Email Validation

21 November 2024. 11 mins to read

Testing services for email validation

Many inactive emails in the database? Recipients often complain about spam? Low email deliverability rate? All of this is often because you're not checking your subscriber base for validity.

If you have too many unconfirmed emails, the mailing list services may block your accounts, emails will end up in the "spam" folder or won't reach the user at all.

When do I need to clean the database and check email?

The user accidentally or deliberately made a mistake when filling out the form.

And you didn't send the subscriber an email asking them to confirm their subscription to the newsletter (no double opt-in). Why double opt-in is necessary, read also the article "Soft and hard returns in email newsletters".

The base is old (over 2 years old) and it's been a while since you sent an email on it.

In any, even the best database, over time there are invalid postal addresses, duplicates, addresses that no one visits anymore or simply overflowing boxes.

Did you assemble by hand or are you not sure how the base was assembled before you.

From websites, at exhibitions, acquaintances, maybe somewhere from someone took or moreover bought a base. How it was collected and how valid it is, you do not know.

The mailing service after the first email asked to clean the list or start building it from scratch because of the poor bounce rate and unsubscribes.

Mechanics of the study

About a year ago, we conducted a study of email validation services. We uploaded 1000 emails, 500 of which were invalid according to MailChimp mailing statistics (bounces or rejections), and 500 were valid, with high loyalty to our mailing.

We uploaded the list to 7 services for validation, paid for it with our own money, the services did not warn us about the testing. We downloaded valid addresses according to the services and compared their results with what we know about these emails from many years of mailing.

Here are the results of the test:

Zerobounce

Test results

The service found 612 valid addresses. Not bad, but 112 addresses over the minimum 500 is quite a lot. The excess is 22% of the norm of 500 addresses.
After checking how many addresses match the original (valid) ones: 453 emails out of 500 are left.
The total error is 159 addresses (16%).

Neverbounce

Test results

The service identified 456 valid addresses.
Of these, 356 addresses match the original 500 valid addresses.

DataValidation

Test results

403 safe emails. You can download safe emails at once and you can download all of them.
Out of 403, 330 addresses match the original ones.
Error in 243 addresses (24%).

Bounceless

Test results

You can download different kinds of tested emails.

There are a total of 534 safe emails.
Of these, 418 match the original 500.
Error in 198 addresses (20%).

Snov.io

User-friendly interface, you can see lists of addresses at a glance. There is also another functionality - an extension for Chrome that collects emails from websites and LinkedIn profiles. Listen or watch our podcast with the CEO of Snov.io to learn more about it.

Price: 200 checks per month free, beyond that you can only choose monthly plans from $19.
You can't pay for a one-off number of email checks.

Test results

The service detected 456 valid addresses.
Of these, 344 addresses match the original 500 valid addresses.
There are 268 addresses in error (27%).

Briteverify

A rigorous process to sign up for the service - you need a LinkedIn account or write to their support team to have them send an email to confirm your registration.

You can't test the service without entering your payment details.

Test results

The service showed 426 valid addresses.
Of them 349 addresses match 500 original ones.
There are errors in 228 addresses (23%).

Bulk email checker

The price depends on the number of emails. For 1,000 we paid $2.65.
You can adjust the speed of verification. Integration of the service with Mailchimp is possible.

Test results

The service identified 343 valid addresses.
Of these, 299 converged with the original 500 valid addresses.

Results

Of all email validation services, the closest to the result of 500 valid addresses are Mailvalidator (461, if we count those addresses that the service called conditionally valid on full validation), Zerobounce (453 valid addresses), Bouncless (418).

Total error in both valid and invalid addresses:

Bouncless 20%

Mailvalidator 21%

Zerobounce 21%

Briteverify 22%

DataValidation 24%

Neverbounce 24%

Snov.io 27%

Check your base, save time and money on sending letters to non-existent addresses. Don't let your emails get into spam and your mailboxes get blacklisted!