Chinese email domains: QQ, NetEase, Sina and Sohu
QQ Mail, NetEase Mail, Sina Mail and Sohu Mail are identifiable Chinese email services. Their official sign-in sites help establish which service you are visiting. They do not establish a comparable ranking of active mailbox users. The earlier answer's numbered popularity order, QQ messenger user-count proxy and broad security and reliability claims were not supported by a consistent email-market dataset.
Five domain examples, four service families
| Address-domain example | Service family | Official entry point | Interpretation |
|---|---|---|---|
qq.com | QQ Mail | QQ Mail | An email domain is different from the provider's general portal or messenger user base. |
163.com | NetEase Mail | 163 Mail | One NetEase mailbox-domain example. |
126.com | NetEase Mail | 126 Mail | A separate domain, not evidence of an additional independent provider. |
sina.com | Sina Mail | Sina Mail | The web sign-in hostname need not equal the domain after an email address's @ sign. |
sohu.com | Sohu Mail | Sohu Mail | Use the provider's current account interface to confirm supported address suffixes and eligibility. |
These five address examples belong to four service families because 163 and 126 are both NetEase services. Sina's official registration page identifies the @sina.com and @sina.cn suffixes; Sohu's official registration page identifies @sohu.com. Those address suffixes differ from their webmail sign-in hostnames. The official pages were reachable during this review; several require JavaScript or redirect to a mobile sign-in interface. No account was created, no message was sent, and no provider's uptime, account recovery or delivery quality was independently tested.
What would support a popularity ranking?
A defensible ranking would specify its geography, period, population and unit: active mailbox users, unique people, registered accounts, delivered messages or visits to webmail. Those measures cannot be substituted for one another. One person may use multiple addresses; corporate mail can use a custom domain; users may read messages through a mail client rather than a webmail site.
Likewise, QQ messenger monthly active users are not a measured count of QQ Mail users. A provider's worldwide registered-account total would not by itself measure current mainland-China email usage. This revision therefore retains the useful service references while removing the unsupported “top five” ordering and projected market-growth claims.
Identify an address without guessing ownership
For an ordinary address such as reader@163.com, the domain after the final @ sign is 163.com. In the deliberately fictional lookalike reader@qq.com.example.invalid, the domain is qq.com.example.invalid, not qq.com. A familiar brand appearing somewhere inside a hostname does not establish that the brand operates it.
A domain match also does not prove who controls a particular mailbox or whether a message is legitimate. When arranging a payment, changing account details or exchanging sensitive documents, confirm the recipient through a previously established channel. This is an identity-checking workflow, not a claim that any provider listed here is unsafe.
Choose for the actual communication task
If you need a new mailbox, check the current provider's registration requirements, recovery methods, storage, supported clients and terms directly. If you need to reach an existing contact, ask which address they currently use. A historical list of domains is not permission to scrape addresses or send unsolicited mail.
For an organization's custom-domain mailbox, investigate the actual service and contract rather than assuming the operator from a consumer-domain list. The earlier answer also mixed aliyun.com with alibaba.com; those strings are not interchangeable, and neither is ranked by this article. Reachability and deliverability can vary by network, destination and time. Neither universal accessibility nor censorship behavior was tested here.
Keep the source date and the observation date separate when comparing changing services. The comparison worksheet can record a provider's documented conditions and your own observations without inventing a market-share score.