Can your cPanel hosting be used for email only?

Sometimes clients wish to point their website hosting records (the www and @ DNS records) away to another provider, while leaving other DNS records pointing to us. Usually this is done because the client would like to use a particular site builder like Wix or Weekly, neither of which offer email or other related services--strictly hosting only.

We do not recommend or support using our cPanel hosting service in this way, and our terms of service specifically prohibits it. That's not to say it cannot be done, but that we don't recommend or support it. If you understand DNS records and wish to set things up that way, we won't stop you, but if you run into problems we will not be able to provide support or assistance with any issues specifically caused by such a configuration.

The most common problem that occurs if you point your hosting away is that your cPanel based email service goes down because the MX (mail exchanger) record and the A record for the mail host in your DNS zone are tied to the @ record. You need to understand how those records should to be adjusted to accommodate this change. If you choose to take this approach and things go awry, we will not be able to assist.

The better way to handle a situation where you're opting to move your website to a provider that doesn't offer email, is to move your email to a standalone service such as our business email, (which is a far more robust email platform with all the features of Microsoft Exchange at a fraction of the cost), or to another email provider.