Skip to main content

Email Hosting

free
GET/v1/domain/email-hosting

Identifies the email hosting provider for a domain by analyzing MX records against 30+ known provider patterns. Detects enterprise (Google Workspace, Microsoft 365), business (Zoho, Fastmail, ProtonMail, Rackspace), transactional (SendGrid, Mailgun, Amazon SES, Postmark), security gateway (Mimecast, Proofpoint, Barracuda, Cisco), and consumer (Gmail, Yahoo, iCloud) email services. Returns provider name, vendor, service type, features, confidence level, and security gateway detection.

What It Does

Queries MX records via Cloudflare DoH and matches mail server hostnames against a comprehensive library of 30+ email provider patterns. Sorts MX records by priority (lowest = primary), detects the primary email provider, identifies service type (enterprise/business/consumer/transactional/security), lists provider features, calculates detection confidence (high/medium/low based on primary vs backup MX match), and detects email security gateways (Mimecast, Proofpoint, Barracuda, etc.) that filter email before delivery.

Why It's Useful

Email provider identification is essential for sales intelligence (enterprise email = higher-value prospect), security assessments (detecting security gateways and encryption capabilities), competitive analysis (tracking provider adoption across industries), email migration planning (understanding current infrastructure), and vendor risk management (identifying organizations using consumer-grade email for business).

Use Cases

Sales Development

Sales Intelligence

Identify prospect email providers to qualify leads based on technology sophistication. Enterprise email (Google Workspace, Microsoft 365) correlates with larger, better-funded organizations.

Prioritize prospects using enterprise email solutions for higher conversion rates.

Security Analyst

Security Assessment

Detect email security gateways (Mimecast, Proofpoint, Barracuda) and identify email infrastructure maturity as part of vendor or partner security assessments.

Assess partner email security posture without requiring access to their infrastructure.

Marketing Analyst

Competitive Intelligence

Analyze email provider adoption across industry verticals or competitor sets. Track migration trends from consumer to enterprise email.

Understand market preferences for email solutions and identify technology trends.

IT Administrator

Email Migration Planning

Identify current email infrastructure before planning migration to a new provider. Detect multiple MX configurations and security gateway layers.

Plan email migrations with full understanding of existing infrastructure complexity.

Parameters

NameTypeRequiredDescription
domainstringRequiredThe domain to identify email provider forExample: example.com

Response Fields

FieldTypeDescription
domainstringThe queried domain
hasEmailbooleanWhether email hosting was detected
providerstringEmail provider name
mxRecordsarrayMX records with host and priority (e.g. [{host: "aspmx.l.google.com", priority: 10}])
mxRecordCountnumberNumber of MX records
confidencestringDetection confidence (high, medium, low)
vendorstringVendor/parent company name (e.g., Google, Microsoft, Twilio)
typestringService type: enterprise, business, consumer, transactional, or security
featuresarrayProvider features (e.g., Custom Domain, Admin Console, End-to-End Encryption)
isSecurityGatewaybooleanWhether an email security gateway (Mimecast, Proofpoint, Barracuda) is in use
backupProviderobjectBackend email provider behind a security gateway (provider, vendor, type, features), or null
recommendationsarrayEmail hosting and security improvement suggestions
lastCheckedstringISO 8601 timestamp of when the detection was performed

Code Examples

cURL
curl "https://api.edgedns.dev/v1/domain/email-hosting" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" \
  -d "domain=example.com"
JavaScript
const response = await fetch(
  'https://api.edgedns.dev/v1/domain/email-hosting?domain=example.com',
  {
    headers: {
      'Authorization': 'Bearer YOUR_API_KEY'
    }
  }
);

const data = await response.json();
console.log(data);
Python
import requests

response = requests.get(
    'https://api.edgedns.dev/v1/domain/email-hosting',
    headers={'Authorization': 'Bearer YOUR_API_KEY'},
    params={
    'domain': 'example.com'
    }
)

data = response.json()
print(data)

Read the full Email Hosting guide

Why it matters, real-world use cases, parameters, response fields, and how to call it from Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini via MCP.

Read the guide →

Related Endpoints

External References

Learn more about the standards and protocols behind this endpoint.

Try This Endpoint

Test the Email Hosting endpoint live in the playground.