How to Activate Gmail of Google Workspace in Squarespace Domain & DNS Records Easily 2026

After subscribing, the Admin console link on the Google Workspace site is your way into the setup tools. Contact sales sits next to it and leads somewhere else entirely.

Clicking through leaves the marketing pages behind and lands you in the dashboard where domain verification and mail routing are both configured. Keep this tab open alongside your Squarespace domain settings. You will be copying values between the two, and having both open saves a lot of navigation.

Google presents the process as two timed items: verifying you own the domain, around 4 minutes, and starting to use Gmail with that domain, around 10 minutes. Verification unlocks the rest of Workspace once it passes.

Read the warning on the Gmail item before you continue. Every address already receiving mail on your domain has to be accounted for, because those addresses stop working the moment mail routing switches over.

Make a list now of every mailbox, alias and forwarding rule currently live on the domain, and make sure each has a matching user or alias in Workspace. This is the step that causes real damage when skipped, and it is much harder to reconstruct afterwards than to write down beforehand. Clicking Get started on the verification item is what generates the DNS values you will paste into Squarespace.

Switch to Squarespace, open your domains dashboard, click the domain name, then click DNS in the side panel. Custom records sit further down that page.

This is the only place in Squarespace where Google's records are entered; the Website and Email settings elsewhere in the same panel do not touch DNS. Check you have the right domain selected if the account manages several, since records pasted onto the wrong domain verify nothing and leave clutter to untangle later. One detail worth knowing before you start typing: Squarespace gives custom records a 4-hour TTL by default, which you can change per record.

Google's verification step supplies a TXT record: a Host value you can usually leave at its default, a long Data string beginning with google-site-verification=, and a TTL. Copy the Data value exactly.

Google also offers a CNAME alternative if you prefer, and if you connect the domain from Google's side, Squarespace notes that a verification CNAME gets added automatically along with mail records. Add the record in Squarespace, save, then go back to Google Workspace and run the check. Verification failures at this point are nearly always one of three things: the record has not propagated yet, it went onto the wrong domain, or the Data string was truncated in the copy.

Here is where older guides go wrong. Google Workspace now uses one MX record: the value smtp.google.com at priority 1.

Accounts created before 2023 may still carry the five legacy records whose values start with aspmx, and Google states those remain supported, so a working setup does not need changing. New setups take the single record.

Google is explicit that other MX records must go: keeping old or incorrect ones can stop mail working correctly. So delete what is there before adding the new record, and check for leftovers from a previous host.

On Squarespace you may not need to type anything. Choose Google Workspace MX from the Add Preset dropdown and Squarespace adds the required records for you.

If you bought Google Workspace through Squarespace, the MX records were added during setup and should already be present. Watch the format rules if you do enter it by hand, since Squarespace and Google differ on conventions like a trailing dot and whether priority sits in the same field as the destination.

Then wait properly. Google says new MX records can take up to 72 hours to be recognised, and Squarespace says changes may take up to 48 hours to process. Mail not arriving twenty minutes after the switch is not a fault.

Older versions of this advice, including an earlier version of this page, described SPF and DKIM as good for deliverability but not required. Google's sender guidelines changed that.

Since 1 February 2024, all senders must have SPF or DKIM set up for their sending domains, and bulk senders over 5,000 messages a day must have SPF, DKIM and DMARC, with DMARC allowed to sit at a policy of none. For SPF, add a TXT record on the root of the domain.

Where Google Workspace is your only sender, Google gives the value v=spf1 include:_spf.google.com ~all. A domain gets exactly one SPF record, so if one already exists, edit it instead of adding a second.

Extra senders such as a newsletter tool go in as additional include tags, up to a limit of ten. For DKIM, generate the key in the admin console under Menu, then Apps, Google Workspace, Gmail, and Authenticate email.

Keep the default selector google and pick 2048-bit if your provider supports it. That produces a TXT record named google._domainkey to add in Squarespace.

A 2048-bit key runs past the 255-character limit on a single TXT string, so it has to be entered as several quoted strings one after another in the value field, and a key pasted as one long line is a common reason DKIM never authenticates. Google gives up to 48 hours for both SPF and DKIM to start working.

Once the records are saved and have had time to settle, send mail in both directions using an address outside your domain. Receiving proves the MX record is live.

Sending proves the mailbox works. Then check the authentication result instead of trusting that the record exists.

Open the received message in Gmail, use Show original, and confirm SPF and DKIM both report pass. A record that is present but malformed will sit in DNS looking correct while failing every check, and this is the one test that catches it before your mail starts landing in spam folders.