification, that a mail couldn't be delivered days later (when mailserver didn't exist at all...)

Thanks again.
Greetings Arno