Your fake email stopped receiving: finding out why
Messages used to arrive and now they do not. Before trying anything, it is worth knowing which of three quite different things happened — because two of them you can fix in a minute and one you cannot fix at all.
One case does not belong here at all: if a sign-up form refused the address rather than accepting it, nothing has stopped working — that is a list on the site's side, and it is answered on its own page.
Run one check
Open the domain debugger and give it the part of your address after the @. It asks the domain's own name servers, live, and prints what they answer. Three shapes of answer are possible, and each means something different.
Answer 1 — the domain works, but its mail goes elsewhere
Name servers found: 2 — a.ns.facebook.com, b.ns.facebook.com
> priority: 10 MX server: msgin.vvv.facebook.com. (TTL 3600 s)
The domain works, but its mail goes elsewhere — none of the records above point at our server, so mail for facebook.com cannot be read here.
Name servers exist, an MX record exists — but it points at somebody else's mail system. The domain is alive and healthy; it simply is not pointed here. Mail sent to it is being delivered, just not to us.
The check says so in as many words, and then offers the two ways out: take an address on one of our own domains, which needs no setup at all, or repoint this domain's MX record — which only its owner can do.
What you can do: if the domain is yours, repoint the MX record — one record, and the guide is here. If it is not yours, nothing: you cannot change records you do not control.
Answer 2 — the domain works, but accepts no mail at all
Name servers found: 2 — a.iana-servers.net, b.iana-servers.net
Error! No mail server found.
This domain is not set up correctly.
The domain resolves, but there is no MX record anywhere — so no mail server anywhere will accept a message for it. Anything sent bounces.
One thing worth knowing before you conclude anything: if you have just edited the records, you may be reading a half-finished change. Name servers pick up edits at their own pace, and for a short while different servers can still be answering with different records. Wait, then run the check again — an empty result and a result that has not arrived yet look exactly the same here.
Answer 3 — the domain is not on the internet any more
Error (263)! No name servers found.
No name servers at all. The domain is not merely misconfigured — at the top level of the internet it does not answer. Usually that means the registration lapsed, but there are other causes, and they have different outcomes.
The same situation can also come back as The DNS lookup failed. The domain may not exist, or the name server did not answer in time. — the wording differs, the meaning does not.
This is where the checks end and ownership begins. What the domain's status means and what is worth doing about it — continued here.
Short version
| What the check says | What it means | Can you fix it? |
|---|---|---|
| MX records point elsewhere | domain serves another mail system | yes, if the domain is yours |
| No MX records | nothing accepts mail for it | yes, if the domain is yours |
| No name servers | domain is not live at all | only by taking it over |
How to not be here again
Every case above comes down to the same thing: the domain belongs to someone who may stop maintaining it. A domain of your own removes that entirely — you control the records and the renewal date, and you find out about problems because you caused them. Attaching one is a single MX record.