Mailmap global scan: preliminary results

Sam Tuke Dec 2 2021 Share

If you follow Lightmeter on Mastodon or Twitter or met us at FOSDEM or Telegram then you know that we’ve been scanning the world’s servers to map the evolving state of email. A dedicated page with many statistics and the ability to explore the data yourself is under construction and coming soon.

Some of you however have asked for publication of preliminary results, so here’s a snippet of what’s to come.

Global mailserver market share

To start with here is the breakdown of different email server software used worldwide.

  • Open Source: 92%
  • Exim & Postfix: 72%
  • Proprietary: 8%
Mail Transfer AgentNumber of domainsShare (%)
Postfix smtpd2,091,14555
Exim smtpd632,29117
cbdev cmail smtpd385,05810
Sendmail205,9265
Microsoft Exchange smtpd152,0914
MailEnable smptd82,4942
netqmail smtpd73,2482
qmail smtpd54,5651
Access Remote PC smtpd41,7221
Microsoft ESMTP32,1381
hMailServer smtpd20,0471
Global email server software market share in Winter 2021

Other findings resulted from this research, including:

  • Global location and distribution of mailservers
  • Percentage of self-hosted vs outsourced mailservers
  • Percentage of servers properly configured using SPF

Those will be published in the coming weeks, including an explanation of the methodology we used and how to run your own scans. Check back soon or get the Lightmeter newsletter to receive the stats in your inbox ?

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