If you’re moving your website to Squarespace, there’s a good chance you’re a little nervous about one thing: what happens to your email when you do it?

That fear is well-placed. It’s one of the most common ways a routine website move turns into a stressful week — not because moving your website is hard, but because your email is quietly tied to the same domain, using a completely different set of settings. Touch the wrong one, and mail stops arriving with no warning at all.

Here’s how to move your domain to Squarespace the right way, and keep your email running the whole time.

The Part Everyone Forgets: You’re Not Moving One Thing, You’re Moving Three

Your domain name, your website, and your email are handled by three separate systems, even though they all live under one address:

• Your registrar — where you bought the domain (often GoDaddy)
• Your website host — where your site actually lives (Squarespace, in this case)
• Your email provider — whoever runs your inbox (Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, or sometimes the registrar itself)

Moving your website to Squarespace only touches the second one. But the DNS settings that connect all three live in one shared control panel — which means it’s very easy to update the record for your website and accidentally wipe out the record for your email in the same click.

A Real Move: GoDaddy to Squarespace

We recently moved a client’s domain from GoDaddy over to Squarespace. The website migration itself was the easy part. The DNS records were where the real risk was.

Before touching anything, we documented every existing DNS record — especially the MX and TXT records handling their email — since those aren’t things Squarespace’s setup wizard manages for you. Then we updated only the A record to point to Squarespace, leaving the email-related records untouched. Afterward, we re-checked everything to confirm mail was still routing correctly before calling the migration done.

That “re-check afterward” step is the one people skip — and it’s the one that catches a wiped MX record before it becomes a week of missing invoices and client emails.

Step by Step: Transferring Your Domain to Squarespace Without Losing Email

1. Before you touch anything, write down your current DNS records — specifically your A record (website) and your MX and TXT records (email and verification). Most registrars show these under a “DNS Management” or “DNS Records” section.
2. Connect your domain to Squarespace using Squarespace’s domain connection instructions, which will ask you to update your A record (and sometimes CNAME) — but not your MX or TXT records.
3. Leave your email’s MX and TXT records exactly as they are, unless you’re also switching email providers at the same time. Moving your website does not require moving your email.
4. Wait for DNS to propagate (usually a few hours, sometimes up to 24-48) and confirm your site loads at your domain.
5. Send yourself a test email to confirm mail is still arriving normally. This is the step that actually catches a problem — don’t skip it.

Why This Breaks: The Two Failure Points

Why is my website down after the move? Almost always the A record. If it isn’t pointing to Squarespace correctly, your domain won’t resolve to your new site.

Why is my email not working after the move? Almost always the MX record. If it was cleared or overwritten during the DNS update — often because a “reset DNS” or “use these nameservers” option touched everything at once — your mail has nowhere to go.

Both are fixable in minutes once you know which record to check. The stressful part is usually not knowing that’s the problem in the first place.

Keep This Somewhere You’ll Actually Find It

We put together a free one-page reference — Domains Decoded — that covers exactly this: what your registrar, host, and email provider each do, the three DNS records worth knowing, and a checklist for anything you migrate in the future. It also links to a copyable template so you can save your own account details somewhere permanent, instead of digging through old emails next time something needs updating.

📺 Prefer to watch it explained? Watch the full replay here — recorded live from this month’s Tech Tips session.