To sum it up, if someone sends you e-mail and your mail server is down, the message will be bounced back to the sender. Bouncebacks reflect poorly on your company, and can also cause you to miss important e-mail from potential clients or from friends and family. The true cost of mail server downtime can in many cases amount to hundreds or thousands of dollars, depending on the type of business that you run.

Configuring Backup Mail is easy. First you need to add a backup mail slot to your shopping cart and purchase it. Next you need to configure it.

If you have not yet added your domain to Sitelutions, go to the Domain Control Center and use the "Add Domain" feature (for domains registered elsewhere). Then go to the Backup MX Control Center (there is a link from the main Account Control Center).

From the Backup MX Control Center, you can configure the "Backup MX Slot" that you've purchased. Just choose a domain name. If you you are using our system for DNS, the system will automatically configure DNS for your backup mail server so that when your mail server is down, mail is delivered to the backup (the backup will then re-deliver the mail to your server when it comes back up).

If you are not using us for DNS, you'll need to add an MX record for your domain pointing to our backup mail server. On the Backup MX Control Center, you will see which backup mail server your backup mail slot is on ("mx1.sitelutions.com", "mx2.sitelutions.com", etc.). Create an MX record for this host/domain, and make sure to terminate it with a dot (".") -- which is proper FQDN (fully-qualified domain name) format in DNS. Make the MX "preference" a higher number than the other MX record for the domain. This ensures that this mail server is given a lower priority so that delivering servers will first try your main SMTP server.

If you still have questions, just let us know.