Deliverability insights
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Email infrastructure of the Tranco top-1M domains — MX, SPF, DMARC
A daily census of the world's most-visited 1 million domains measuring real-world email deliverability infrastructure: which mail providers dominate (Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Yandex, Mail.ru, Zoho, self-hosted), how SPF policies are configured at the apex, DMARC enforcement levels (none / quarantine / reject) via the _dmarc record, plus NS delegation and A/AAAA/CAA presence. Open data for deliverability researchers, ESP product teams, and security analysts comparing their own setup against industry baselines.
- Domains scanned
- 1,000,000
- MX providers
- 200+
- Auth signals
- SPF · DMARC
- Refresh
- Daily
How to cite: Live Direct Marketing, "Email infrastructure of the Tranco top-1M domains," check.live-direct-marketing.online/email-stats, snapshot date as shown on the page.
Check the MX Before You Hit Send: How Your Prospect's Mailbox Provider Decides Your Cold Email's Fate
One free dig MX lookup reveals which spam filter judges your cold email — Gmail, Microsoft 365, a gateway or a self-hosted box — and how to adapt to each.
38% of Top Domains Sit Behind Google or Microsoft: A Cold Outreach Playbook for Each
Google Workspace fronts 21.75% of top domains, Microsoft 365 16.68% and growing 2.6× faster. Two filters, two philosophies, two separate playbooks.
Selling Into Enterprise? A Security Gateway Reads Your Email Before Any Human Does
Proofpoint doubled to 1.91% of top-1M MX since 2022, Mimecast hit 1.53%. How secure email gateways score, sandbox and quarantine cold email — and how to survive.
The Free Tech-Stack Lookup Nobody Uses: What a Prospect's DNS TXT Records Reveal
SPF includes and verification tokens expose a prospect's tools — Zendesk in 3.87% of SPF domains, Salesforce in 2.62%. One dig TXT beats paid technographics.
Why Your Sequences Die in Japan: The Email Stack You've Never Heard Of
Japan runs on Amazon SES (16.79%), SecureMX (12.14%) and five ESPs with 100% Japanese customers. Why Gmail-tuned playbooks fail there and what to change.
4,925 Top-1M Domains Literally Cannot Receive Your Email
Thousands of top domains publish broken MX records — empty targets, localhost, a literal tilde. What Null MX (RFC 7505) means and how to protect your bounce rate.
What a Company's SPF Record Tells an SDR Before the First Call
A prospect's SPF names its senders: SES 6.21%, SendGrid 4.75%, Mailgun 4.10% of SPF domains. Read the stack, gauge maturity and sharpen discovery in 60 seconds.
Cold-Emailing Germany vs France vs Brazil: The Regional Mail-Stack Map
Mailjet owns France, Locaweb owns Brazil, Mandrill leads DACH: the country-by-country mail-stack map and how to localize your cold outreach.
Your Prospect Enforces DMARC p=reject. Here's What That Changes for Your Outreach
47.16% of DMARC domains now enforce. What p=reject on the prospect side breaks for outreach, and how to check both policies in one DNS query.
Self-Hosted Email Is Dying — and That's Good News for Your Reply Rates
Self-hosted MX fell from 42.76% to 22.53% in a decade. Why the migration to Google and Microsoft makes cold-email deliverability predictable.
The SMB Tell: What Cloudflare Email Routing in the MX Says About Your Prospect
Cloudflare Email Routing hit 1.6% of top domains faster than any newcomer. What that MX record signals about a prospect and how to pitch them.
Segment Your Outbound List by Mailbox Provider (Reply Rates Differ by Multiples)
Google 21.75%, Microsoft 16.68%, self-hosted 22.53%, unknown 12.45%: batch MX lookups and tune volume, content and cadence per filter regime.
One in Eight Domains Is 'Unknown': The Long Tail Where Deliverability Advice Stops Working
81,514 top domains (12.45%) run mail on unclassifiable hosts across 36,377 hostnames. A conservative playbook for the deliverability wild west.
Amazon SES Is Now the #1 ESP on Earth: The Great Unbundling of Email Marketing
Amazon SES reaches 6.21% of top-1M SPF domains — 2.2x since 2022 — as raw sending pipes overtake suite ESPs. What unbundling demands of your team.
Mailchimp Peaked in November 2022. Here’s Where Its Customers Went
Mailchimp hit 5.03% of top-1M SPF domains in November 2022 and slid to 3.69%. DNS data shows Brevo, MailerSend and SES absorbing the migration wave.
ESP Market Share by Country, 2026: The Local Champions Nobody Writes About
Locaweb holds 42.58% of Brazil, Mailjet 35.88% of France, Unisender 38.21% of Russia. The country-level ESP map that global rankings average away.
Quarantine Just Overtook Reject: The DMARC Enforcement Plateau, Explained
June 2026 first: 114,824 p=quarantine domains passed 114,390 on p=reject. Why DMARC rollouts stall at quarantine and what silent spam-foldering means.
The Google/Yahoo Bulk-Sender Rules, Two Years On: What 459,124 DMARC Records Show
DMARC enforcement fell from 46.91% to 40.98% after the February 2024 mandate, then recovered to 47.16%. Two years of daily DNS data on compliance vs protection.
Your ESP Choice Is a Deliverability Decision: Reading Provider Health From Public DNS
SPF share trends are a live census of ESP health: Mailgun climbs 2.61%→4.10% since 2022 while MailChannels crashes 64%. A due-diligence checklist.
Choosing an ESP for European Expansion: France Runs on Mailjet, Italy on MailUp
Mailjet signs 35.9% of French SPF domains, MailUp 22.9% in Italy. DNS data on Europe's local ESP champions and how to pick a provider per market.
Ten Years of ESP Churn in One Dataset: Who Survived 2016–2026
192 DNS snapshots of the top-1M show Mandrill still at 3.37% years after its sunset. Why email infrastructure decays over decades, not quarters.
The MailChannels Cliff: A 64% Share Crash and the Lesson About Platform Risk
MailChannels fell from 2.94% of SPF domains in March 2021 to 1.07% — the fastest ESP decline in our dataset, and a case study in platform risk.
Multi-ESP Is the Norm: What a Healthy Sending Stack Looks Like in 2026
ESP shares sum to well over 100% of SPF domains — companies run several senders. How to split marketing, transactional and support mail safely.
BIMI, MTA-STS, TLS-RPT: Which 'New' Email Standards Are Actually Getting Adopted
What BIMI, MTA-STS, TLS-RPT and DANE actually buy you, which senders deploy them, and the deployment order that works — DMARC enforcement first.
Email Signature Management Doubled Since 2022: The Quiet Channel Marketers Ignore
CodeTwo grew from 0.34% to 0.71% of top-1M SPF domains since 2022. Every employee email is a brand impression — and most companies waste it.
Google Workspace vs Microsoft 365: What a Million Companies Actually Chose
DNS census of the top-1M domains: Google Workspace 21.75% vs Microsoft 365 16.68%, ten-year trajectories, and who actually picks which suite.
Microsoft Is Winning Business Email 2.6× Faster Than Google: The Enterprise Pull
Since 2022 Microsoft 365 gained +4.31pp of top-1M mail domains vs Google's +1.64pp. Teams bundling and E3/E5 economics explain the enterprise pull.
When Free Email Forwarding Is Enough — and When It Quietly Kills Your Replies
Cloudflare Email Routing already fronts 1.60% of top-1M mail domains. Forwarding receives fine — but the reply path can wreck your credibility.
The Registrar-Email Exodus: GoDaddy Mail Halved in Four Years
GoDaddy-hosted mail fell 4.23% → 1.49% → 0.75% of top-1M domains. Why registrar bundles lose, plus a zero-loss migration checklist.
Should You Self-Host Email in 2026? 147,000 Top Domains Still Do
Self-hosted mail fell from 42.76% to 22.53% of top-1M domains, yet 147,712 still run their own MX. An honest checklist for when it makes sense.
Geopolitics in Your MX Record: Yandex 360's Rise and 70% Fall
Yandex-hosted mail peaked at 5.56% of top-1M domains in December 2019 and sits at 1.63% today. How macro events leave traces in public DNS.
The Commerce Email Stack: Shopify Now Sends for Nearly 1% of the Top-1M
Shopify appears in the SPF of 0.85% of top-1M domains, up from 0.04% in 2016. What the platform sends for merchants and what stays their job.
The State of DMARC 2026: 47% Enforced, 51% p=none — in 459,124 Records
DMARC across the Tranco top-1M in 2026: 459,124 records, 51% stuck at p=none, 47.16% enforced, and quarantine just overtook reject for the first time.
The 10-Lookup SPF Limit in the Wild: How Top-1M Domains Hit PermError
SPF allows 10 DNS lookups per check — then returns PermError. How the limit is counted, how multi-ESP stacks blow through it, and how to audit your record.
SPF Flattening Is Invisible to Every Survey — Including Ours (2026)
Flattened SPF records list raw IPs instead of vendor includes, so no DNS survey can attribute them to an ESP. Why every published ESP share is a floor.
A Field Guide to the Internet's Long Tail: 36,377 Unmatched MX Hostnames
Beyond Google and Microsoft: 36,377 MX hostnames our 310+ patterns cannot classify, covering 81,514 top-1M domains. A taxonomy of the unclassifiable.
+all and Other SPF Suicide Notes Found in the Top Million Domains
The qualifier on your final all mechanism is the whole policy. What +all really authorizes, why ?all is a shrug, and how to choose between ~all and -all.
DKIM Selector Archaeology: What selector1, k1 and mte1 Reveal
DKIM selectors are vendor fingerprints: selector1 means Microsoft 365, k1 means Mailchimp. How selector scans map sending stacks — and what they miss.
Null MX Done Right (and Wrong): How Top-1M Domains Say 'We Don't Take Mail'
RFC 7505 Null MX versus the hacks: 4,925 empty MX targets, 502 localhost records, 157 tildes in the top-1M — and what each pattern costs senders.
Email Is IPv4's Last Fortress: AAAA on MX Across a Million Domains
Only 4.96% of self-hosted MX hosts in the Tranco top-1M publish AAAA records, while Google's MX fleet is 90% IPv6 — why email remains IPv4's last holdout.