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🕒 Last updated: September 10, 2026

Point your MX record to Clean Mailbox from IONOS

A step-by-step guide to edit your domain's DNS zone in the IONOS (1&1) customer area, so incoming email flows through Clean Mailbox.

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IONOS's customer area changes regularly: the menus, labels and locations described below may differ from what you see today. This guide is provided as a courtesy to help you; it does not replace IONOS's own official support, which remains solely responsible for guiding its customers through their DNS zone management. See IONOS's official guide on editing MX records for the up-to-date reference.

Why this is needed

Your domain's MX (Mail Exchanger) record tells servers sending you email where to deliver it. For Clean Mailbox to filter spam, phishing, malware and ransomware before it reaches your inbox, your domain needs to advertise Clean Mailbox as the entry point — that's exactly what the MX record does.

This is a one-time configuration at the domain's DNS zone level — not at the mailbox platform level. It doesn't move your mailboxes: whether they're hosted on Microsoft 365, Google Workspace or elsewhere, they stay right where they are. Only the path incoming email takes changes — it now flows through Clean Mailbox before being delivered.

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This guide covers changing the MX record from the IONOS customer area, for a domain whose DNS zone is managed at IONOS. If your domain is registered elsewhere, the fields to fill in (priority, target) stay the same — only the path through the interface differs.

MX value to use

Set the following record in your DNS zone:

PriorityTarget
1 mx.clean-mailbox.com
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Unlike the IP address list used for allow-listing on the mailbox side (see the Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace guides), this MX target is a fixed hostname — you won't need to change it if Clean Mailbox's infrastructure evolves. The priority value itself doesn't matter much as long as no other MX record is present; we use 1 here since that's the value IONOS's own interface typically suggests by default.

1

Access your domain's DNS zone

From the IONOS customer area, open Domains & SSL, locate your domain, click the gear icon under Actions and select DNS. Your records are listed in a table; find the MX rows.

2

Remove the existing MX record(s)

For Clean Mailbox to receive all of your incoming email, the old MX record needs to be removed — leaving it in place alongside the new one (even at a higher priority number) risks letting part of your email bypass Clean Mailbox entirely.

On each MX row, click Edit Record under Actions, or use the equivalent delete action. If your mailboxes are currently hosted directly at IONOS, you'll typically see one or more records pointing at IONOS's own mail servers (hostnames ending in .ionos.fr or .ionos.com) — these are the entries to remove.

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Only remove this record once you're ready to immediately move on to the next step: a domain with no MX record can no longer receive email.

3

Add the Clean Mailbox MX record

Click Add Record, then select the MX type. Fill in:

Confirm with Save. Then check in the table that the MX record shown is Clean Mailbox's, and that no other MX record remains.

Verify it works

According to IONOS, DNS zone changes take effect immediately on IONOS's side, but worldwide propagation can take up to an hour. Check propagation with the following command (Terminal on macOS/Linux, or PowerShell on Windows):

dig MX yourdomain.com +short

Replace yourdomain.com with your own domain name. The result should show 1 mx.clean-mailbox.com. and nothing else. If the old value still appears, wait a little longer — that's the old record's TTL expiring across DNS resolvers.

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For a more visual check, including propagation as seen from multiple resolvers worldwide, you can also use an online DNS propagation checker.

Next step: configure your mailbox platform

Pointing the MX at Clean Mailbox isn't enough on its own: once this step is done, your mailbox platform needs to be configured to trust Clean Mailbox as an inbound source, to avoid delivery issues caused by SPF and DMARC.

Frequently asked questions

Can I keep my old MX record too, "just in case"?

No. As long as another MX record stays active, part of your incoming email can keep being delivered directly to your old server, entirely bypassing Clean Mailbox's filtering. Only one MX record — Clean Mailbox's — should remain in place.

Does this move my mailboxes?

No. The MX record only defines the entry point for incoming email; your mailboxes stay hosted wherever they are today (Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, IONOS Mail, etc.). Clean Mailbox then relays the filtered email on to that same platform.

Do I also need to change my SPF record?

SPF governs authentication of your outgoing email and doesn't need to change for this inbound MX configuration. That said, once the MX is in place, follow the mailbox platform guide above — domains with a strict SPF/DMARC policy need a bit of extra configuration so that email relayed by Clean Mailbox isn't wrongly blocked.

Questions about this configuration?

Our support team can help you with the MX value to use or check propagation. For the management of your DNS zone itself, please reach out to IONOS support.

Contact Clean Mailbox →

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