Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 on your own domain: MX records, and keeping your website with us

The short answer: you can have the website with us and the e-mail with another service, such as Google Workspace or Microsoft 365. What decides where your domain’s e-mail goes are the DNS MX records; what decides where the website is are the A records. You change one without touching the other. Those subscriptions are made directly with those providers, not with us.

The steps, in order

1 Before touching the DNS, save what you have. If you already use mailboxes with us, copy the messages to the new account before changing the MX, or the old messages stay behind. See Bringing your mailboxes from another provider and Keeping your own copy of your e-mail.
2 Register the domain in the provider’s panel. It asks you to prove the domain is yours, usually with a TXT record it gives you. Create it in the domain’s DNS.
3 Replace the MX records with the ones the provider gives you. Copy them from its panel exactly: do not use the ones from an example you saw in an article. Delete the old MX records, or e-mail will split between the two services.
4 In cPanel, tell the server that e-mail lives elsewhere. Open Email Routing and choose Remote Mail Exchanger. Without it, our server, on seeing an address of your own domain, tries to deliver it locally: the website’s contact form stops reaching the new mailboxes.
5 Update SPF and add DKIM for the new service, so the e-mail you send does not land in spam. See Creating your SPF record and SPF, DKIM and DMARC.
6 Confirm with a test message both ways, from an outside address.

What does not change

Part Does it change?
The website (A and CNAME records) No. It stays where it is.
The nameservers No, unless you want to. See Domain with us, site somewhere else.
The old mailboxes on the hosting They go unused. Keep them until you are sure you do not need them, then delete them.
E-mails the website sends (orders, forms) They keep leaving from the website. If they go to your own domain, see the Email Routing step above.
DNS takes time to propagate. For a while, part of the mail still goes to the old place. Make the switch at a quiet moment and do not delete the old mailboxes the same day. See How long DNS changes take to propagate.
Your domain’s DNS may be elsewhere (at the registrar, or on Cloudflare). MX records are created where the domain’s nameservers are: see Nameservers.

Want help finding where your domain’s records are before changing the e-mail? Open a ticket with the domain.

Open a support ticket

SEE ALSO

DNS records explained: A, CNAME, MX, TXT and TTL

Bringing your mailboxes from another provider: the messages, not just the addresses

Copying mailboxes with imapsync: how it works and what to prepare

Why your e-mail is not sending or receiving

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