Troubleshooting guideReviewed 2026-08-07By HostWithShery technical editorial

Email works but website does not

Mail and web traffic use different DNS records, so healthy MX records do not prove the A/AAAA/CNAME and HTTPS setup is correct.

Start with evidence from your own domain before changing DNS, SSL or mail settings.
Check your own configuration

Email Health Check

This page is preconfigured with the Email Health Check that best matches this problem.

No accountPublic evidence only
Live public check

Checks MX routing plus SPF, DKIM discovery, DMARC, BIMI, MTA-STS and TLS-RPT public signals.

No account · Public configuration only
On this page

What this symptom usually tells you

Working email proves only that the MX path is usable. Browsers depend primarily on A/AAAA/CNAME, HTTP, TLS and hosting configuration, so a domain can receive mail while the website has no address record, a wrong server target, an invalid certificate or an application failure.

Evidence that narrows the cause

Use the live diagnostic to test the exact hostname involved. For this problem, the highest-value evidence is below. Treat each result as one piece of the business-email DNS and mail authentication diagnosis rather than as a standalone health score.

  • Check web DNSVerify check web DNS from the public Internet and compare it with the value the responsible provider says should be live.
  • Check HTTP/HTTPSRecord the public status, final URL and relevant response headers. A working DNS answer does not prove that the application is serving a genuine website response.
  • Preserve working MXRead the public MX priorities and targets, then verify that each target itself resolves. A visible MX record is not enough if its mail hostname is broken.

Record the current state before editing

Before changing business-email DNS and mail authentication settings, save the exact public values for check web DNS, check HTTP/HTTPS, preserve working MX and note which hostname or mail path is failing. This creates a rollback point and prevents a later resolver cache, provider dashboard or unrelated working record from being mistaken for the original cause. Change one evidence-backed setting at a time, then compare the same signals again.

Safest repair path

Preserve the working MX and mail-authentication records. Investigate the web hostnames separately: resolve root/www, compare A and AAAA, test HTTP/HTTPS and follow redirects. Repair the first failed web layer rather than modifying mail configuration that is already healthy.

How to confirm this specific repair

The website should resolve and complete HTTPS while the MX/provider result remains unchanged. Re-running the combined health check is useful here because it confirms that fixing the web path did not disturb the already-working mail path.

A common wrong turn

Do not use a provider’s “reset DNS zone” option just to restore a website. Resetting can erase the healthy mail configuration that demonstrates why the incident is web-specific.

When to escalate with evidence

If these public checks match the provider's current documented configuration but the service still fails, give support the exact hostname, the observed business-email DNS and mail authentication result, a timestamp, and the failing network or message path. That separates a provider-side incident from a DNS change that has not actually become authoritative.

Technical references

These primary standards and provider documents are used to verify the behavior described on this page. Provider dashboards can change, so use the current official value for tenant-specific DNS records rather than copying an example from another account.