A Beginner's Guide to Signing up for Google Workspace
You’re now ready to set up Gmail as your business email for your domain (and, if you haven’t already, verify your domain).
To do this, you need to sign in to your domain host and direct the email for your domain to the Google Workspace servers. It’s like registering your new address with the post office when you move so that your mail gets delivered to the right place. We’ll walk you through the steps.
Before you begin
- Verify that you own your domain.
Or, you can verify now with an MX record. We’ll show you how while you're setting up the MX records.
- Create user accounts in Google Workspace for your team.
If your team members already use email with your domain (their email address ends with your domain), you have to create their user accounts in Google Workspace before you change any MX record settings. Otherwise, they won't be able to send or receive messages with their business address in Gmail.
Change your MX records
Step 1: Sign in to your domain host
- Leave the Google Admin console open.
- Open a new browser window and go to the Network Solutions site in a new tab. Keep the Setup Wizard open in the first tab.
- On the Network Solutions homepage, in the upper right, click login.
- Under Log into Account Manager, enter the username and password you created when you purchased your domain from Network Solutions.
- From Log in to, select Manage All Services.
- Click Login.
If you don’t know your account information, you can retrieve your username and reset your password or contact Network Solutions support.
Step 2: Go to your DNS records
- From the Network Solutions Account Manager, under My Domain Names, click Edit DNS.
- Click Change Where Domain Points.
- Select Advanced DNS and click Continue.
- Scroll down to Mail Servers (MX Records) and click Edit MX Records.
Step 3: Delete existing MX records
- If you have existing MX records in the Add/Edit Mail Servers (MX Records) table, check the Delete box next to all of them.
- Scroll down and click Save.
- Click Save Changes to confirm the MX records deletion.
- Click Return to Advanced DNS Summary.
Step 4: Add the new MX records
MX server address | Priority |
ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM | 1 |
ALT1.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM | 5 |
ALT2.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM | 5 |
ALT3.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM | 10 |
ALT4.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM | 10 |
- Scroll down to Mail Servers (MX Records) and click Edit MX Records.
- Leave the Sub-Domain field blank.
- Set Priority to 1.
- In the TTL field, keep the default value of 7200 (seconds).
- In the Mail Server field, enter ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM
- Repeat steps 1—4, entering the remaining MX Server address values from the table above and changing the Priority values as indicated in the table for each record.
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Skip this step if you already verified your domain by another method (such as TXT or CNAME record).
If you need to verify your domain:
- In the Admin console, scroll to the Get your verification code section and click the Copy button.
- Paste the value in the Value/Answer/Destination/Target column.
- Make sure the record's priority is set to Low or to 15 or greater.
Note: If your registrar rejects the verification code, try deleting the period at the end of .com. - In the Admin console, scroll to the Get your verification code section and click the Copy button.
- At the bottom of the records table, click Save.
- Click Save Changes to confirm your MX records.
Step 5: Tell Google to find your new MX records
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Open the Google Workspace setup tool.Sign in to your Google Admin console.
Sign in using your administrator account (does not end in @gmail.com).
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Check the boxes to confirm:
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You've created accounts for all existing email addresses in your organization.
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You're ready to stop receiving messages at your old email provider and start receiving them in Google Workspace.
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Click Continue.
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Scroll to the bottom of the next page and click Activate Gmail.
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