Clients not able to send you emails? Fix it in 5 Minutes

You’ve taken the plunge, set up Google Workspace, and verified your domain. You’re ready to do business.

But then a client tries to send you an email, and it bounces straight back to them with an ugly “Address not found” error.

gmail delivery failure address not found

The culprit here is almost always your MX (Mail Exchange) records. Think of them as the digital postie instructions that tell the rest of the internet exactly where to deliver your mail. If these aren’t pointed to Google, your emails go missing.

The good news? Even if you’ve never touched a DNS setting in your life, you can fix this yourself in less than five minutes. Here is exactly how to do it.

The Solution: A Step-by-Step Walkthrough

To get your emails landing safely in your Gmail inbox, you need to update the settings where your domain name lives (your domain registrar, such as Digital Pacific, GoDaddy, or Squarespace).

Step 1: Open Your DNS Settings

Log into your domain registrar dashboard. Look for your domain name and click on Manage DNS or DNS Settings.

Step 2: Clear Out the Old Rubbish

Before you add Google’s records, look at your existing list of DNS records. If you see any old MX records from previous email providers (like Zoho, cPanel, or an old web host), delete them first.

A table enclosed in a gold border listing three Zoho Mail MX (Mail Exchanger) records. Each row displays the record type as MX, a TTL value of 14400, and their respective mail server values: "10 mx.zoho.com", "20 mx2.zoho.com", and "50 mx3.zoho.com".

A confirmation dialog box enclosed in a gold border with the title "Delete Record" in red text next to an exclamation mark icon. The prompt asks, "Are you sure that you want to delete this record?" and provides two options at the bottom: a solid red "Confirm" button and a white "Cancel" button.

Warning: Having multiple MX records pointing to different email providers will absolutely break your email system!

Step 3: Add the Google MX Record

Click Add Record and fill out the fields exactly like this:

Type: MX
Name / Host: @ (Note: If your provider rejects the @ symbol, simply leave this field blank).
TTL (Time to Live): Set this to the lowest possible value, such as 300 (which stands for 5 minutes). This ensures the change happens fast.
Priority / Preference: 1
Value / Exchange / Destination: smtp.google.com

A web form enclosed in a gold border showing configuration fields for a DNS MX record. The fields are filled out with the following values: Type is "MX", Name is "@", TTL is "300", Preference is "1", and Exchange is "smtp.google.com".

Step 4: Verify It’s Working

Don’t just assume it worked—test it. Go to a free tool like https://mxtoolbox.com, type in your domain name, and click MX Lookup.

If you see a green tick next to “DNS Record Published,” you are good to go.

A screenshot enclosed in a gold border showing an MX lookup on the MXToolbox "SuperTool" website for the domain "workspace-admin-training.au". The results table displays two rows for the hostname "SMTP.GOOGLE.COM" with a preference of 1 and a TTL of 4 hours—one with an IPv4 address (142.251.16.26) and one with an IPv6 address. At the bottom, a green checkmark highlights a passing test labeled "DNS Record Published" with the result "DNS Record found".

If you see a red cross, don’t panic. DNS changes can sometimes take a little while to travel across the internet. Wait an hour (or whatever time you set in your TTL field) and check it again.

Hi, I’m Priya! I’m a certified Google Workspace Administrator and Product Expert who speaks ‘human’, not I.T.

I help small business owners stop wrestling with their Google Workspace and start using it to grow.

My Google Workspace Services

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