MX Guarddog Free Spam Filtering – Add New Domain (2024)

MX Guarddog is a service that provides email filtering to protect users from spam, phishing, and other malicious emails. The service uses a variety of techniques to identify and block unwanted emails, including pattern matching, blacklisting, and heuristics. Because MX Guarddog’s service uses MX DNS records to perform the spam filtering, it will work with any email system. There is no software to install. Your mail goes through their mail servers first and then it gets redirected to then redirected to your mail server. MX Guarddog is a valuable free spam filterfor anyone who wants to protect their inbox from unwanted email. The service is free in exchange for a backlink to their site or else you just pay $0.25 per mailbox. Without a doubt this is the cheapest spam filtering you can get.

How does MX Guarddog Work?

To use the MX Guarddog spam filtering service you have to change your domain name’s MX records to point to unique MX records provided by MXGuardog. MX records are DNS records that are used to identify which mail server is responsible for handling email for a given domain. The MX record specifies the hostname of the mail server and a priority value, which is used to determine the order in which mail servers should be tried if one is unavailable. For example, if a domain has two mail servers with MX records set up, the server with the lower priority value will be tried first. If that server is unavailable, the second server will be tried. MX records are set up in DNS by the domain owner and can be changed at any time.

Add new domain name

After creating your free account you’ll arrive at the Domain Center dashboard. From here you’ll manage all the settings related to each domain name configured in your account. To add a new domain click on Domain Management.

On the Domain Management page you’ll see all the domains you have configured with your account along with some important details such as if the MX records have been configured or not. Click the Add New Domain button.

Next you’ll be prompted to enter the new domain name that you want to add.

After entering the new domain name you’ll see a screen showing your current MX Records. They will have to be changed before the spam filtering service can work.

Lower on the same page you’ll see the new MX Records that need to be configured for your domain name. Enter these new values where ever domain name’s DNS records are managed. This is typically managed at your Domain Registrar.

Changing MX Records

The domain name in my example is hosted at Namecheap. So after logging in there I can delete the old MX Records and add the new ones provided MX Guarddog.

After updating the new MX Records in DNS at your Domain Registrar the next step is to set your mail server hostname. This is the destination where MX Guarddog will send all your mail after the spam filtering is performed. It’s the server where your mailboxes are physically located.

Testing the new MX Records

After entering your mail server address click the Test Email Delivery button. This will send a test message from MX Guarddog’s mail servers to your mail server. If the test does not go through you’ll get a notification like the one below. Double check your mail server settings to ensure everything is set properly..

If the mail test is successful, then you’ll see the notification below.

Additionally on the Your Email Servers tab you’ll see the message below indicating everything is configured properly.

MX Guarddog email delivery test

After completing the MX Record configuration and SMTP test, you should check your inbox to ensure the test message arrived.

If you don’t see the test message in your inbox you should check your mail server settings. Ensure that each mailbox on your mail server matches each address you have configured in MX Guarddog otherwise you will experience delivery issues.

To learn about more MX Guarddog features check out my other post where I cover them in more detail.

In Summary

MX Guarddog is a free spam filtering service that can help to protect your email from unwanted messages and it works with every mail provider. The service is easy to set up and use, and it does not require any special configuration other than updating MX Records. MX Guarddog is highly effective at identifying and blocking spam, and other email based threats so check it out. Thanks for reading!