SOLVED Squarespace Website with cPanel email

[WorkinOnIt]

I am migrating a customer to cPanel from Squarespace, but until their new website is built in cPanel, we need to keep the A record pointing to their squarespace site - however, their email needs to be going through cPanel.

When I created the new cPanel account the default settings appear to be fine - and I added my domain A record and CNAME record to point to Squarespace for the website - however, the email was not working right.

There seems to be a bit of confusion on how to do it - so - for the benefit of others (and possibly my future self!), here's a step by step approach. This could also work if you are planning to move to Squarespace from cPanel (though why you'd want to do that is anybody's guess - so don't do it - stay in control of your own website code!)



Using SquareSpace with cPanel

If you need to point your website to Squarespace but wish to keep your email on cPanel - here's how to do it.


Part A - Point your website to Squarespace

Step 1) Adjust your A records

1. Log into cPanel for the domain (you can also do this through WHM > Edit DNS if you have access)

2. Click on the Advanced DNS Zone Editor icon

3. Click Edit next to the A record for example.net

4. Squarespace will have provided you with a series of A records. Change the IP address on the Address Field to the first one they have listed (ex 198.185.xxx.xx)

5. Leave the other settings as they are and click the Edit Record button.

6. Go to the section above called Add a record and create the additional A records provided by Squarespace.

Name: example.net.
TTL: 1440
Type: A
Address: Enter the IP address provided by Squarespace

Click on the Add Record button to create the new record. Keep repeating this step until all the remaining A records have been created.


Step 2) Adjust your CNAME records

1. Create a new CNAME record to verify your domain with Squarespace (I'm not sure this is required if you are already verified!)

Name: Enter the name provided by Squarespace
TTL: 1440
Type: CNAME
Address: Enter the verification record name provided by Squarespace

2. Click on the Add Record button to create a new CNAME record.

3. Click Edit button to the right of the CNAME record pointing to example.net.

4. Change the record on the CNAME field to what has been provided by Squarespace (eg. ext-cust.squarespace.com.)

5. Leave the other settings as they are and click Edit Record to save your changes



Part B - Modify your Email

Step 1) Adjust Your MX Records

If you wish to use your cPanel Hosting account to send and receive email for your domain, you will need to adjust your current MX record.

1. Click Edit next to mail.example.net

2. Change Type from CNAME to A

3. Change the address to your server IP address and save the edit

4. Go back to cPanel Home page and navigate to Email section

5. Click on MX Entry icon

6. Click Edit on the MX record

7. Change the Destination field to be mail.example.net


Wait 24hours to allow DNS propagation!

You can use intodns.com to check DNS and whatsmydns.net to see propagation.

 

[Jcats]

To comment on the initial issue, by default, cPanel points the MX record to the root of the domain(domain.com) so by pointing the A record for the root of your domain(domain.com) to squarespace, this means all emails are now routed to square space since its controlled by your MX record.

Good write up and thanks for sharing!

 

[WorkinOnIt]

Yes - it took me a while to find the relevant information to be able to retain my emails on cpanel. Squarespace help pages were full of information on how to set up domain DNS - but I couldn't find any information on how to retain the email on the cpanel server.

Everything works fine now! I just have to remember to reverse the process once I move the website A record back to the cPanel when I'm ready to ditch squarespace!

 

[cPanelMichael]

Hello,

I'm happy to see everything is now working well. Thanks for taking the time to write up these instructions for other users that might face a similar issue!

 

[kaseygil]

This is great! I've pointed my domain to Squarespace but I forgot to update my mx records for my email. Now I can no longer access cpanel through my url example.com/cpanel. It takes to my website page 'We couldn't find the page you were looking for." Is there a way to log in cpanel without the url?

 

[cPanelMichael]

Hello,

You can access cPanel using the server's IP address (e.g. IP/cPanel) if your domain name does not resolve to the cPanel server. Your web hosting provider can let you know which IP address to use.

Thank you.