Any DNS Experts Here?

[Markintosh]

Here's the situation. All of my domains are registered via GoDaddy. All of my sites are hosted via Hostgator. I am not looking for commentary here on why you think there are better hosts or registrars.

It's a site that I've been hosting for my son that is the issue. One of his friends convinced him that building sites at Squarespace was so much better than building via Wordpress and he got himself to the point of being really committed. Of course no one told him that when he pointed the domain to the new site at Squarespace, all access to 9 years of email for the company would no longer be accessible.

So apparently it is possible to add an MX record to the DNS records at GoDaddy that allows all web traffic to be directed to Squarespace and all mail traffic being directed to Hostgator. After bouncing back and forth on support chats at GoDaddy and Hostgator. A new MX record was created but it seemed to use circular logic...but that is what support suggested. After allowing a few hours for propagation...no dice.

Ideas?

[clay]

you've got the right idea.

If godaddy is still the SOA (start of authority), then you'd need to add the MX records there that point to Hostgator. And then the A record would point to Squarespace to direct to his website.

If you have a cpanel account at host gator for his account, just login to that, and look into the DNS zones and you may be able to lift those MX records to use at Godaddy, if that makes sense.

Some email providers also require using an SPF record and DKIM record in order for mail to be delivered. You could probably find those in the HOstgator cpanel as well.

Check the TTL values in your godaddy account--if the values are high, it could take a while for things to propagate fully and appear to work. I'm headed to bed shortly, but if you want to PM me the domain name, I can take a look and see if anything pops out at me.

[C(-)ris]

clay pretty much nailed it. It is SUPER common to have email in one place and website on another. This is pretty much a recap of what clay stated already.

Most of my domains are registered for DNS at Network Solutions or GoDaddy and use Google for mail and dreamhost or another host for the site. Definitely a workable solution.

You should have your MX records pointed to HostGator's mail servers. Should be able to get that info from Hostgator.

Your A records would point to Squarespace.

You can use MXToolbox to look at what your DNS is currently reporting and check your propagation times: https://mxtoolbox.com/MXLookup.aspx

As you requested, I'm not going to talk about hosts being better or worse than others, but I am going to make a suggestion that you use a dedicated email host for your email instead of using your web host. While inconvenient, there are many advantages for having your DNS, Mail, and site hosting all on different platforms.

[Tiangou]

Did he go into the advanced options at GoDaddy and change the nameservers/host-names? If the latter then he gave control over DNS to Squarespace and will need to change the MX records in the Squarespace DNS records panel.

Edit:
Check the MX record propagation for the domain here:
https://dnschecker.org

...If your changes haven't propagated then you've edited the wrong zone file.

[M A V I C]

Tiangou wrote:
Did he go into the advanced options at GoDaddy and change the nameservers/host-names? If the latter then he gave control over DNS to Squarespace and will need to change the MX records in the Squarespace DNS records panel.

Edit:
Check the MX record propagation for the domain here:
https://dnschecker.org

...If your changes haven't propagated then you've edited the wrong zone file.

And if this is what happened, I would switch the DNS back to GoDaddy. Then update the A record on GoDaddy to point at Squarespace for the website only.

[Markintosh]

I am just going to say that Clay is a national treasure. He made it really clear what needed to happen to make it work.

Thanks to MAVIC and Tiangou for supporting info as well.

I love it when this community can solve a problem that the very remote support staff for Squarespace, Hostgator or GoDaddy could not figure out.

miley-gen013:

[M A V I C]

Unfortunately hosting support has gone way downhill over the years. There's so many people with websites and the hosts are all about quantity, not quality. I pay one host 4x as much as other hosts because of the level of support they offer. However, unbeknownst to me they changed their support policies and still charge me as much. When I ask them questions now, they give me a hard time and tell me I need to hire a developer to figure it out.

I've been a developer. I know how to solve the problem. But I'm paying them so I don't have to waste my time on them. I have moved all but one site off of them, and once that's gone I'll be cancelling that account.

[clay]

M A V I C wrote:
Unfortunately hosting support has gone way downhill over the years. There's so many people with websites and the hosts are all about quantity, not quality. I pay one host 4x as much as other hosts because of the level of support they offer. However, unbeknownst to me they changed their support policies and still charge me as much. When I ask them questions now, they give me a hard time and tell me I need to hire a developer to figure it out.

I've been a developer. I know how to solve the problem. But I'm paying them so I don't have to waste my time on them. I have moved all but one site off of them, and once that's gone I'll be cancelling that account.

Yes, yes, and yes. Shitty hosts continue to dominate the industry at all levels.