dns.pizza research
Who runs the web's mail: two companies receive 46.2% of it
We classified the mail servers of 71,427 domains of the Tranco top 100,000 by their MX records. Google and Microsoft alone receive the mail of 46.2% of them — and the higher a domain ranks, the more likely its mail arrives at a security gateway instead.
Published September 1, 2026 · data collected June 2026–September 2026 · download the data
28.4%
Google Workspace — the largest mail receiver
17.9%
Microsoft 365 — second
17.6%
run their MX under their own domain (self-hosted or bundled web hosting)
27.2%
of measured domains publish no MX record at all
Key findings
- Nearly half the web's mail goes to two companies. Google Workspace receives the mail of 28.4% of the domains that can receive mail at all, Microsoft 365 17.9% — together 46.2%. And because the security gateways further down this list mostly sit in front of Google and Microsoft mailboxes too, that figure is a floor. The third-largest "provider" is not a company at all: 17.6% of domains still point their MX at a host under their own name.
- The bigger the site, the more likely its mail arrives at a security gateway first. Proofpoint receives the mail of 10.5% of the top 1,000 — behind only Google and Microsoft — but just 4.5% of the 10,001 – 100,000 tail. The pattern is institutional: Proofpoint fronts 19.1% of .gov and 13.4% of .edu, and in .uk Mimecast — a distant number two among gateways globally — holds 8.9%. A filtering gateway in front of the mailbox is an enterprise purchase, and the tiers show exactly who buys it.
- Self-hosting isn't dead — it moved east. Overall, 17.6% of domains run their MX under their own name (genuine self-hosters plus the mail bundled with web-hosting control panels). But the average hides the geography: own-domain mail is 83.1% of .ir, 48% of .tr, 45.6% of .ru and 45.8% of .tw — against 3% of .io and 7.3% of .uk.
- The map fractures where the big two are hard to buy from. In .ru, Google (5.6%) and Microsoft (0.5%) barely exist — mail lives on own-domain servers (45.6%) and Yandex (17.6%). In .cn, Google receives 0.4% and the market belongs to own-domain servers (30.2%), Tencent (21.8%) and Alibaba (8%). Even inside the western web the mix shifts: .de runs 9.4% Google against 25.2% Microsoft, with over a third of its mail at national hosts in the residual.
- More than a quarter of the top of the web can't receive mail at its own domain. 26,672 domains (27.2% of every domain we measured conclusively) publish no MX record — and the share is highest at the very top: 30.9% of the top 1,000, where CDN endpoints, API hosts and telemetry domains rank on traffic they never answer mail for. 388 domains publish an RFC 7505 null MX, the explicit "this domain accepts no mail" record. The one TLD where everyone does mail: .edu, at 1.2% without MX.
- Three internets, three leaders. Of the 44 TLDs with enough data for their own row, Microsoft 365 leads 15 — the institutional west (.gov, .edu, .uk, .ca, .au) — own-domain mail leads 15, mostly in eastern Europe and Asia, and Google Workspace leads 14, including the startup web almost outright: 72.9% of .ai and 61.4% of .io. .com — 32,835 domains, the bulk of the corpus — has Google at 34.8% and Microsoft at 18%.
Mail provider share by popularity tier
Share of each tier's domains with MX records. The 3 largest providers are named; the full breakdown of 22 named providers is in the tables below.
Source: dns.pizza MX lookups · snapshot September 1, 2026
Mail provider share by TLD
The eight TLDs with the largest samples. Outside .com the residual grows — that is where the national providers live; the per-TLD table below names them.
Source: dns.pizza MX lookups · snapshot September 1, 2026
Every provider with enough domains for a row
Every provider receiving mail for at least 200 domains in the corpus, by share of the 71,427 domains with MX records. 31 smaller named providers fold into "everyone else" along with the unmatched long tail.
| Provider | Domains | Share | Top 1,000 | 10,001 – 100,000 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google Workspace | 20,261 | 28.4% | 33.5% | 27.8% |
| Microsoft 365 | 12,766 | 17.9% | 14.1% | 18.1% |
| Own-domain MX (self-hosted / web host) | 12,570 | 17.6% | 13.1% | 17.9% |
| Proofpoint | 3,357 | 4.7% | 10.5% | 4.5% |
| Mimecast | 1,510 | 2.1% | 2.9% | 2.1% |
| Cloudflare Email Routing | 1,129 | 1.6% | 0.2% | 1.6% |
| Yandex | 1,108 | 1.6% | 0.9% | 1.6% |
| Amazon WorkMail/SES | 850 | 1.2% | 1.5% | 1.2% |
| Zoho | 823 | 1.2% | 0.5% | 1.2% |
| Namecheap forwarding | 820 | 1.1% | 0% | 1.2% |
| Tencent | 625 | 0.9% | 1.1% | 0.9% |
| Cisco Secure Email | 477 | 0.7% | 1.2% | 0.6% |
| Alibaba | 396 | 0.6% | 0.9% | 0.5% |
| Mail.ru (VK) | 322 | 0.5% | 1.2% | 0.5% |
| GoDaddy | 309 | 0.4% | 0.5% | 0.4% |
| Barracuda | 283 | 0.4% | 0.3% | 0.4% |
| Trend Micro | 280 | 0.4% | 0.3% | 0.4% |
| Mailgun | 280 | 0.4% | 0.5% | 0.4% |
| Feishu/Lark (ByteDance) | 255 | 0.4% | 0% | 0.4% |
| Proton Mail | 242 | 0.3% | 0% | 0.3% |
| OVHcloud | 215 | 0.3% | 0.2% | 0.3% |
| Fastmail | 207 | 0.3% | 0.2% | 0.3% |
| Everyone else | 12,342 | 17.3% | 16.7% | 17.5% |
By popularity tier and TLD
Share of each segment's domains with MX records. The four largest providers are named and the largest of the four in each row is bold; "rest" is every other provider combined, so it can exceed the bold cell. All 44 TLDs with at least 200 MX-bearing domains are listed, largest sample first.
| Segment | Domains | Microsoft | Own-domain | Proofpoint | Rest | No MX | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All domains | 71,427 | 28.4% | 17.9% | 17.6% | 4.7% | 31.5% | 27.2% |
| Top 1,000 | 665 | 33.5% | 14.1% | 13.1% | 10.5% | 28.7% | 30.9% |
| 1,001 – 10,000 | 6,516 | 33.8% | 16.1% | 15.2% | 6.5% | 28.4% | 27.6% |
| 10,001 – 100,000 | 64,246 | 27.8% | 18.1% | 17.9% | 4.5% | 31.8% | 27.1% |
| .com | 32,835 | 34.8% | 18% | 11.9% | 6.9% | 28.4% | 28% |
| .net | 3,805 | 19.9% | 8.8% | 30.7% | 2.2% | 38.4% | 40% |
| .org | 3,261 | 24.9% | 26% | 11.2% | 5.8% | 32.1% | 19.6% |
| .ru | 3,227 | 5.6% | 0.5% | 45.6% | 0.1% | 48.3% | 13.9% |
| .de | 1,593 | 9.4% | 25.2% | 22% | 2.4% | 41.1% | 8.2% |
| .jp | 1,419 | 21.5% | 14.7% | 27.1% | 1.7% | 35% | 19.4% |
| .io | 1,340 | 61.4% | 6.4% | 3% | 1.2% | 28% | 28.7% |
| .br | 1,193 | 38.1% | 23.1% | 14.3% | 3.1% | 21.4% | 13.4% |
| .uk | 1,079 | 16.9% | 40.7% | 7.3% | 6% | 29.1% | 17.9% |
| .fr | 893 | 16.9% | 20.3% | 16% | 5.4% | 41.4% | 7.7% |
| .edu | 796 | 19.1% | 52.6% | 5.8% | 13.4% | 9% | 1.2% |
| .it | 786 | 28.4% | 23.7% | 20.5% | 3.8% | 23.7% | 6.9% |
| .in | 770 | 32.7% | 12.2% | 17.4% | 0.8% | 36.9% | 37.2% |
| .pl | 705 | 15% | 24.8% | 26% | 1% | 33.2% | 6% |
| .nl | 572 | 19.6% | 35.8% | 14.3% | 1.6% | 28.7% | 9.2% |
| .cn | 563 | 0.4% | 2.7% | 30.2% | 0.2% | 66.6% | 40.1% |
| .co | 555 | 51.9% | 15.5% | 8.1% | 1.1% | 23.4% | 32.2% |
| .es | 484 | 18.2% | 25.4% | 14.7% | 8.1% | 33.7% | 11.2% |
| .au | 478 | 14.4% | 32.2% | 8.8% | 15.5% | 29.1% | 7.5% |
| .ca | 381 | 13.9% | 42.3% | 9.7% | 10.8% | 23.4% | 15.9% |
| .cz | 358 | 18.7% | 18.7% | 21.2% | 0.3% | 41.1% | 6.5% |
| .tv | 353 | 25.8% | 9.3% | 13% | 3.4% | 48.4% | 30.9% |
| .ua | 352 | 33% | 9.1% | 29.5% | 0.3% | 28.1% | 5.1% |
| .ai | 350 | 72.9% | 4.9% | 1.1% | 1.1% | 20% | 15.9% |
| .ir | 344 | 0% | 0% | 83.1% | 0% | 16.9% | 16.7% |
| .id | 341 | 42.5% | 12% | 27% | 1.2% | 17.3% | 12.6% |
| .gov | 329 | 8.2% | 44.7% | 9.1% | 19.1% | 18.8% | 23.1% |
| .tr | 300 | 10% | 19% | 48% | 1.3% | 21.7% | 10.2% |
| .gr | 283 | 23.7% | 27.6% | 28.6% | 1.8% | 18.4% | 6.6% |
| .se | 281 | 27.4% | 35.2% | 13.5% | 2.1% | 21.7% | 8.5% |
| .ro | 265 | 24.5% | 15.1% | 38.9% | 0.8% | 20.8% | 5% |
| .eu | 250 | 18.8% | 21.2% | 24.4% | 2.8% | 32.8% | 25.8% |
| .hu | 249 | 18.5% | 27.7% | 26.1% | 0% | 27.7% | 6.7% |
| .vn | 247 | 36% | 14.6% | 28.7% | 0% | 20.6% | 14.5% |
| .tw | 240 | 30% | 9.6% | 45.8% | 0.4% | 14.2% | 22.3% |
| .ar | 238 | 26.1% | 22.7% | 29.4% | 1.3% | 20.6% | 10.5% |
| .me | 230 | 33.9% | 6.5% | 14.8% | 0.9% | 43.9% | 45.5% |
| .mx | 229 | 31.4% | 29.7% | 8.3% | 9.2% | 21.4% | 19.1% |
| .ch | 219 | 16.4% | 33.3% | 24.2% | 2.3% | 23.7% | 11% |
| .info | 217 | 20.3% | 10.1% | 28.6% | 0.5% | 40.6% | 47.2% |
| .app | 211 | 54.5% | 2.4% | 6.6% | 0.9% | 35.5% | 46.2% |
| .za | 211 | 16.1% | 28% | 15.2% | 1.4% | 39.3% | 8.7% |
| .be | 211 | 19% | 41.2% | 15.6% | 1.9% | 22.3% | 9.4% |
| .kr | 211 | 22.7% | 5.7% | 32.2% | 0.5% | 38.9% | 21.6% |
Methodology
dns.pizza resolves each domain's MX records while generating domain intelligence reports across the Tranco top 100,000. This report aggregates the latest conclusive lookup per domain — 98,099 domains measured between June 10, 2026 and September 1, 2026: 71,427 with MX records and 26,672 that conclusively publish none (including 388 RFC 7505 null MX records). Lookups that failed — timeouts, refused queries, server errors — tell us nothing about the domain, so those 3,538 domains are excluded from every denominator. Most of those failures are our own resolver refusing under bulk load rather than anything about the domain.
The provider is classified from the domain's primary MX host — the lowest-preference exchange, the server that receives its mail first. A domain that routes through a filtering gateway (Proofpoint, Mimecast, Barracuda) counts for the gateway even if a Google or Microsoft mailbox sits behind it, so the big-two figures here are a floor, not a ceiling, on where mailboxes actually live. Hostnames are matched against each provider's documented MX targets; an unmatched host under the domain's own name counts as "Own-domain MX" — genuine self-hosting plus the mail servers bundled with web-hosting control panels, which DNS alone cannot tell apart.
A provider gets its own row with at least 200 domains; 31 smaller named providers and the unmatched long tail fold into "everyone else". Per-TLD rows require 200 MX-bearing domains, which yields 44 TLD rows; the gate leaves out 13,711 domains across 626 smaller TLDs, which remain in the overall and per-tier numbers. The committed snapshot also discloses every unmatched MX pattern covering 100+ domains, so the residual is auditable in the raw data.
Limitations: the corpus is the top-ranked slice of the web (Tranco aggregates several popularity signals; it is not a literal visit count), so shares describe the popular web, not all registered domains. We read the MX of the registrable domain only — mail hosted on subdomains is invisible here. MX records say who receives a domain's mail, not who sends its newsletters, and one domain is one vote: Google's share of domains is not Google's share of mail volume. Lookups come from a single vantage point, and the per-TLD figures reflect the domains popular enough to rank, not every registration in that registry.
The data is free to cite and reuse (CC BY 4.0, credit "dns.pizza"). For questions or the raw per-domain data, get in touch.
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