How to setup cPanel Email on Vercel (or any other DNS host)

Let's assume you have a cPanel account and want to use cPanel Email but your website is hosted on a different server.

For example, my website Coindrop is hosted on Vercel but Vercel does not provide email hosting. I don't want to pay for separate e-mail hosting since I already have an underutilized Namecheap Hosting server running on cPanel.

Setting it up is simple:

In cPanel,

• Home > Domains > Addon Domains. Create an addon domain for your domain (e.g. your-website.com).
• Home > Email > Email Accounts. Create an email account for the domain you just added (e.g. admin@your-website.com).
• Home > Sidebar. Note the IP Address of the cPanel account.

On your server, add the following DNS records. In Vercel, this can be found at Dashboard > Domains > your-website.com > DNS Records.

• NAME="", TYPE="MX", VALUE="webmail.your-website.com"
• NAME="", TYPE="MX", VALUE="mail.your-website.com"
• NAME="webmail", TYPE="A", VALUE="[your cPanel IP]"
• NAME="mail", TYPE="A", VALUE="[your cPanel IP]"

Test it out

I like to use Thunderbird as my e-mail client but cPanel also has built-in e-mail clients you can test it with if you go to cPanel > Email Accounts > admin@yourwebsite.com > Check Email. If you're using Thunderbird, go to Menu > Add New > Existing Email Account. Accept any security certificates during the login process.

Test it out by sending an email to admin@your-website.com.