How to Check Your Squarespace DNS Settings for Email (Without Reading Every Record)

Check your domain's email and website records in one message to ChatGPT. Try TinyFish free. New accounts start with $8 in Wallet funds.

TL;DR

• Your Squarespace DNS settings decide whether your custom email arrives, lands in spam, or bounces, and whether your website loads.
• Checking them means opening the domains dashboard and reading rows of records that look like code.
• With the TinyFish app in ChatGPT or Claude and a saved Squarespace login, one prompt lists every record and flags anything missing for email or your website.
• It's read-only. It shows you what's there. You make any changes yourself.

A quick disclosure: I work at TinyFish, which gives ChatGPT and Claude live web access, including a browser agent that can click through real websites for you.

Why check your DNS before a busy season

You only notice DNS when something breaks. An order confirmation doesn't arrive. A wholesale buyer says your email went to spam. A newsletter won't send.

Usually the cause is a record that's missing or was deleted. Squarespace puts it plainly: without MX records, mail sent to your address never reaches your inbox; without SPF or DKIM, your messages are more likely to be marked as spam; without a DMARC record, marketing emails can fail the check and campaigns may not send (Squarespace Help).

A five-minute check before Black Friday is cheaper than finding out from a customer.

What your Squarespace DNS settings mean, in plain words

You don't need to memorize these. You just need to know what each one is for, so the answer makes sense.

• MX: tells the internet where to deliver email sent to your domain. Most email providers give you several, each with a priority number.
• SPF (a TXT record): a list of who is allowed to send email as your domain.
• DKIM (a TXT or CNAME record): a signature that proves an email really came from you.
• DMARC (a TXT record named _dmarc): tells inboxes what to do with mail that fails the SPF or DKIM check. A Squarespace domain can have only one.
• A and CNAME: point your domain and www at your website.

These definitions follow Squarespace's own guides to email DNS records and editing your DNS records. If you use Google Workspace for email, Squarespace also has a guide to adding Google Workspace MX records.

What you need

• ChatGPT or Claude.
• The TinyFish app. Install it once by following the plugin docs. TinyAgent, the browser agent in TinyFish, opens the site in a real cloud browser and reports back.
• A saved Squarespace login (a TinyProfile). DNS settings sit behind your Squarespace login, so the agent needs a signed-in session. With TinyProfiles, you sign in to Squarespace once in a secure TinyFish browser profile. Later tasks reuse that signed-in session, so the agent skips the login. TinyFish never needs your password in the chat.
• A domain whose DNS lives in Squarespace. You can edit DNS in Squarespace when the domain is registered through Squarespace or connected with Nameserver Connect. Otherwise, your records live with your domain provider (Squarespace Help).

The prompt

This is the exact prompt our engineering team tested. Replace yourdomain.com with your domain.

Use TinyFish with my saved Squarespace login to list the DNS records for yourdomain.com. Read-only: show each record's type, host and value, and flag anything missing for email or my website.

Here it is filled in for an invented bakery:

Use TinyFish with my saved Squarespace login to list the DNS records for maplecrumbbakery.com. Read-only: show each record's type, host and value, and flag anything missing for email or my website.

The word "Read-only" is doing real work. It tells the agent to look, not touch. Your DNS is live: one wrong edit can stop your email. A read-only prompt is safe to run on your real account.

What you get back

A table of your records, then a short list of what looks missing.

• Type: MX, TXT, CNAME, A and so on.
• Host: the name the record applies to, like @, www or _dmarc.
• Value: where it points, or the text it holds.
• Flags: anything missing for email (no MX, no SPF, no DMARC) or for your website.

Example output (invented business):

Maple Crumb Bakery is made up for this post. Your real answer will show your real records.

A second prompt: ask what to do next

Keep going in the same chat:

For each flagged item, explain in plain words what it affects and what I'd need
to ask my email provider for. Don't change anything.

Then take the values your email provider gives you and add them yourself in Squarespace. The email DNS records guide walks through each one.

Tips

• Changes are yours to make. The agent only reads. Adding or deleting a record is a decision for you, in the domains dashboard.
• Don't delete MX records on a hunch. If your Squarespace login email uses this domain, deleting MX records can lock you out of password resets (Squarespace Help).
• Give it time after a change. Squarespace says DNS changes can take up to 48 hours to work. Run the check again after that.
• Check each domain separately. If you own more than one domain, each has its own records. Name one domain per prompt.

When it doesn't work

• "Can't find a signed-in session." Your TinyProfile isn't signed in to Squarespace, or the session expired. Sign in again in the profile, then rerun the prompt. If the profile isn't signed in, the agent stops and asks you to sign in rather than guessing.
• No DNS records shown. Your domain's DNS may be managed by another provider. Check with them instead.
• A flag you don't understand. Ask ChatGPT to explain it, then confirm with your email provider before you change anything.

What it costs

New accounts start with $8 in Wallet funds, no card needed. Agent runs are billed per step, at $0.016 per agent step. TinySearch and TinyFetch are free.

Want to see this live? We're running it at TinyFish Small Business Week, a free 45-minute live session on Thu Nov 19, 11 AM ET. Save your seat, and bring the job you want off your plate.

Catch a missing email record before your customers do. Start free on TinyFish.