Squarespace Email forwarding defaults for ex-Google Domains - Mailgun?

I have been transferred over today to Squarespace from Google Domains, and I am now trying to confirm everything is set up correctly and won't cause errors in the future. However I'm confused by what I see on the DNS interface under "Email Forwarding" - it references a third party website I've never used and which I can't find any indication is connected or used by Squarespace for this, specifically Mailgun.

Does anyone know if this is the norm for Squarespace domains using Email forwarding, or a hangover from Google Domains email forwarding?

I also have the following:

Same for me. I assume squarespace use the 3rd part mailgun.org to process emails?

Hi YES!! This! Why don't they put this on their help guides it would solve so many problems!

So after my domains transferred from google domains, I was having a hell of a time getting it set up to forward emails and thought I had to set up google workspace to manage these 3 personal email addresses.

Seems like this is their workaround but customer service didn't tell me about it - I figured it out by looking at the DNS settings on a domain I own that I don't use with any emails and I entered all of them into my DNS settings and now my old emails forward to gmail again... now if anyone knows how to make them an SMTP alias on in accounts in gmail... that would make up for all the time I have wasted trying to figure this out. I feel really burned by google domains for sending me to squarespace with no support. 

does anyone have a password for their domain email anymore to be able to set it up with gmail? I was able to do this with google app passwords in the past but it doesn't seem to work any more. 

After my MX records were changed to mailgun.org I was able to get my original google domain email address to work as in alias in regular gmail google using the following instructions for app passwords. (It seems there is a bug in google that is making the app passwords work differently than on their guidance page.) 

follow these instructions:

3. Go to https://myaccount.google.com/

5. In the search window at the top of screen enter "app passwords"

6. Let google verify your identity

7. Where it says "app name" in the gray box enter your gmail address (email@gmail.com)

8. copy the code that is generated

9. open gmail settings (settings wheel on upper right, "see all settings", accounts and import)

10. click "Add Another Email Address"

11. in the Yellow box type the domain email address you want to use ex. name@yourdomain.com

and make sure the Treat as alias box is checked

12. Press Next Step and it the following box change the SMTP Server to smtp.gmail.com

13. Enter your gmail address exactly as entered in your app password (step 7)

14. Enter the code copied (step 8)

15. Press Add Account

16. You should receive a Verification Email from google. Follow the link and use your domain email as a gmail alias.

it was only after adding these mx records that my domain forwarding worked on my mail accounts that were originally set up with google domains. I cannot get anyone at customer service to acknowledge their existence, however. It's very strange. 

Thank you for this thread, I'm still working through this and I think it's an issue of MX records within square-space. But, I was able to finally get to the app password step. 

NOTE: you cannot have access to the setting "app passwords" if you do not have two factor authentication setup on your google account. Once I did that for this account running this domain, I then got this option. 

It appears that they have revised the original spf records and included it in the mail forwarding section. The issue I'm seeing is that you can only delete the entire email forwarding section, but not edit it. All the other sections have both an edit feature and a delete feature. 

I'm currently using an SMTP relay service for my custom domain and want to change that service to another provider.  So, I need to edit the spf record, but the only way to do is to delete the entire email forwarding section.  Really not ideal....    

On 5/6/2024 at 9:44 PM, Riapro said:

I'm confused by what I see on the DNS interface under "Email Forwarding" - it references [mailgun.org].

Does anyone know if this is the norm for Squarespace domains using Email forwarding, or a hangover from Google Domains email forwarding?

This is normal when you enable email forwarding. As part of the Email Forwarding preset, you should see two MX records and one TXT record that refer to mailgun.org plus one further TXT record for the DKIM key.

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Tech-challenged person here, probably asking a dumb question! Not sure where else to ask it though as it relates to the topic in this thread (though most of what has been said has gone way over my head).

I have a custom Squarespace domain. I set a custom email to forward to my personal gmail address. I'm receiving emails in gmail that were sent to the custom email address, so that part was successful. But when I reply to those emails my customers are seeing my personal gmail address.

In gmail, there's a setting where you can "send mail as." When I select "add another email address" it asks for a password. What password does it want? And can I send mail as my custom email address with the free gmail account? Or do I need to pay for the Google Workspace thing to be able to send mail from my custom email address?

Thanks!

Have the same problem. When Google moved my domain to square space I lost my dmarc and spf is borked, all my aliases I setup before go into a blackhole now. I wish Google or square space would have told us this beforehand. This is an old domain for me which is no longer monetized, though I can imagine if this was my primary source of income it would have cost me hundreds of dollars in lost revenue, what were they thinking? Thanks for those who replied with the workaround. I'll deal with this after the memorial day holiday and hope I can repair the damage. Square space and Google domains , if anyone on staff is reading this, you really need to post a FAQ to get people back up. While email admin is a skill in my hat, I can imagine there's a lot of broken customers now with no idea how to make repairs.

Interesting. I was transferred a little over 2 weeks ago and email forwarding seemed to work fine. Sometime around this morning, it stopped working and senders are seeing the following error:

host mxa.mailgun.org[34.160.157.95] said: 550 5.7.1
    Relaying denied (in reply to RCPT TO command)

I've reported this to support, but haven't heard back yet. Looking at my DNS records, I see the same mailgun MX records as described by other posters

Started receiving email a little while ago, so this looks to be resolved.

My email forwarders to Gmail seem to work.  However, it says I cannot edit or add any forwarders due to the custom MX records (i.e., *.mailgun.org), which were not added by me.  It says I need to delete the custom MX records, but I'm afraid to do so since I have a lot of forwarders and it will break if I do.  The ones who says it's working now, do you have the mailgun.org MX records?  And if so, can you still edit and add?

kasmith, Thank you so much.  Somehow gmail dumped my previous password.  You had the right solution to correct it.  Glad that after 4 hours trying to figure out what was going on,  I finally did a search with the keywords gmail and squarspace to see your solution.

Thank you kasmith. Your solution worked like a charm.

On 5/19/2024 at 11:56 AM, paul2009 said:

This is normal when you enable email forwarding. As part of the Email Forwarding preset, you should see two MX records and one TXT record that refer to mailgun.org plus one further TXT record for the DKIM key.

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Okay, these mailgun MX records appear to be required in order for email to be sent to @customdomain email addresses. Without any MX records, smtp servers (from any SMTP server) can't send email to the @customdomain email address:

"Sending of the message failed.
An error occurred while sending mail. The mail server responded:
Requested action not taken: mailbox unavailable
invalid DNS MX or A/AAAA resource record."

However, having those mailgun MX entries in custom records (or in the "email forwarding" section of "dns settings") prevents the capacity to edit or add new email forwarding rules at Squarespace Domains.

This situation appears to be a Catch-22: either delete custom mailgun MX records and prevent anyone from sending you email--or have custom mailgun MX records and be unable to add new forwarding rules.

At least the existing forwarding rules work once mailgun MX records are present.

I did test deleting the mailgun MX records and using Squarespace DNS defaults, but sent emails to @customdomain email addresses were never received. When using mailgun MX records instead (the ones Squarespace appears to have created by default for Google Domain migrations), incoming email received based on forwarding rules, are received immediately.

For anyone deleting mailgun MX records (or anything currently present in your DNS settings), I suggest noting (saving somewhere) what those entries are so that you can add them back in the event problems arise.

On 5/31/2024 at 10:07 AM, man910 said:

My email forwarders to Gmail seem to work.  However, it says I cannot edit or add any forwarders due to the custom MX records (i.e., *.mailgun.org), which were not added by me.  It says I need to delete the custom MX records, but I'm afraid to do so since I have a lot of forwarders and it will break if I do.  The ones who says it's working now, do you have the mailgun.org MX records?  And if so, can you still edit and add?

I'm in the exact same position. I'm not a Google Workspace user, by the way.

Existing forwarding rules work, but I can't edit existing forwarding rules nor add new ones.

And if I delete mailgun MX records, no one can send email to my @squarespacedomain email addresses:

"Sending of the message failed.
An error occurred while sending mail. The mail server responded:
Requested action not taken: mailbox unavailable
invalid DNS MX or A/AAAA resource record."

Of course the DNS MX record is unavailable if both custom mailgun MX records are deleted without being replaced by anything else.

Based on what I'm reading in another thread, the suggestion is to delete the mailgun MX records and use the default Squarespace preset instead. However, I foresee at least one problem: even if that does work, it's probably going to take up to 48 hours for MX records to update. That's a lot of emails held up in queue, if you're lucky (incoming emails will be lost or bounced back if you're unlucky).

More importantly though, why were we all setup with custom mailgun MX records if the default Squarespace preset DNS records are supposed to work for forwarding to gmail? That doesn't make sense. It seems more likely to me that the custom mailgun MX records are required.

I was instructed to delete the custom mailgun MX records by Squarespace support and then add a brand new forwarding rule.

Apparently, adding a new forwarding rule creates hidden, custom mailgun DNS records to the account, according to the same Squarespace support representative.

Afterwards, sending email to an old, existing forwarding rule (email@squarespacedomain.com), however, failed:

SMTP error from remote server for RCPT TO command, host: mxb.mailgun.org (34.160.63.108) reason: 550 5.7.1 Relaying denied

So, I do suggest saving existing forwarding/custom DNS entries in case they need to be added back to have forwarding rules work again.

To summarize, if I want to add new forwarding rules I have to delete existing custom MX records, but if I delete mailgun MX records, no one can send me email.

The workaround is this:

1. Delete custom mailgun MX records.

2. Edit or add forwarding rules.

3. Add the custom mailgun MX records deleted in step 1.

Not fun.

Does anyone know if the mail forwarding supports "+" operators in the email address?  A quick Google search seems to suggest that Mailgun supports +, but when I just tried testing this on an email address from a domain that was migrated from Google Domains, and it doesn't seem to work.  The email doesn't arrive, nor does it bounce back to the sender.  Anyone else having this issue?

Hello Angmar,

I'm currently facing the exact same issue: I have a bunch of email+modifier@customdomain.tld which I'm not receiving since June 1st (my domain migration). I just realized that 😢

I just added a catch-all email (*@customdomain.tld), and I'll wait 24-48 to see if this works. This is really a pity because I have a rule that forward group@customdomain.tld to a Google Group, and, IF the catch-all email works, I highly doubt it would transfer the group+modifier@customdomain.tld to the Google Group, but rather to the target of the catch-email.

Let's see how it behaves.

In the meantime, if anyone has feedback on this kind of setup, please share your knowledge.

Thanks!

On 5/13/2024 at 2:28 PM, kasmith said:

After my MX records were changed to mailgun.org I was able to get my original google domain email address to work as in alias in regular gmail google using the following instructions for app passwords. (It seems there is a bug in google that is making the app passwords work differently than on their guidance page.) 

follow these instructions:

3. Go to https://myaccount.google.com/

5. In the search window at the top of screen enter "app passwords"

6. Let google verify your identity

7. Where it says "app name" in the gray box enter your gmail address (email@gmail.com)

8. copy the code that is generated

9. open gmail settings (settings wheel on upper right, "see all settings", accounts and import)

10. click "Add Another Email Address"

11. in the Yellow box type the domain email address you want to use ex. name@yourdomain.com

and make sure the Treat as alias box is checked

12. Press Next Step and it the following box change the SMTP Server to smtp.gmail.com

13. Enter your gmail address exactly as entered in your app password (step 7)

14. Enter the code copied (step 8)

15. Press Add Account

16. You should receive a Verification Email from google. Follow the link and use your domain email as a gmail alias.

 

 

It worked, but when I send an email it fails on validation and is considered as a phishing

Authentication-Results: spf=pass (sender IP is XXXX)
 smtp.mailfrom=gmail.com; dkim=none (message not signed)
 header.d=none;dmarc=none action=none
 header.from=XXXX.dev;compauth=fail reason=001

so, the solution to this was to delete the entries in Squarespace and simply re-enter them? 

On 5/13/2024 at 1:28 PM, kasmith said:

After my MX records were changed to mailgun.org I was able to get my original google domain email address to work as in alias in regular gmail google using the following instructions for app passwords. (It seems there is a bug in google that is making the app passwords work differently than on their guidance page.) 

follow these instructions:

3. Go to https://myaccount.google.com/

5. In the search window at the top of screen enter "app passwords"

6. Let google verify your identity

7. Where it says "app name" in the gray box enter your gmail address (email@gmail.com)

8. copy the code that is generated

9. open gmail settings (settings wheel on upper right, "see all settings", accounts and import)

10. click "Add Another Email Address"

11. in the Yellow box type the domain email address you want to use ex. name@yourdomain.com

and make sure the Treat as alias box is checked

12. Press Next Step and it the following box change the SMTP Server to smtp.gmail.com

13. Enter your gmail address exactly as entered in your app password (step 7)

14. Enter the code copied (step 😎

15. Press Add Account

16. You should receive a Verification Email from google. Follow the link and use your domain email as a gmail alias.

 

 

I followed these instructions and the previous Squarespace instructions but could not get the verification email to my forwarded address. Instead, I get a bounceback response from <mailer-daemon@googlemail.com> that states...

Message not delivered
Your message couldn't be delivered to <name@yourdomain.com> because the remote server is misconfigured. See technical details below for more information.
The response from the remote server was:
550 5.7.1 Relaying denied