Q: I have a domain name purchased on NameCheap.com and pointing to Heroku hosting (Node/Express App). I am currently paying for SiteGround hosting so can they host only the email, while the domain is pointed elsewhere?
A: Yes
The Setup Notes:
From the SiteGround site here: “If you have your domain name pointed elsewhere, but you wish to have your mail handled by SiteGround, you can easily achieve this by pointing your domain’s MX (Mail eXchange) record to us.”
This is the detailed article they refer you to here.
Created an empty site on SiteGround and then added an email address and password.
In the “Site Tools” DNS Zone Editor delete records not relating to email. So keep all MX records in and anything related to DKIM and SPF
In NameCheap’s admin panel I added 3 MX records from the email/host (as described in the article).
Note: I was unsure of what to put for the “host” value so I just used the “@” symbol. If this doesn’t work I could also try “simplecarcost.com.” or “simplecarcost.com” as this is the value in the SG DNS Zone editor for name.
MX records alone may not get you all the way there due to SPF/DKIM requirements as explained by Google issue here and a good article on DKIM records overall here.
These will be pre-configured on your host’s DNS records. Copy these SPF Records (TXT) and DKIM Records (TXT) records to namecheap.
Note: the host on the TXT record for the DKIM was “default._domainkey.yourSiteURLHERE.com”
May also want to link up this new email to your email client via POP3 so you can send and receive emails on from your preferred email client. A great link with gifs for linking email from hostinger to gmail here.
If you are using a host for email only and with the site pointing elsewhere. I delete all records besides the MX records, and the TXT for DKIM and SPF. After these are added to namecheap or your DNS provider then I believe they can be deleted entirely from the web/email host.
For Example, after creating an empty site hostinger has a lot of CAA records I deleted. Also deleted the A, AAAA, and CNAME. These are here so when you point your nameservers here everything works automatically out of the box. But if you are not pointing your nameservers here they don’t do anything and are not needed. You can delete to make things more clear. Hostinger has a reset to defaults if you ever need these back which is nice.