Setting up a Freelance Business Email and Website

I woke up today knowing that I was going to purchase the domain lizziemears.com, which I was delighted to find available just yesterday. It cost me $12 for the year. I set it up through Google domains thinking it would be easier to sync with my google workspace (how I got my business email), but found it to be tricky nonetheless.

Before I purchased my domain, I paid for this Squarespace subscription, as my trial had expired. That cost me around $200– over $20 cheaper than it would’ve been had I not searched “2021 Squarespace Promo Codes” and found a 20% off code! It’s always a good idea to scan the web for a promo code before making a large purchase.

Through Squarespace, I was able to input the domain I had purchased through Google Domains. Syncing the domain on Squarespace was quite easy—what was tricky was syncing the domain with my business email.

The Squarespace account came with one year free of a business email through Google Workspaces, but it was a bit of a pain to set that up, because of the technical requirements of syncing your workspace and domain, despite setting both up through Google. I made my way through the DNS section of the domain, hosted on a personal email of mine, where I had to add custom MX and CNAME records (series of numbers copy/pasted from google workspace). To be totally honest, I still have no idea what that means. I’ve just submitted these records in hopes that tomorrow, I’ll be able to access my new email, lizzie@lizziemears.com. I’ll keep you posted!

Update: It did work, and there are plenty of tutorials on how to do this at your fingertips should you need clear instructions. But the fact that Google Domains doesn’t automatically sync up with your Google Workspace is something I wish I’d known before this process, because other domain hosts were cheaper options. I could’ve used any other domain host and still had to input code to sync the domain with my business email.

Update: Apparently Yahoo syncs automatically, but then you would need your business email set up through yahoo and I prefer Google Workspace so that I have access to the applications I’m familiar with, such as Gmail, Docs, and Sheets.

Moral of the Story:

Purchasing your domain through Google won’t save you time, so if you like Google Workspace and want to sign into your business email through Google, you can use any website host.