Email and DNS provider market share in 2026
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We looked at the MX and NS records of 130,803 domains from the top 1 million websites (Chrome UX Report list of September 2025) to see which mail and DNS providers they point to. The DNS queries were made on 2026-09-27. We also used our DNS history to count the domains with a new mail provider first recorded in 2025.
We queried all the domains of the top 100k and a random sample of the others, so the top 1M numbers are estimates. A market share here is a share of domains (not of mailboxes, mail volume, revenue, etc).
The main numbers are:
- The MX records of 22.7% of the top 1M domains point to Google Workspace, and 18.0% point to Microsoft 365.
- For more than 4 domains in 10 of the top 1M, we cannot name the mail provider. 21.3% have an MX host under their own name (e.g.
mx1.example.com), and 21.2% point to an operator which is not in our rules. - 4.9% of the top 1M domains are behind a filtering gateway (e.g. Proofpoint). It is 7.4% in the top 100k.
- Cloudflare hosts the DNS of 34.6% of the top 1M domains, and of 41.7% of the top 100k.
- 12.0% of the top 1M domains with a Google Workspace MX only list the new
smtp.google.comhost. 0.5% of the top 1M domains with a Microsoft 365 MX only list the newmx.microsofthostnames, which support DANE. - We found 1,062 changes of mail provider in our history. On 2026-09-27, 78.5% of these domains only list the new one.
Which mail providers do the top 1M domains point to?
Google Workspace is the first mail provider in the MX records, with 22.7% (22.3 to 23.1) of the top 1M domains. Microsoft 365 has 18.0% (17.6 to 18.3). The numbers in parentheses are 95% confidence intervals.
These 2 shares are minimums. When a domain has a filtering gateway in front of its mailboxes, we only see the gateway in the MX records, and we count the domain for the gateway.
We only count the domains where we could read an MX host (92,933 of our 130,803 domains). We left out the others, e.g. the domains with no MX record.
The chart below gives the mail providers with at least 1% of the top 1M. A forwarding service (e.g. Cloudflare Email Routing) sends the mail to another address.
Share of domains by mail provider in the MX records, top 1M. DNS queried on 2026-09-27.
The 2 gray bars are the MX hosts we cannot name. For 21.3% (20.9 to 21.6) of the domains, the MX host is under the domain’s own name (e.g. mx1.example.com for example.com). The name does not tell us who operates the server.
Another 21.2% (20.8 to 21.6) point to an operator which is not in our rules (the list of hostnames we recognize for each provider). We are aware that some of them are known services (e.g. the Namecheap email forwarding hosts under registrar-servers.com, 908 domains).
Is it the same for the most visited websites?
No. The share of Google Workspace is higher for the most visited websites. It is 31.8% (30.6 to 32.9) in the top 10k, 27.4% (27.0 to 27.8) in the top 100k and 22.7% in the top 1M.
For Microsoft 365 it is the opposite. It is 16.0% (15.1 to 17.0) in the top 10k and 18.2% (17.9 to 18.5) in the top 100k.
The top 1k has 827 domains (several websites can be under the same domain), and we could read an MX host for 624 of them. So the intervals are pretty wide. We measure 35.9% (32.2 to 39.7) for Google Workspace and 12.5% (10.1 to 15.3) for Microsoft 365, and we cannot say that these shares are different from the top 10k.
Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 by rank, with the 95% intervals.
The table below gives all the mail providers with at least 1% in one of the tiers. You can see the others in mx_primary.csv.
| Mail provider in the MX records | Top 1k | Top 10k | Top 100k | Top 1M |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google Workspace | 35.9% | 31.8% | 27.4% | 22.7% |
| Microsoft 365 | 12.5% | 16.0% | 18.2% | 18.0% |
| Zoho Mail | 1.6% | 1.7% | 1.8% | 1.8% |
| Hostinger | <10 | 0.4% | 0.8% | 1.5% |
| Yandex Mail | <10 | 1.5% | 1.4% | 1.2% |
| Proton Mail | 2.1% | 0.7% | 0.3% | 0.2% |
| Filtering gateway | 8.5% | 8.7% | 7.4% | 4.9% |
| Forwarding service | 5.4% | 3.1% | 2.5% | 1.7% |
| Host under the domain’s own name | 16.5% | 16.0% | 17.8% | 21.3% |
| Operator which is not in our rules | 15.2% | 16.9% | 18.3% | 21.2% |
<10 means fewer than 10 domains. Each tier contains the previous ones. The 95% intervals of every number are in the CSV files.
How many domains are behind a filtering gateway?
The MX records of 4.9% (4.7 to 5.1) of the top 1M domains point to a filtering gateway. A filtering gateway (e.g. Proofpoint, Mimecast, etc) is a service which receives the mail first, filters it and then delivers it to the mail provider.
We find more gateways among the most visited websites. The share is 7.4% (7.2 to 7.7) in the top 100k and 8.7% (8.0 to 9.4) in the top 10k. Proofpoint is the first vendor in each tier, with 2.1% (1.9 to 2.2) of the top 1M. Mimecast has 1.1% (1.0 to 1.2).
The MX records don’t tell us which mail provider is behind a gateway, so we looked at the SPF records of these domains. An SPF record lists the services allowed to send mail for the domain. It does not say where the mailboxes are.
48.4% (46.5 to 50.6) of the top 1M domains behind a gateway allow Microsoft 365 to send their mail, and 6.9% (5.9 to 7.9) allow Google Workspace. For comparison, we did the same for 2 groups of 1,000 domains drawn at random. 91.5% (89.0 to 93.9) of the domains with a Microsoft 365 MX allow Microsoft 365, and 64.4% (59.9 to 68.8) of the domains with a Google Workspace MX allow Google Workspace.
| Group | Domains with an answer | SPF allows Microsoft | SPF allows Google |
|---|---|---|---|
| Behind a filtering gateway | 5,804 | 48.4% | 6.9% |
| With a Microsoft 365 MX | 1,000 | 91.5% | 3.2% |
| With a Google Workspace MX | 999 | 3.0% | 64.4% |
We only read the SPF record of the domain itself (an SPF record can include other records), so the real shares may be higher.
You can also look at the MX history of a domain with the DNS search of Profundis. If our collector recorded another MX value before the gateway, this value is still in our history. For instance, 52 of the changes listed below go from a Microsoft 365 MX to a filtering gateway.
Who hosts the DNS of the top 1M domains?
Cloudflare hosts the DNS of 34.6% (34.2 to 35.0) of the top 1M domains. Its share is higher in the top 100k, where it is 41.7% (41.3 to 42.0).
Amazon Route 53 is more frequent for the most visited websites. It hosts the DNS of 16.6% (15.8 to 17.4) of the top 10k domains and of 8.5% (8.2 to 8.7) of the top 1M. GoDaddy is less frequent for these websites, with 1.2% (1.0 to 1.5) of the top 10k and 5.7% (5.5 to 5.9) of the top 1M.
DNS providers by rank, with the 95% intervals.
Akamai and the other providers are in the table.
| DNS provider | Top 1k | Top 10k | Top 100k | Top 1M |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cloudflare | 41.2% | 42.6% | 41.7% | 34.6% |
| Amazon Route 53 | 16.7% | 16.6% | 12.9% | 8.5% |
| GoDaddy | <10 | 1.2% | 3.1% | 5.7% |
| Hostinger | <10 | 0.2% | 0.6% | 1.6% |
| Google Cloud DNS | 1.6% | 1.5% | 1.3% | 1.5% |
| Azure DNS | <10 | 0.9% | 1.3% | 1.2% |
| Akamai | 6.8% | 4.6% | 2.3% | 0.8% |
| Several operators | 10.9% | 8.8% | 8.4% | 8.3% |
| Host under the domain’s own name | 5.2% | 4.4% | 3.6% | 2.3% |
| Operator which is not in our rules | 10.7% | 14.3% | 19.5% | 28.3% |
In the top 1M, 8.3% (8.1 to 8.6) of the domains have nameservers at several operators, and 28.3% (28.0 to 28.7) have an operator which is not in our rules.
The table doesn’t list every provider. For instance, OVHcloud with 1.1% of the top 1M and Namecheap with 1.0% are not in it. You can see all of them in ns_hosting.csv.
Do domains list the new Google and Microsoft MX hostnames?
Most of them still list the older hostnames.
Google now gives smtp.google.com as the MX host of Google Workspace (see the Google doc). The domains set up before 2023 may have the older aspmx.l.google.com hosts, which Google still supports. Among the top 1M domains with a Google Workspace MX, 12.0% (11.4 to 12.6) only list smtp.google.com and 87.2% (86.6 to 87.8) only list the older hosts.
Microsoft 365 has new MX hostnames under mx.microsoft, which support DNSSEC and DANE (see the Microsoft announcement). With DANE, the sending server can check the TLS certificate of the receiving server against signed DNS records. The older hostnames end in mail.protection.outlook.com. 0.5% (0.4 to 0.7) of the top 1M domains with a Microsoft 365 MX only list the new hostnames.
How many domains changed their mail provider?
We found 1,062 changes among the 24,990 domains with an MX value in our DNS history before 2025-01-01.
We count a change when a domain had 1 operator before 2025-01-01, and 1 different operator first recorded between 2025-01-01 and 2025-10-18. An operator is a mailbox provider (e.g. Google Workspace, Microsoft 365) or 1 of 3 groups: the filtering gateways, the forwarding services and the hosts we cannot name. So a change from a gateway to another gateway is not counted.
We then checked what these 1,062 domains have in their MX records on 2026-09-27. 78.5% (76.0 to 80.9) only list the new operator. The other cases are in the chart below.
MX records on 2026-09-27 of the 1,062 domains with a change in our history (number of domains in parentheses). Fewer than 10 domains did not answer and are not shown.
The table below gives the 10 most frequent pairs. The last column counts the domains which only list the new operator on 2026-09-27.
| Before 2025 | First recorded in 2025 | Changes | New only |
|---|---|---|---|
| Host we cannot name | Microsoft 365 | 172 | 151 |
| Filtering gateway | Microsoft 365 | 153 | 143 |
| Host we cannot name | Google Workspace | 95 | 81 |
| Host we cannot name | Filtering gateway | 61 | 52 |
| Microsoft 365 | Filtering gateway | 52 | 40 |
| Host we cannot name | Hostinger | 52 | 30 |
| Google Workspace | Microsoft 365 | 50 | 45 |
| Google Workspace | Host we cannot name | 38 | 16 |
| Microsoft 365 | Host we cannot name | 36 | 17 |
| Microsoft 365 | Google Workspace | 28 | 24 |
The order of the first 2 rows changes with a stricter definition (without the domains where an MX value has no date in our history).
In the 2 rows between Microsoft 365 and a filtering gateway, the mailbox provider may be the same as before. Also, a lot of the 153 changes share the same gateway hosts, so they probably come from fewer organizations.
Our rules don’t know some regional MX hosts of Hostinger (e.g. hostinger.in), so a domain already at Hostinger may appear as a change.
Between Google Workspace and Microsoft 365, 45 changes to Microsoft 365 and 24 changes to Google Workspace only list the new provider on 2026-09-27. These are small numbers, and with the stricter definition we get 24 and 20. We do not conclude anything about the direction.
For 735 of the 1,062 changes, the new operator is a mailbox provider. It is 2.9% (2.7 to 3.2) of the 24,990 domains, over 9.5 months. Without the 170 changes from a filtering gateway, it is 2.3% (2.1 to 2.5).
These 2 shares depend on the 2025-01-01 date, and the other dates we tried are in mx_changes_stats.csv. We didn’t turn them into an estimate for the top 1M.
Our history gives the date when a value was first recorded (you can see these dates for a domain in the DNS search of Profundis). This date depends on when our collector visited the domain, so it may be later than the real change. This is why we don’t give any change date or any monthly chart.
How did you get these numbers?
First, we took the Chrome UX Report list of September 2025 and reduced it to 761,619 registrable domains (e.g. example.com for www.example.com). We kept the 80,803 domains of the top 100k. We also drew 25,000 domains at random in each of the 2 next groups (ranks 100k to 500k, and 500k to 1M). In these 2 groups, each domain we queried counts for several domains of the list.
We then queried the MX and NS records of the 130,803 domains through the public resolver 1.1.1.1. We read the provider in the hostnames, with a list of hostnames for each provider (e.g. aspmx.l.google.com for Google Workspace, or the hosts ending in mail.protection.outlook.com for Microsoft 365). When a domain has several MX hosts, we keep the ones with the lowest preference value (the hosts tried first).
The SPF records come from TXT queries made on the same day. The 112 domains behind Cloudflare Email Security are missing, because we added this gateway to our rules after the queries.
The changes come from our DNS history, from 2024-08 to 2025-10-18. You can read how we collect this data here.
Every number was computed by 2 programs written separately. At first they didn’t agree, because some definitions were left open. We fixed these definitions, and both programs now give the same CSV files.
We also checked 54 results by hand against the DNS and our history. We found no error in the numbers, but we found gaps in our rules.
We removed 1 MX host (mx1.norelay.stc.com.sa) recorded for 101 unrelated domains, each time on a single day. It was probably returned by a resolver used by our collector. With it, we would have counted 1,076 changes instead of 1,062.
Limits
- Some mail filters connect to the mail provider with its API and don’t change the MX records. We only read hostnames in the DNS, so we don’t see them.
- Our rules don’t know every provider. For instance, the parking services under
abovedomains.comandparklogic.com(725 and 768 domains) are counted as DNS operators which are not in our rules. You can see the operators we missed with at least 20 domains in unrecognised_operators.csv. - The list comes from Chrome, so the websites mostly visited with other browsers are under-represented. A platform which gives a subdomain to each customer counts 1 time.
- The intervals only cover the variation due to chance. They don’t cover the gaps in our rules.
- We queried 1 resolver on 2026-09-27 only, and the records may be different on another day. We planned to query a part of the domains again 7 days later to check it, but we didn’t do it.
- Our history stops on 2025-10-18, 11 months before the DNS queries. We don’t see the changes made after this date, and a configuration published between 2 visits of our collector can be missing.
Can I download the data?
Yes. The 12 CSV files are below, under the CC BY 4.0 license. They only contain counts and shares, and no data about a specific domain.
| File | Content |
|---|---|
| population.csv | Domains per rank tier, status of their DNS records and coverage of our history. |
| mx_primary.csv | Share of domains by mail provider. |
| mx_gateways.csv, gateway_txt.csv | Filtering gateways and forwarding services by vendor, and the SPF records of the domains behind a gateway. |
| ns_hosting.csv, ns_mx_pairs.csv | Share of domains by DNS provider, and the most frequent pairs of DNS and mail providers. |
| mx_formats.csv | MX hostnames of the Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 domains. |
| mx_changes.csv, mx_changes_funnel.csv, mx_changes_stats.csv | Changes of mail provider in our history, and what the MX records list on 2026-09-27. |
| unrecognised_operators.csv | Operators which are not in our rules, with at least 20 domains. |
| data_dictionary.csv | Type, unit and meaning of every column. |
You can cite them as below. If you find an error in these numbers, please contact us here.
Profundis (2026). Email and DNS provider market share, data v1, DNS queried 2026-09-27. https://blog.profundis.io/blog/email-dns-provider-market-share/. Licensed under CC BY 4.0.
How to check the MX history of a domain?
You can check the MX and NS history of a domain with the DNS search of Profundis. Each value is shown with the date when it was first recorded.
The search works in both directions. host:example.com AND type:MX returns all the MX values we recorded for a domain, and value:"*.pphosted.com" AND type:MX returns the hosts with a Proofpoint MX. The search fields are in our doc.
Sources. Population: the Chrome UX Report (CrUX) global list of the top 1 million origins by Chrome page loads, September 2025 release, by Google, licensed under CC BY 4.0, retrieved from https://github.com/zakird/crux-top-lists. We reduced the origins to registrable domains using the Public Suffix List (Mozilla Public License 2.0). The CrUX data is provided as is, without warranty. DNS history: Profundis, from 2024-08 to 2025-10-18.