Updating MX records in cPanel for web hosting?

ClouDNS is a good choice. Their free service will give you a single zone, which is sufficient for all the records you may need for one domain name and some subdomains if you need them. You may find it a bit odd that the way they do the free stuff uses their own domain name but it points yours to the right place so not a worry. You sign up for a ClouDNS free account and follow the instructions, they have it pretty well laid out.

But the netim.com account may have sufficient flexibility for you to do it all in there. That would simplify matters, so check there first. However, most registrars only offer a very basic DNS service, just about enough to get you to a host or specialist DNS service provider.

Post again if you get stuck. I have a ClouDNS account so am familiar with their interface.

I bought my domain through Netim.com. They are in France. My domain ends in .GQ, so kind of weird/rare TLD. I got a highly valuable single word that is related to e-mail.

My Netim.com account is very basic. There are not a lot of options. Would I still be able to do this?

Would I use something like this: https://www.cloudns.net/

Here is a screenshot from my Netim account: https://imgur.com/hCTmLYG

I don't know if I'll be able to do this, with the lacking number of features in Netim.

Quoted from Guest on Monday, 01 September 2025

I am going to have my professional e-mail address hosted with an e-mail hosting company, but keep my website hosted with a regular hosting company.

I need to update my MX records in Cpanel to do so. Not a problem. I've done this before.

Here's my thought / question:
In the event that there was an outage and my hosting went down, the web hosting company wouldn’t be able to “tell the world” about the MX records and direct emails to the correct place. I would not get the e-mails then. Is my understanding correct? So I better have a reputable host with good uptime. Correct?

If your DNS is hosting with your hosting provider and their server went down, all of your sites goes down too including your emails.

Do not use your hosting provider's DNS and use an external one with redundant DNS instead. To avoid losing important emails, use an email provider with redundant mail servers ( at least 2 MX setup ).

Better to get separate DNS hosting (or build your own DNS servers). This may turn out to be difficult if your domain name registrar/reseller is your web host. But if you bought your domain name separately you should have access to your DNS servers without having to use your web host's cPanel service. Then you can set up all of your records within your domain's zone. So you point A and AAAA records at your web host, MX records at your email host and all other records as appropriate. Then any service failure (other than DNS itself of course) cannot affect any other service.