Receive emails to a custom email address that matches your domain.

With a Squarespace-managed domain, you get email forwarding at no extra cost.

With email forwarding, you can create up to 100 email aliases for your domain, then automatically redirect emails sent to those aliases to an email address of your choice. 

For example, if your site's domain is yoursitename.com, you can create hello@yoursitename.com as an alias, then forward messages sent to this address to an email address you already use.

If you already have a custom email address associated with your Squarespace-managed domain, you'll need to set up email forwarding through your email provider instead to prevent issues with mail delivery.  

Eligibility

Email forwarding is available for:

• Squarespace-managed domains. To set up email forwarding for a domain registered with a third party, follow your domain provider’s documentation.
• Domains that don't already have a custom email address. To set up email forwarding for a domain that already has a custom email address, follow your email provider's documentation.
• Domains that use American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) characters. Email forwarding isn't available for Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) or domain names that include non-ASCII characters.

Email forwarding limitations

When you set up email forwarding, you can receive and respond to emails in an already existing email inbox. It’s not possible to:

• Send emails from your alias, depending on your provider. To learn if you can send emails from an alias, contact your email provider.
• Forward to an email address that’s already forwarding to another address. All email forwards need to point to a real email address. Plus addressing isn’t available.
• Use an email forwarding address with email campaigns.

Email forwarding vs. custom email addresses

Creating a custom email address and forwarding emails are two different methods you can use to deliver email. Both methods support the ability for your visitors and customers to send mail to an email address that matches your custom domain, but there are some key differences.

Use the table below to understand the differences between email forwarding and creating a custom email address.

If you want a custom email address with a unique inbox, or if you'd like to send replies and outbound mail from a custom email address, you can use a custom domain email you already own, or use our Google Workspace integration to create email addresses for your custom domain.

Unsupported email providers

It's not possible to use a free recipient email address for domain forwarding (like yourname@aol.com) if the provider enforces Domain Keys Identified Mail (DKIM), which many email providers do. If you need to use a free email as the recipient email address, we recommend Gmail, but you may still have issues receiving email.

Below is a non-exhaustive list of email domains and subdomains you can't use as the recipient of your email forward:

• aol.com
• centurylink.net
• icloud.com
• mac.com
• me.com
• squarespace.com
• squarespace-mail.com
• yahoo.com

Create an email forwarding rule

Before creating an email forwarding rule, delete any existing DMARC record on your domain. We add one automatically when you create the rule, and a conflicting record will cause setup to fail.

To create an email forwarding rule:

1. Open your domains dashboard.
2. Click the domain you're setting up an email forward for.
3. Click Email, then scroll down to the Email Forwarding section.
4. Click Add rule. Enter your current password, or if you have two-factor authentication (2FA) enabled, reauthenticate your account using your 2FA method and click Continue.
5. Enter an alias in the Forward from field. The alias is what will display before @yoursitename.com. To forward mail sent to any alias at this domain to the same destination email address, enter an asterisk (*). If you have a rule for a specific alias and a rule that uses an asterisk, the delivery system will prioritize any rule with a matching alias, and if it can't find one, it will follow the rule with the asterisk.
6. In the Forward to field, enter the email address where you'd like to receive the forwarded emails. It's not possible to enter multiple email addresses in this field or receive forwarded emails at multiple addresses.  
7. Click Save.
8. After you save changes, we'll send a verification email to the email address you entered in the Forward To field. Click the link in the email to verify. Your email forwarding begins 24-48 hours after you verify your address. While verification is pending, a yellow Verification pending status will appear next to your domain in the Email forwarding panel. You don't have to verify the email address if you've set up an email forwarding rule with this address previously.

When you create an email forwarding rule, we'll automatically add TXT, DMARC, and MX records in an Email forwarding section in your domain's DNS settings panel. We use Mailgun as our email forwarding service provider, so some of these records will include references to "Mailgun" in the Data fields. Removing these records will break your email forwarding rules, so it's not possible to remove the records while you have an active email forwarding rule. To remove these records, delete your email forwarding rules. 

Keep in mind, it's not possible to forward mail sent to an alias to multiple different addresses by listing multiple “Forward to” addresses, or by creating multiple rules for the same alias. 

Tip: When testing your new forwarding rule, ensure you aren’t sending the test email from the email address you’re forwarding mail to. To avoid an infinite loop, emails sent from the destination address won’t be forwarded. 

Resend the verification email

To resend the verification email:

1. Open the domains dashboard.
2. Click the domain you're editing.
3. Click Email.
4. Scroll down to the Email Forwarding section.
5. Click Resend verification email under the forwarding rule you need to verify.

Edit or remove an email forward

To edit or delete an email forward:

1. Open the domains dashboard.
2. Click the domain you're editing.
3. Click Email.
4. Scroll down to the Email Forwarding section.
5. Click Edit to edit the forwarding rule, or click the trash can icon to delete the forwarding rule. 
6. Enter your current password, or if you have two-factor authentication (2FA) enabled, reauthenticate your account using your 2FA method and click Continue.
7. If you edited the email forward, we'll send you another verification email to the email address you entered in the Forward To field.

Keep in mind, If you delete all your email forwarding rules, we'll automatically remove the email forwarding DNS records we added to your domain.

Create email forwarding rules for a domain that uses custom nameservers

1. Open your domains dashboard.
2. Click your domain name.
3. Click Email, then scroll down to the Email forwarding section.
4. You'll see an Action required banner stating you must update your DNS records at your DNS provider for email forwarding to work.
5. Click Review instructions to view the two MX and two TXT records you'll need to add to your domain. These records are specific to this domain. If you have other domains, you'll need to go through these steps for those domains separately.
6. In a new tab, log into the account you have with your nameserver provider.
7. Find where to manage your domain's DNS settings. Depending on your provider, the settings for managing your domain's DNS records may be called DNS, Advanced DNS Records, Manage Domains, or something similar.
8. Add the DNS records you viewed in Step 5. If you need help adding DNS records, reach out to your nameserver provider using our suggested language, below.
9. It can take anywhere between 24 and 48 hours for DNS records to update after you add or change them. When your records update, the Action required banner will disappear from your Email panel, and your email forwarding rules will be fully set up.

Request help from your nameserver provider

For help adding DNS records on a domain that uses custom nameservers, we recommend contacting your nameserver provider. They're more familiar with how their service works and can look into your domain setup directly.

For help adding new records, take a screenshot of the required records you reviewed in Step 5 in the sections above, and ask your nameserver provider for help directly with a message like this:

I'd like to add the following records to the DNS settings of my domain, [enter your domain here]. Can you help me with this process? Here are the records I need to add: [Insert screenshot here]

Error message: This email forwarding rule cannot be saved

When creating an email forwarding rule, this message appears if the third-party email provider you previously used with your domain used Mailgun, an email forwarding service, to create your email forwarding rules.

Squarespace also uses Mailgun as our forwarding service provider, so trying to create a new forwarding rule when an older rule already exists creates an error. To resolve this, contact Mailgun for help. You can use a message like this:

I'm trying to create a new email forwarding rule in Squarespace, but because my previous email provider used Mailgun to create forwarding rules on this domain, a collision is occurring and I'm unable to add a new forward. Can you help me remove the connection between [the name of your old email service provider] and Mailgun so I can successfully create a new forwarding rule in Squarespace?

If Mailgun isn't able to help resolve the collision, contact your previous email service provider for help instead, and use the message above to ask if they can help you resolve the issue.

How to use email forwarding after the Google Domains migration

If your domain migrated to Squarespace from Google Domains, the email forwarding rules you created in Google migrated too. However, for those rules to work, add some DNS records to your domain.