You are free to use a different mail server but still host your website with InMotion Hosting. This can be accomplished through changing your MX records. Making changes to your MX records will still allow you to host your website with us, but you email at a third party server such as Google.

Obtaining Third Party MX Records

The first step in routing your mail to a third party is the obtain the MX records that party wants you to use. In this example, we'll use Google. Google would provide you with a list of MX records to enter in. This must be entered correctly for the email to function properly:

Note! In order for you to use Google APPs MX records with Google, you will need to get a Google APPs account. Please visit this link to get a Google APPs account.

The MX records above are an example of the MX records you would need to use to set up Google Apps.

Changing your Domain's MX Record

The first step is to log into your cPanel account. Once logged into cPanel, find the icon "Mx Entry" in the Mail section:

Important! If you still need to receive your email on our server while the Google MX records are propagating, DO NOT remove the original MX record. Update the original MX record to priority 100 to prevent email from bouncing, instead of removing the 0 priority MX record. Once the Google MX records are propagated, you can then remove the original MX record.

If you want to remove the existing records, click on the delete link next to each record. In this example, We will use the same records as above, as if we were going to use Google Apps.

Once you have entered in the record correctly, simply click "Add New Record" and now you can verify the record was created correctly. Follow this same process for each record you need to create. 

Please check the next article on Creating an Autoresponder in cPanel. If you missed our previous article, please see the How to log into Webmail tutorial. For more information on this course please visit Using Email.