Hetzner mailbox provider
According to Live Direct Marketing's daily Tranco top-1M scan (September 13, 2026), Hetzner is the mailbox provider for 1,031 domains — 0.16% of 664,797 domains with MX records. Detection method: primary MX record (lowest preference).
Key facts
- 1,031 domains in the Tranco top-1M use Hetzner (0.16% of domains with MX records).
- Snapshot date: 2026-09-13 — recomputed every day.
- Strongest TLD: .de (37.7% of its domains).
- Region skew: Germany.
- Most co-used service: Constant Contact.
- Directory category: hosting mail bundle.
Why Hetzner appears in this category
German VPS/dedicated server provider; mail often self-managed on Hetzner IPs.
We classify it as a hosting mail bundle from primary MX record (lowest preference) matching a maintained provider rule. This is infrastructure attribution from public DNS, not evidence of a direct contract or exclusive use.
Hetzner is a German hosting and infrastructure provider that operates mail services alongside its cloud and dedicated-server offerings. The company serves a broad international customer base, with particular concentration in German-speaking regions and Western Europe, where it is a standard choice for organisations managing their own IT infrastructure.
When Hetzner MX records appear in your delivery flows—predominantly from smaller organisations, regional businesses, and self-hosted mail operators—it signals a customer running mail directly on Hetzner's managed servers rather than delegating to a specialist email platform. This footprint pattern matters for deliverability because Hetzner-hosted mail typically lacks the consolidated reputation infrastructure of larger ESPs, making sender authentication, list quality, and domain reputation the critical factors in whether your mail reaches the inbox.
Where Hetzner sits in the Tranco ranking
| Tranco rank band | Domains | Share of its base |
|---|---|---|
| Top 1,000 | 0 | 0.0% |
| Top 10,000 | 1 | 0.1% |
| Top 100,000 | 44 | 4.3% |
| Top 1,000,000 | 972 | 94.3% |
| Unranked | 14 | 1.4% |
Top-level domain split
| TLD | Domains | Share | |
|---|---|---|---|
| .de | 389 | 37.7% | |
| .com | 260 | 25.2% | |
| .net | 49 | 4.8% | |
| .org | 36 | 3.5% | |
| .at | 35 | 3.4% | |
| .gr | 31 | 3.0% | |
| .eu | 24 | 2.3% | |
| .ch | 18 | 1.7% | |
| .pl | 10 | 1.0% | |
| .it | 10 | 1.0% |
What Hetzner users also use
Cross-tabulated from the same daily snapshot — the other email services seen on the same 1,031 domains.
| Type | Service | Domains | Share of Hetzner users |
|---|---|---|---|
| ESP | Constant Contact | 24 | 2.3% |
| ESP | Mailjet (Sinch) | 23 | 2.2% |
| ESP | Brevo (ex-Sendinblue) | 21 | 2.0% |
| ESP | Amazon SES | 17 | 1.6% |
| ESP | Mailchimp | 11 | 1.1% |
| ESP | MailerLite | 8 | 0.8% |
| ESP | Mailgun | 7 | 0.7% |
| ESP | Mandrill | 6 | 0.6% |
| ESP | Newsletter2Go (Brevo) | 5 | 0.5% |
| ESP | SendPulse | 5 | 0.5% |
Fragmented mail reputation and individual sender responsibility
Hetzner's mail infrastructure is spread across thousands of independent customer installations—small businesses, regional firms, individual operators—rather than concentrated in a few high-volume accounts. This fragmentation means filtering systems do not typically apply shared-platform reputation acceleration to Hetzner IP ranges; instead, each customer's sender and domain reputation is evaluated independently. As a result, organisations using Hetzner for mail (whether transactional or marketing) must maintain full authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) and build their own sending reputation without the trust-by-association benefit that consolidated providers offer.
See the full Hetzner data page (KPI cards, trend, sample domains) →
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Frequently asked questions
Should I test my email campaigns against Hetzner-hosted recipients?
Testing against Hetzner is worthwhile if your audience includes German or Western European small-to-mid-market businesses, as they represent a realistic cross-section of independent inbox configurations and filtering behaviours rather than a unified platform policy.
How many domains use Hetzner?
1,031 domains in the Tranco top-1M use Hetzner as their mailbox provider as of September 13, 2026 (0.16% of domains with MX records), according to Live Direct Marketing's daily DNS scan.
Is Hetzner common enough to affect email deliverability testing?
Hetzner accounts for 0.16% of domains with MX records in the top 1M. Whether you should seed a test mailbox there depends on how much of your audience it represents — the co-usage table above shows the services it appears alongside most.
Which countries or TLDs use Hetzner most?
Hetzner's largest TLD is .de (37.7% of its domains); it appears across 79 TLDs in total.