How do I leave Gmail and get the Hubspot email domain?

[AliceBArcos]

Hello all, 

from my understanding you can use Hubspot as the domain to send emails. So we would like to do that and leave Gmail. How do we do that?

Context:

Our Gmail account is connected to Hubspot. We use the Gmail domain to receive emails but we see them in the Hubspot inbox and we do all our tasks there. 

However, we have been having issues lately. When we send emails from withing Hubspot they bounce back with this error: "550 5.7.26 Your email has been blocked because the sender is unauthenticated. Gmail requires all senders to authenticate with either SPF or DKIM. Authentication results: DKIM = did not pass SPF...etc.", when we send the emails from the Gmail website (another browser tab) the email does not bounce back. It goes through.

They say we should fix the authentication issue in Gmail. 

Since, apparently, having an email domain with Hubspot is included in the package, we are thinking of leaving Gmail and have our email with Hubspot.

This way the authentication email should resolve also.

How do I do that? How do I leave Gmail and get an email domain with Hubspot?

Thank you!

[Josh]

Hi @AliceBArcos,

Can you confirm you are referring to an @gmail.com email address or are you using your domain on a Google powered email (like Google Workspace)? 

[AliceBArcos]

Hello Josh, 

Let's say my business name is Blanket Mindset. So my email is: alice@blanket.mindset
It's a Gmail account because I have access to the Gmail inbox if I want to (we mostly use Hubspot for that though).

However, Squarespace is now a reseller of Google Workspace. So, in order to authenticate the email to solve the email issue I had, I had to go to the Squarespace settings to fix the spf.

My colleague and I would like to detach from Squarespace. We already moved our website from there to here in Hubspot. My colleague told me that she spoke to Hubspot and customer service said that we can do it but she cannot find the customer service conversation to refer to it and see exactly what they said. 

That is why I am inquiring about this again. 

Does this help?
Thank you!

Best,
Alice

[Josh]

Hi @AliceBArcos,

Thank you for clarifying.

If you would like to detach from Squarespace completely you would need to purchase Google Workspace separately. This would allow you to continue to use Gmail as your email provider and still maintain the use of USER@blanket.mindset as your email. 

This will add to the complexity of this conversation a bit because once you leave squarepace, you will still need something to host your DNS. Usually, companies will host their DNS with the place they purchased their domain name (GoDaddy for example) or use another service, such as Cloudflare. Once this is set up it will point your website to HubSpot and point your email to the new Google Workspace you have set up. This will also allow you to add the required SPF record. As mentioned, probably more complex than can be easily supported in this thread.

As another option, you could leave your email and DNS with Squarespace (I think) and still add the records there. Here's an article I found that is pretty decent at explaining the customization of Squarespace DNS settings: https://elfsight.com/tutorials/squarespace-dns-configuration/

The last option would probably be the most straightforward, but if you do plan to leave Squarespace completely, you might have to take the other steps.

Josh

As an alternative, you could leave

[AliceBArcos]

Hello Josh, 

Thank you so much. From our understanding Squarespace bought Google Workspace so I am not sure how that would work. 

Hubspot customer service said the following:

"I note from this Squarespace documentation that Squarespace is a reseller of Google Workspace. HubSpot does not provide the same service of reselling/hosting of Gmail accounts. So if you're thinking of moving off Squarespace to use HubSpot, you'll need to check with Squarespace if they can unlink your Gmail account from Squarespace to have it exist as an independent account.

If you can do that, your Gmail inbox can be connected to HubSpot to utilize features/tools in HubSpot such as the conversations inbox, sending of sequences and email logging."

I am not sure what "have it exist as an independent account" means. I will follow up with customer service in the future. 

My colleague and I discussed it and we will keep things as they are for now. 

We do not have IT assistance within our team nor the money to pay for it. Even if we know/learn how to make this happen, we will have to save all the info before moving forward, and we are not ready to do that yet. 

Thank you so much for your assistance!

I appreciate your input on this one. 

Best, 

Alice

[Josh · Accepted solution]

Hi @AliceBArcos,

For clarity, you wouldn't send from a HubSpot domain in the same fashion as you would Gmail. You likely wouldn't "leave" Gmail to get an email domain from HubSpot. However, from the HubSpot Inbox, you can use a HubSpot Hosted email as your to send email responses and was created when you set up the account.  

You can "Use Default" to send from that HubSpot email and have emails sent to your inbox with the Forwarding address. This is typically used if you are sending to an email that is a distribution list vs one that can be connected directly. 

Here's a resource on the conversations Inbox: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/inbox/set-up-the-conversations-inbox

In short, you wouldn't be able to add a DKIM to authenticate if you are using a free Gmail account, so make sure under the From Address settings you are set to Default instead of "customize from address."

Hope this helps!

[AliceBArcos]

Thank you, Josh!

So, it sounds like that in order to solve this issue I will have to authenticate the email. Which means I have to fix the DNS and SPF on my Gmail account. I have not idea how to do any of this.

It has been very difficult because unfortunately those settings are now on Squarespace (from my understand when we used to have the website on Squarespace, they bought the domain from Gmail, so now all the settings are there). 
Squarespace customer service is not responding "due to high volume" and I am stuck. We receive emails but we cannot respond.

It's a small business. It's the two of us. We do not have an IT department. 

Any suggestions on how I should move forward besides waiting for Squarespace to answer?

Thank you!
Best,
Alice