Your domain has DNS records
Every domain (like your-company.com) has a set of DNS records that can be viewed by anyone on the internet. DNS records have been around since the beginning of the internet and tell computers how to find your website and where to deliver your company's email messages.
One kind is an MX record
Mail Exchange (MX) records direct a domain's email to the servers hosting the domain's user accounts.
When someone sends a message to [email protected], the sender's computer looks up the MX records for @your-company.com to figure out where to deliver that email message. To direct incoming messages to Google’s servers, you have to change your domain’s MX records to point to Google's mail servers. After that, your messages arrive at your Gmail inbox.
I want the whole story
Watch this 3-minute video to learn about DNS records and what you need to do activate Gmail for Google Workspace.
A Beginner's Guide to Signing up for Google Workspace
Summary of steps to Activate Gmail
- You'll get your new MX records from the Google Workspace setup tool.
- You'll sign in to your domain registrar. There, you'll delete any existing MX records for your google.com domain that route messages to your current email provider, then add the Google MX records.
- Once your domain registrar publishes the Google MX records, we'll activate Gmail for your domain.
Ready to activate Gmail? Go to the steps
