SiteGround: Set up MX records

Tip! Only Google Workspace customers who want to use Gmail must change their MX records. You can skip this procedure and continue to use your current email provider with Google Workspace.

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

Open all   |   Close all

Step 1: Sign in to your domain host

1. Leave the Google Admin console setup instructions open.
2. Open a new tab or browser window and go to the SiteGround site.
3. Enter your username or email address and click Next.
4. Enter the password you created when you bought your domain from SiteGround.
5. Click Sign In.

   If you don’t know your account information, you can recover your account.

Step 2: Go to your DNS records

1. Click the Services tab.
2. Click the Hosting child tab.
3. Under your domain’s hosting plan, click Manage.

   

4. On the Plan Details page, next to the domain you want to set up with Gmail, click Manage.

   

5. Next to your domain, click Site Tools.

   

6. In the left column, click DomainDNS Zone Editor.

   

7. (Optional) If you have multiple domains, use the Select Domain list at the top of the DNS Zone Editor page to choose a domain.

Step 3: Delete existing MX records

1. Under Manage DNS Records, scroll down to the MX records.
2. Next to the first MX record, click Delete .

   

3. Click Confirm to complete the record deletion.
4. Repeat steps 2–3 until all MX records have been removed.

   You’ll add new MX records in the next step.

Step 4: Add the new MX records

To direct your email to your Google Workspace account, you have to add new MX records to your domain. These are the records that you need to add:

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

Important: Some registrars require you to add a period after the .COM in the MX server address.

1. Scroll up to the Create New Record section, and click the MX tab.
2. Leave the Name field blank.
3. In the TTL field, leave the default value of 1 hour.
4. In the Priority field, enter 1.
5. In the Destination field, enter ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.

   

6. Click Create.
7. Click Back.
8. Repeat steps 1–7, entering the remaining MX server address values from the table above and setting the Priority values.

   

9. 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:

   1. In the Admin console, scroll to the Get your verification code section and click the Copy button.
      
      
   2. Paste the value in the Value/Answer/Destination/Target column.
   3. 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.

   

Step 5: Tell Google to find your new MX records

1. 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).

2. Check the boxes to confirm:

   1. You've created accounts for all existing email addresses in your organization.

   2. You're ready to stop receiving messages at your old email provider and start receiving them in Google Workspace.

3. Click Continue.

4. Scroll to the bottom of the next page and click Activate Gmail.

Google, Google Workspace, and related marks and logos are trademarks of Google LLC. All other company and product names are trademarks of the companies with which they are associated.