Forwarding an e-mail address across domains?

March 19, 2005 8:40 AM

I recently registered a domain name through GoDaddy.com and now I want to forward e-mail to an address on my domain to another e-mail address on another domain. GoDaddy's help files don't explain how to do this. Help!

So I have mydomainname.com and I want any e-mail sent to [e-mail] to get forwarded to [e-mail]. GoDaddy has a place for e-mail forwarding and I've entered both the e-mail address on mydomainname.com and the e-mail address for anotherdomainname.net, but for the past 3 days the status on this forward has said " --- pending setup: validating MX record ---". I currently have no MX records in my Total DNS Control settings through GoDaddy. Do I need to add one? Does it need to be the POP server from anotherdomainname.net, such as pop.anotherdomainname.net? Any help on this would be greatly appreciated.

posted by Servo5678 to computers & internet (6 comments total)

GoDaddy would need to change your MX record to point at their mailservers to do mail forwarding, but that should take minutes not days. You may want to drop them an email and ask what's up.

I don't know about GoDaddy's setup but once you get webhosting this will be a standard feature. Also, you can use a DNS hosting service like ZoneEdit (first 5 domains free) in the meantime.
posted by boaz at 10:11 AM on March 19, 2005

You don't need a MX record to receive mail - when it's missing mail servers just use the A record instead. I wouldn't go adding MX records yourself. If you just point the mydomainname.com MX record at the IP of the anotherdomainname.net, the server will respond to incoming mail by saying "Hey, I'm not mydomainname.com", and reject it. A server that knows it's the destination for mydomainname.com needs to forward email to the anotherdomainname.net server.

I'd contact GoDaddy and ask them to investigate why their forwarding service isn't working.
posted by cillit bang at 10:52 AM on March 19, 2005

There's a few things to check here. One is what purpose GoDaddy serves for you. Did you just register the domain there, or are you using any of the other services that they provide? They offer DNS service as well, which costs extra (I think), and if you're using it you should call GoDaddy and ask them why e-mail forwarding is stuck. (They also offer webhosting and a number of other things - if you're buying any of these you should just call 'em.)

If you just registered the domain through them, then you have more work to do to get e-mail forwarding working. Check the FAQ entitled "Can I use your email account if I host my domain with another registrar?" - it has the server settings you need to add to DNS to make it work. If you are hosting it somewhere else, though, you should probably just see if the place you're hosting with has e-mail forwarding built in - most do, and it'd be easier than setting up MX records. The e-mail forwarding service GoDaddy provides is free, but you have to add the MX records if you're not at least using GoDaddy's DNS service - they can't modify stuff they don't have control of.

If you need a nice place to host your DNS you can try ZoneEdit - they provide e-mail forwarding too. I would not recommend changing to them in the interim, though; it takes 24-48hrs before updates really take place and so if it takes 5 days for GoDaddy to fix itself, it'll be another 4 before it works because you'll be waiting for everyone's records to update.
posted by mrg at 11:05 AM on March 19, 2005

um.. jfyi, the FAQ I mentioned is right there when you go to your account, then to E-mail Accounts either through the bar at the top (Hosting & E-mail) or through the domain control dealie. Should be the next to last one.
posted by mrg at 11:06 AM on March 19, 2005

Thanks mrg. Here's some additional info on my situation. I'm new to owning and configuring a domain name, so this is all unfamiliar territory to me.

I'm hosting my site at Typepad.com. Typepad's FAQ regarding e-mail forwarding says that I have to go through my registrar to make it work and that GoDaddy does support this. It just doesn't say how to do it. The only thing I'm using from GoDaddy is the actual domain name that I registered. I'm not hosting with them or using any of their other purchased services. The e-mail account I want my domain to forward to is @prodigy.net. The domain name itself works fine as far as pointing to my site at Typepad, it's just this e-mail forwarding thing I cannot figure out.

I'll go have a look at that FAQ you recommended, but if you can offer up any more help on this I'd appreciate it. Like I said, I'm new at this aspect of the Internet and my Google skills only bring up advertisements, not actual answers.
posted by Servo5678 at 12:18 PM on March 19, 2005

Ah, fixed! I logged in to my account and found it was no longer pending and a test confirmed it. Thanks again for your help. I have no idea why it took three days to start working, but at least now it does.
posted by Servo5678 at 12:31 PM on March 19, 2005