Self hosted email continues to steeply decline
A decade of DNS data analysis shows that self-hosted email infrastructure is rapidly declining, with market share consolidating heavily under Google Workspace and Microsoft 365. The study highlights that nearly 40% of the top million domains now rely on these two providers for email services.
Why it matters
The centralization of email infrastructure poses risks to internet decentralization and increases reliance on a small number of major tech corporations.
Ten years of DNS measurements reveal three trends across the Internet's most popular domains: email continues to consolidate around two providers, DMARC enforcement has hit a plateau, and a surprisingly large long tail of infrastructure defies easy classification.
Almost everything about how a domain handles email is sitting in public DNS, waiting to be counted. The MX record says where the mailbox lives. The SPF record says who may send on the domain's behalf. The DMARC record says what should happen when a message fails authentication. Put those three together for a million domains, every day, and you get something like a weather station for email infrastructure.
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