Squarespace domain email without Google Workspace: clear the old records (Google Domains leftovers included), add ours in Squarespace's DNS panel, and confirm it all works.
You've got a domain at Squarespace. Maybe you bought it last week and skipped the Google Workspace box at checkout. Or maybe you bought it at Google Domains years ago, and it quietly became a Squarespace domain when Squarespace took over Google Domains registrations in 2023. Either way, you want Squarespace domain email working now, without Google Workspace and ideally before you pay for anything.
This page covers the Squarespace part only: the choice in front of you, the clicks in Squarespace's DNS panel, and the problems specific to Squarespace (two of them are easy to hit if you came over from Google Domains). For what MX, SPF, DKIM and DMARC actually do, see our complete guide to custom domain email setup.
Squarespace sells two email products. Here's what they cost as of 8 October 2026, read from Squarespace's own help pages that day:
Squarespace also offers free email forwarding (run on Mailgun), which passes incoming mail to another inbox but isn't a mailbox itself. We've written up where forwarding stops being enough if you're weighing that route.
So which one? Honestly, it depends on what you need the email to do.
If your team lives in Google Docs, Drive and shared calendars, Workspace is the right buy, and we'd tell you to take it. JustEmails doesn't do calendars or contacts. And if you need exactly one address on one domain and you're in one of Titan's four countries, $3 a month (at that 8 October 2026 price) comes out cheaper than we do.
A separate host wins past that point: a second person, a second domain, or a pile of addresses like hello@, billing@ and support@. Our pricing:
JustEmails is $49 a year, flat, for unlimited custom domains and unlimited mailboxes with a unified inbox across all of them — additional team members are $2 per member per month, and storage beyond the included 10 GB is $99 a year per 100 GB.
Per-user pricing adds up fast once a few people need addresses. Our breakdown of what a custom domain email address really costs runs the numbers at different team sizes, and the current figures are on our pricing page.
Two checks first. Skip either and it can cost you an afternoon.
1. Check which email you sign in to Squarespace with. If it's an address at this same domain (say you@yourbusiness.com), change your Squarespace account email to something else before you change any MX records. Otherwise, while mail is moving between providers, Squarespace's password resets and verification emails have nowhere to land, and you could lock yourself out of the account that controls your DNS.
2. Confirm the domain uses Squarespace's nameservers. Go to your domains dashboard at account.squarespace.com/domains, click the domain, click DNS, and look under Domain Nameservers. Squarespace's defaults end in .googledomains.com, .nsone.net, .squarespacedns.com or .systemdns.com. A migrated Google Domains domain still on ns-cloud-something.googledomains.com is on Squarespace's defaults, so you're fine.
If you see custom nameservers instead (Cloudflare is the common one), nothing you add in Squarespace's DNS panel will do anything. Add every record at that DNS provider instead, and skip the Squarespace steps below.
Now open your JustEmails dashboard, add your domain, and keep the setup screen open in another tab. That's where you'll copy the DKIM key, verification token and MTA-STS id from, because they're unique to your domain.
This is the easiest step to skip. Leave the old records in place and some or all of your mail keeps going to the old provider, depending on the priority numbers, and the first suspicion is that the new MX record is broken. It isn't; the old one is still there.
Click Add record under Custom Records (Squarespace may ask for your password or a 2FA check), then fill in:
Click Save. One MX record, nothing else. Don't add a backup MX "just in case"; a backup with nothing behind it does more harm than good.
For each TXT row in the table below: Add record, Type TXT, then the Name, then paste the value into the Text field, then Save.
In the Name field, type only the host part: @ for the root, or dkim._domainkey, arc._domainkey, _dmarc and _mta-sts. Squarespace appends your domain automatically, so typing the full domain can leave you with a doubled name like _dmarc.yourbusiness.com.yourbusiness.com. It's an easy mistake to make, and it looks a lot like slow propagation. And don't wrap the SPF value in quotation marks.
Add record, Type CNAME, Name mta-sts, Data mta-sts.justemails.app, then Save. No slashes, colons or https. (A CNAME can't use @ as its Name; this one doesn't need to.)
| Type | Name / host | Value | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| MX | @ (the domain) | mail1.justemails.app priority 10 | Delivers incoming mail to us |
| TXT | @ | v=spf1 a:mail1.justemails.app ~all | SPF: lets us send for the domain |
| TXT | dkim._domainkey | v=DKIM1; k=rsa; p=… (unique per domain) | DKIM signature key |
| TXT | arc._domainkey | v=DKIM1; k=rsa; p=… (same key as DKIM) | Signs forwarded mail |
| TXT | _dmarc | v=DMARC1; p=quarantine; rua=mailto:dmarc@justemails.app | DMARC policy |
| TXT | @ | justemails-verify=… (from the dashboard) | Proves the domain is yours |
| TXT | _mta-sts | v=STSv1; id=… (from the dashboard) | Turns on enforced encryption |
| CNAME | mta-sts | mta-sts.justemails.app | Hosts the encryption policy |
The p=… and … parts are placeholders. Copy the real values from your JustEmails dashboard, never from an example on a web page. Made a typo? Find the record in Squarespace and click the pencil to edit it.
Two rows on this list come with a one-per-domain rule. A domain can have only one DMARC record, so if a _dmarc TXT already exists (some registrars and email products add one), edit it to our value instead of adding a second. SPF has the same rule and a messier history, so it gets its own section.
A domain should have exactly one SPF record. If it already has one (very often left behind by Google Workspace with include:_spf.google.com in it), edit it rather than adding a second. On most DNS hosts, two SPF records make both of them fail.
Squarespace does something a bit different here. It automatically merges multiple SPF records added as custom records into one. Sounds helpful. We'd rather it didn't, because an old include:_spf.google.com gets merged in with ours and keeps authorising Google to send as your domain long after you've left. So edit the old record to our value, or delete it and add ours.
If Squarespace shows "Custom records not saved", delete the existing SPF records first, then add ours. And if another service also sends mail as your domain (a newsletter tool, say), its include goes into the same single record, before the ~all.
Open your domain in the JustEmails dashboard. It checks each record and shows you which ones are still missing, so you're not guessing which of the eight went wrong.
DNS changes usually show up within minutes and can take a few hours. Squarespace's own help page is more cautious and allows 24 to 48 hours, with a default TTL of 4 hours, so the old MX can hang around in some caches for a while. If a record still shows missing the next morning, check the Name field for a typo first. It's the likeliest culprit.
One planning note. Sending on a newly verified domain is limited to no more than 50 emails a day in its first week, 200 a day in its second, and up to 500 a day from day 15, counted from the day the domain verified. Everyday business mail fits easily. A day-one announcement to your whole customer list doesn't.
Migrated Google Domains can carry two sets of old MX records. Google's forwarding rules came across in the migration, and Squarespace's restore procedure had owners add Mailgun records and later remove Google's. So a migrated domain can have Google MX records and Mailgun MX records at the same time. Delete all of them, not just the one you recognise.
Removing Google's MX records doesn't stop Workspace billing. That's a separate step. If your Workspace plan came over from Google Domains, look for it under Billing in Squarespace first. If it isn't listed there, cancel it from the Google Admin console instead. Cancelling in Squarespace (Billing → Subscriptions → Google Workspace → Cancel Subscription) transfers the subscription to Google with a 7-day grace period, and you finish cancelling at Google. It can't simply be reinstated through Squarespace, and monthly plans get no refund. Move your mail across first; our Google Workspace migration guide covers that part.
A leftover _dmarc record. Squarespace's default anti-spam set (next item) and its email-forwarding set each include one. A domain gets one DMARC record, so if a _dmarc TXT is still sitting there, edit it to our value rather than adding ours alongside it.
Some TXT records may vanish on their own. When a domain is registered or connected through Squarespace's nameservers, Squarespace adds three default anti-spam TXT records (DKIM, SPF and DMARC). Squarespace says they're removed automatically once custom email records are added, and they can't be put back by hand. If you see TXT records disappear that you didn't touch, that's probably why.
"Conflicts with an existing record" errors. "Custom record not saved… conflicts with an existing record" means a duplicate already exists, so delete it first. "This name record is already in use" means another record type is using that Name. A CNAME can't share a Name with any other record.
Long records. Squarespace says TXT and DMARC records have a 255-character limit, but longer DKIM and SPF records are accepted without splitting. Our ARC record carries the same key as DKIM under a different name, so if Squarespace rejects the arc._domainkey value as too long, it may not be treating it as a DKIM record. Squarespace suggests a third-party DNS record splitter for long values, or tell us and we'll help.
Squarespace support covers where records go, not what they do. Fair enough; it's a DNS panel, not a mail server. For questions about the records themselves, ask us.
Yes. Google Workspace is one of two email products Squarespace sells (it's the one offered when you buy a domain), and you can skip it. Any email host works on a Squarespace domain as long as you can add MX and TXT records in Squarespace's DNS panel. With JustEmails that means one MX record, six TXT records and one CNAME, all listed in the table on this page. Your domain, and your website if it lives there, stay at Squarespace; only the email moves.
It does. Google Domains registrations moved to Squarespace in 2023, so a domain bought there is now managed from the Squarespace domains dashboard, and email for a Google Domains domain is set up in the same DNS panel as any other. The one difference is the clean-up: a migrated domain may hold both Google's old MX records and Mailgun's forwarding records, so delete both sets before adding ours.
Yes, both. If Google's MX records stay, incoming mail keeps going to Google, because its records carry a lower priority number than ours. If Google's SPF record stays, Squarespace merges it with ours, which keeps Google authorised to send as your domain after you have left. Delete the Workspace preset, or each record by hand, then add ours. Cancelling the subscription is a separate step: check Billing in Squarespace first, or the Google Admin console if the plan isn't listed there.
Usually within minutes, though it can take a few hours. Squarespace's help page gives it 24 to 48 hours, and because Squarespace records default to a 4-hour TTL, a stale MX record can stick around in some caches. Our dashboard checks every record on the domain and lists the ones it can't find yet, which tells you whether to keep waiting or to go back and fix a typo in the Name field.
We charge $49 a year: one flat price for unlimited domains and mailboxes, with a unified inbox across them, and extra team members cost $2 each per month. Squarespace's Google Workspace plans are priced per user, and Essential Email by Titan covers one account per domain; the prices we read on Squarespace's help pages on 8 October 2026 are in the comparison on this page. If you need one address on one domain in one of Titan's four countries, Titan costs less. From a second domain or a second mailbox onwards, the flat price comes out ahead.
If Squarespace's per-user email doesn't fit, JustEmails is one flat $49 a year for unlimited domains and mailboxes, and your domain (and your website, if you have one there) stays at Squarespace. The dashboard tells you which records are still missing as you go. Start with JustEmails from our pricing page.