Are you experiencing a bounce while trying to send email from your hosting account? This can happen due to PTR record errors on your DNS . In this tutorial, we will see what a PTR record is and how to check if your IP address has one with a PTR lookup.

Let’s get started!

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What is a PTR record?
A PTR record is known as the reverse version of an A record . While the A record associates the domain name with an IP address, the PTR record associates the IP address with a hostname. Thus, the PTR record ensures that your IP address officially connects to your host.

Configuring the PTR record is essential if you use internal or external mail servers. This record adds reliability to the sending servers and allows the recipient to control the hostname of your IP address. It is a great way to protect against all kinds of spammers.

That’s why some of the major e-mail providers such as Yahoo Mail and Gmail perform a Reverse IP Lookup before accepting incoming e-mail.

Two methods to check the PTR record and reverse DNS lookup.
Perform the following methods to see the value of your domain’s PTR record and make sure you have set up a reverse IP lookup:

Using computer consoles
Check whether or not the IP address is resolving to the host name by checking the value of the PTR record through your computer consoles.

If you are using Windows, run this syntax from the command prompt:

nslookup IP_ADDRESS
Change IP_ADDRESS to the IP address of your domain.

Suppose you want to run a PRT lookup for 54-243-154-xx. Then you will see this:

As you can see, the PTR record is ec2-54-243-154-xx.compute-1.amazonaws.com.

The process is similar if you run it on the Linux console terminal or MacOs terminal. Run the PRT search with the following command:

From the ANSWER SECTION, you can see that the value of the PTR record is ec2-54-243-154-xx.compute-1.amazonaws.com.

Using online tools
Alternatively, you can use online ip reverse lookup tools such as MxToolBox to find out the hostname of the IP address. All you have to do is enter the IP address in the field and press the Reverse Lookup button .

Conclusion
As we have seen, a PTR record is the reverse version of your domain IP address. It confirms that your IP address connects to a hostname.

If your IP address does not point correctly, you need to set up a PTR lookup on your hosting provider. This way, you will be able to avoid email bounces!