For info: changing hosts - no webmail - dns settings

[OriginalTouch]

Just realised, having migrated hosts from Fasthosts to Actinic a few months ago, that webmail was not working, so thought I would give you all a heads up.

A and MX records were changed some time ago. But my "webmail.(domain-name).co.uk" still points to Fasthosts. Fasthosts tell me to change the dns settings, but Actinic do not have any!

The Fasthosts control panel is too limited to be able to change the webmail settings without dns settings (although they are promising that this will be available in a few months).

So the only option I see is to get zone-edit to be able to do this myself.

Posting this in case anyone else has the same problem or if anyone has similar experiences. Needed to have a copy of emails on the server so this became an issue for me AFTER moving hosts, when we had a major email issue.

[OriginalTouch]

Can anyone recommend zone-edit?

Have been searching and it appears that the free version can cause pop-ups and the service can sometimes go down?

[4little1s]

Just realised we have the same issue. Just moved from Fasthosts to Actinic and yes now webmail not working. I noticed that Fasthosts say

If your domain name's DNS is managed with a different provider, you may need to provide them with the information below.

Mail server IP address 213.171.216.66 (Cluster 1)
Host name for MX record smtpin1.livemail.co.uk


.....have sent this over to Actinic so hoping this may help ??

[swardell]

Thought I would try to help out a little here. We can offer webmail as part of Actinic's hosting offering. It may not be turned on for your domain(s) but thats takes only a minute to sort out.

Please note, webmail will only work if Actinic is hosting your email (as well as your web site) if your email is being provided by someone else then you cant use our webmail to access it.

You will need to point an A record to the same IP address as your website A record

webmail.mydomain.com A 123.456.789.123

(or set a CNAME record up something like webmail.mydomain.com CNAME www.mydomain.com).

Then, once that DNS change has propagated you will be able to use webmail as part of Actinic Hosting, which on most packages is the Horde webmail client.

You can always call Actinic Support and they will be happy to assist you.

I think the above means you wont need Zone Edit, unless you need to move your DNS away from your current provider to be able to do the above of course.

If you do need to use Zone Edit I would happily recommend them and we have used them for yeras with almost no trouble at all. The user interface is a little disappointing but they have a new one (which we have not migrated to yet) which seems a lot slicker.

[Darren B]

maybe im missing something here, but surely the A cname mx records are all handled by the dns server hosting the website? Well should be to ensure continuity.

Why you would every transfer a domain or rather change the ns records for a domain that points to a server that is not support mx records is beyond me. If farsehosts do not allow full dns changes then i would transfer my registration to another domain registrar, if they refuse to release it pay nominet £10 and get them to change the records. (co.uk only)

sorry forgot to say, or change the priority to something senior to the farsehosts servers so your new host is the priority mx server. Then added your cname for webmail.mydomain or mail.mydomain. Splitting or not having fully control over your domain name is madness IMHO