Have you ever tried to send an email to a client only to receive a reply that the email is not valid?
Maybe you’ve recently sent a campaign with abysmally small open results?
Email verifiers are built to prevent these type of situations.
They help you validate whether an email address (or a list of emails) is correct, helping you ensure that you don’t get bounces on your emails.
But before we go in my personal selection of growth hacking email verifier tools, let’s check the most common questions you might have about the topic.
What is an Email Verifier?
An Email Verifier or email verification tool is a software or an online service that allows entrepreneurs, marketers, and founders to verify whether an Email address is legitimate and valid.
People can often mistakenly give you invalid emails or you can find yourself in a situation with a list of leads from an untrusted source or you’ve found an email from publically available data and want to check whether an email is valid.
In all of the listed cases, you will need to use a tool that tells you whether the email address of list of leads is legitimate and valid.
Of course, there are also other reasons that you might use it.
Why would you need an Email Verifier Tool?
There’s an array of reasons why you might need to verify the email of someone, but the most common one is that their old one doesn’t work.
Now, if you want to contact this person, you often can try and verify whether your presumption of what the new email is correct.
- Switched to a New Email Provider – There’s a trend of getting out of the GOOGLE ecosystem and this means GMail as well.
- Change of Email Address to a More professional one – That’s another common reason people change their email addresses.
- Change of Occupation – More often than not, people change their email addresses when they switch companies. The same can happen if they are promoted/demoted in a company. Managers often have different email addresses than lower-level employees, especially in big corporations.
So, that’s one of the main reasons why email verifier tools exist.
They allow you to check whether an email you think is valid is actually valid, before trying to send a message to the provider.
What are BULK Email Verifier Tools?
Now, in some cases you might want to check JUST one email. Let’s say you’ve spoken to an CEO of a company, they’ve given you a business card, but you’ve lost it somewhere. What do you do? Why not check whether the email you think is right is actually right.
That’s a perfectly fine use case of an Email Verifying tool.
However, as mentioned in MOST cases, Email verifiers are used for full lists of leads to ensure that they are right.
To distinguish between the two, people often refer to the tools that are specifically tailored to check lists as “bulk” email verifiers, noting on the fact that the tool can check “bulk” amounts of email addresses at once.
That’s pretty much it. Nothing THAT special. Right?
Well, most BULK email verification tools are more sophisticated in various aspects.
- They offer a prompt verification on huge email lists and databases
- Most of them have useful integrations with existing CRMs and Email tools
- Some of them even have API integrations
The latter option is what most enterprise-level businesses can’t go without, as it allows them to directly integrate the use of the tool in their existing data management systems in the way that will fit their business needs the most.
Why Do Marketers need an Email Verifier?
There are multiple reasons why we, as marketers need to use email verifiers. However, the most important reason is that you are able to retain your technical reputation as a sender.
More often than not, you have a list of available emails (of leads) and want to send them a new email.
However, people delete and change their emails more often than you’d realize.
Especially in the B2B world, people can change domains (when rebranding) or transition from an Email service to a Domain-based email service or simply change their email from their first name to their last name, because of personal preference.
Furthermore, as employees change, their professional emails also change. The emails of old employees are often quickly removed and if you have one on the list, guess what?
That’s right. Email service providers, such as Google, can mark you as the sender to the now invalid email, as an illegitimate or spam sender.
And guess what they’ll do?
That’s right. ALL Emails sent to ALL of your LEGITIMATE leads can be thrown in the SPAM folder.
And with almost everyone AVOIDING checking their spam folder and 45.3% https://dataprot.net/statistics/spam-statistics/ of all Emails being SPAM, good luck getting noticed.
Emailing a list of leads is a prominent cold user acquisition technique, especially in the B2B space.
However, ruining your reputation as a sender can LITERARY ruin your business.
That’s why, among other factors, being able to verify the bulk lists of old and new emails that you have is extremely important.
In fact, if you are a marketer and you are reading this right now, I would suggest GOING to your Email List right now and verifying it to avoid any issues in the future.
Of course, be sure to read through the article to know how to do that, I’ll explain in just a minute.
Do Marketers use Bulk Email Verifiers to Get New Leads?
Yes and no.
Now, there are a wide array of black hat, white hat and gray hat marketing tactics, when it comes to email.
Depending on your location, the current changes in the industry, it might be OK for you to gather and mass-send emails to manually generated lists.
However, in some cases, it isn’t.
In the B2B world, it’s often a common practice for people to actively publish their contact information and some businesses even have spaces for marketing emails.
In other cases, there are ways to get emails of your close friends that you want to mass-invite to some awesome event you are planning.
For example, I have an article on how to get the emails of your Facebook friends.
However, I’m just a marketer and you should do everything at your own precaution.
This article is a great read for the most common practices when gathering your list of leads.
However, I do advise you to check in with any legal counsel you have access to, especially with the current changes in the digital marketing industry.
Now, presuming you’ve gathered everything in a perfectly legit manner, you might think that your email list is ok.
However, as mentioned, email lists often have inactive and invalid email addresses in them.
With more than thousands of leads at a time, having a small percentage of your list be invalid can truly ruin your reputation as a sender.
And as mentioned, this can hurt your business.
So, once you get the list, it’s best to use an email verifier to ensure that the addresses are completely valid before sending your introductory email.
So you can’t necessarily GET new leads with an EMail verifier tool, but it is a great way to verify your existing list of leads with this type of software or a service that is available online.
How does an Email Verifier Work?
There are various technical aspects of email verifies that make the tools as powerful as they are.
Usually, a well-developed email verifier would go through a number of steps to ensure that the email address is correct.
- A Syntax Check – The first and most obvious feature is a spell/syntax check. This ensures that the email is typed correctly, without spaces with the extensions, characters and domains at the correct places.
- A Domain Check – The second step is to verify whether the domain of the email exists and is working as it should.
- An Email Ping – The third step is to actually ping the email and check whether there is a response from the email server. Email tools usually do that with an EHLO message, which ensures that the email recipient doesn’t receive an empty or technical message in their inbox.
In short, the software tools that verify an email with an EHLO, send a command to the email server to identify itself. This is a step that is usually performed by email service at the starting process of sending an email. Thus, once the server of the recipient is verified, the tool knows that the email address is able to receive messages, without notifying or sending a message to the actual email recipient.
That’s the base and core of how these email verifying tools work.
Now that you have a general overview of everything related to the set of tools and how they work, let’s talk about the best tools in the business and the ones that I consider to be perfect for marketers, founders and entrepreneurs alike.
What is the best E-Mail Verifier Tool of 2020?
As Email Lists degrade at a level of 22.5% each year, according to Hubspot, it’s easy to note why having the right email verifier for your business is crucial.
To help you out on your marketing journey, I’ve decided to share a list of the best email verification tools for 2020, alongside a few reasons on why I would consider some tools to be better than others for particular cases.
Let’s check the list.
Hunter.io (A personal recommendation)
Hunter.io is one of the most popular email verifying tools on the market.
It has a powerful suite of features.
- Email Finder – It helps you establish the accuracy of the email of a person working at a specific company
- Domain Checker – To help you find the potential employee emails of a business based on available data
- Email Verifier – To verify either a single or bulk list of email addresses
The tool has numerous pricing options, including a free tier.
Depending on your use case, the 50 free monthly query requests might be enough for you.
However, if you are checking email lists, you might need to go for a paid option.
How to use Hunter.io?
Using Hunter is extremely simple. (especially if want to check whether JUST ONE email address is correct or not)
All you have to do is visit the Hunter.io verification page.
Enter your email in the search query bar.
Click the “verify” button and within seconds you should have your results.
You’ll receive four primary types of information.
- Format
- Type
- Server Status
- Email Status
Format checks for the syntax of the email. The type checks whether the domain name is used for a professional email, an email service or a temporary email creation service.
Server Status is an email ping to verify whether the server is actively able to receive emails.
And EMail Status is part of the sophisticated response of Hunter.io in the email verification search.
First, it checks whether the email address can receive emails.
And second, it tries to find whether the email has been publically disclosed on the web.
In short, the tool searches through the web to find whether this email address has been actively and publically mentioned and disclosed somewhere.
In our case, as you can see with the first example, the email has been actively found on the web, hence the “verified” status.
However, in the second case, it shows that while the server is able to receive emails, the address itself can’t.
Hunter.io Email Verification Integrations
Another reason why I love Hunter.io is it’s quick and simple Email CRM integrations.
Currently, the tool supports only 5 platforms.
- Salesforce
- Hubspot
- Pipedrive
- Zoho
- Zapier
However, the integration with Zapier is what’s truly great.
As you’ll see from my other guides, including the one on Extracting Emails from LinkedIn Profiles & Your Gmail account to up your list game, Zapier is one of the most effective swiss-knife tools in the growth hacker toolbox.
With it, you are able to automate away various tedious and manual tasks and create your marketing automation in a way that best suits your marketing purpose.
That integration is one of the main reasons why Hunter.io is my PERSONAL choice for the best email verifier of 2020.
Hunter.io Chrome Extension
Last, but not least, Hunter.io also has an extremely easy to use chrome extension.
The extension allows you to do a quick email verification check without ever leaving the page on which you’ve found that email.
While not necessarily something that will be helpful to EVERY business out there, it’s certainly great for B2B marketers and certain entrepreneurs that would need to use such a tool for a quick email verification check.
Other Top Email Verification Tools for 2020
Now, while Hunter.io is my favorite of the bunch, that doesn’t mean it will also be the best option for you.
In fact, if you are the founder of or a marketer at an enterprise-level business, tools with better Bulk email verification pricing or features (such as API integrations) might be more your speed.
Here are my runner-up choices and what I love the most about them.
MyEmailVerifier
MyEmailVerifier is one of the most sophisticated tools for email verification that I’ve come across. It caters to big businesses with email lists in the thousands and millions and the prices do reflect that.
However, if you are looking for a true all-in-one verification service, this might just be the right one for you.
One of the most powerful features of the tool is that it has a real-time verification API for businesses. This means that if your business relies heavily on email marketing, you can create and integrate the tool via the API in your own software and data management systems to have automatic email verification.
Now, if you’d prefer to do things manually, the user interface of MyEmailVerifier is quite intuitive. It allows you to quickly find the feature that you need and use it to the best of your ability.
The tool is so sophisticated and developed at this point, that they even offer entrepreneurs the option to create their own White-Label email verification tools and resell the service under their own brand.
So, if reselling email verification services is something on your list, MyEmailVerifier should be the place to go.
As with most Software As a Service tools out there, MyEmailVerifier also employs marketing tactics related to urgency and discounts.
This means that when you want to buy the tool, you should check their front page regularly and subscribe to their email (or get in touch with them) to make sure that you receive the best offer for your business and use case.
Here are just a glimpse of the amazing features that make MyEmailVerifier stand out above the rest.
- Toxic Domain Verifier – Have you ever dealt with bots subscribing to your email list? If this has happened to you prior, then you should be happy to learn that this tool provides with an email validation API that helps you identify email domains that are spam, abuse or created by bots.
- Catch-All Email Checker – Although this is also detected by Hunter.io, Email Verifier is quite good at detecting “catch-all” domains. Catch-All are domains that accept emails for all existing or non-existing (or even incorrect) email addresses sent to these specific domains. Such domains can often cause a reduction in your open rates and might even cause you problems with your email service provider or sender service.
- Role-Based Detection – Most businesses have some form of group e-mails. For example “[email protected]” or “[email protected]” would be emails that are not associated with a person, but rather an organization or group within the business itself. MyEmailVerifier helps detect such emails and help you exclude them from your lists, as they can affect your conversion rates.
Among it’s more notable features, MyEmailVerifier also helps you validate Yahoo business Emails, check the domains in real time, provide you with a detailed SMTP response and APIs, Grayulist certain domains, check for Spam Traps and more.
QuickEmailVerification
QuickEmailVerification is another tool that’s trusted by enterprise-grade companies. However, it’s also a tool that I would suggest to most businesses and startups, due to its extremely flexible and scalable payment options.
In particular, the tool allows you to both pay for a one-time use, but also subscribe on a monthly basis, based on the number of daily uses you would need.
The tool even allows you to enter the number of “credits” (or emails) you would need and get a custom quote right on their website.
Considering that most tools send you through their sales funnel, just to get a quote, I would consider the approach by QuickEmailVerification to truly be a breath of fresh air.
Similar to other tools mentioned here, QuickEmailVerification is quite prompt and features everything you’d need from an email verifier.
You are able to check someone’s email or a bulk list of emails and whether it’s valid through a syntax check, a domain-name and address check and more.
The best part?
The tool allows you to check 100 emails EACH DAY completely FOR FREE.
That’s right. If you need, you can use the tool to go through a list of 100 emails and verify them each day without spending a penny.
Their free version even has some basic API integrations, which blows my mind.
In addition they have ESP integrations with the most popular email management tools.
If you use AutoPilot, CampaignMonitor, Aweber, Drip, HubSpot, MailChimp, Marketo, SendGrid, SendLoop or anything in between, you are in luck.
In fact, the app integrates with more than 25 different tools.
It’s safe to say that QuickEmailVerification is one of the best email list verifies for marketers available today.
DataValidation
DataValidation is another bulk email verifier tool that is relatively affordable, but extremely powerful.
It’s one of the most trusted tools on the market and is used by corporations, such as Netgear, Orange, and even Associated Press.
Similar to other tools on the list, it has an API and multiple integrations, including HubSpot and Zapier.
Now, while they are probably planning to add more integrations, if you are using ActiveCampaign or Zoho, this might not be the perfect verifier service for you.
However, it’s so simple and easy to use even without integrations that I’d still recommend it.
The tool has 100 free verifications available for first-time users.
To try it out, you need to create an account.
What’s extremely convenient is that you can create an account directly with the email service of your choice, but you can also do so with your email.
Entering the service, you are greeted with the “Free 100” verifications pop-up and you also receive an email with instructions on how to do so.
Ultimately, you will need to enter more information about your business and use case to verify your account.
The process is relatively simple and once you do it the 100 credits should be available for you to try out the service.
Seamless and Easy to Use
The Email verification (of your lists) process itself is fairly straightforward.
What you need to do is upload the .csv file that you have.
The app will prompt you to select the column that contains the email addresses you want to verify.
Once this is done, your report will be ready.
One thing that most people probably take for granted and won’t necessarily take into account in their platform choice is the UX design.
However, for me, it’s extremely powerful to have a simple, easy to use and interactive user design.
What I loved about DataValidation is that they have paid attention to the smallest details.
Again, this doesn’t mean much in terms of functionality, but it’s definitely something that I love seeing in modern tools.
Now, once you upload your list, make sure that it’s below 100 email addresses.
If it isn’t you will get a “purchase credits” report button and will need to purchase more credits to reveal the full information contained in your report.
That said, this tool is extremely easy and simple to use.
What’s the pricing of DataValidation?
When it comes to pricing, DataValidation is extremely transparent.
In fact, you are able to type in the number of subscribers you have in your list and it will generate the exact amount you’ll need to pay to verify those emails.
In addition, if you sign up for a monthly/annual billing period, you will be able to receive a further discount and free verification credits.
Other Notable Bulk Email Verification Services
Now, I did check out a few other tools.
I think they are worth mentioning, as depending on your use case or preference, you might choose one over the other.
MillionVerifier
MillionVerifier is another awesome tool for checking up emails. While I can’t personally vouch for it, as I haven’t used it as much, it does seem to work.
It’s advertised as the email verification tool with the highest accuracy and most affordable rates.
Allegedly, it allows you to test as much as 1 Million Verifications For $299 Only, hence its name.
The company is based in the United Kingdom and advertises that it’s compliant with European GDPR standards.
This translates to the fact that they allegedly won’t sell your data or store it on their servers.
The tool also seems to have high levels of trust with its customers.
It’s definitely a tool that I would love to try out in the future, although, at this point it doesn’t seem to have any active integrations.
That said, the tool does seem to be extremely easy to use.
How to use MillionVerifier?
Once you create a trial account, you are greeted by their welcome screen and prompted with a chatbox message.
The message quickly guides you to a welcome screen where you can opt-in to receive 200 free credits (once you enter and verify your phone number)
The verification process itself also seems to be fairly straightforward.
The tool gives you the option to bulk upload email lists in various formats, including the most popular ones (.txt, .cvs, .xls, .xlsx) and once you do, they quickly generate a report about the validity of the emails in the list.
The summary of the report is featured directly on your dashboard.
It shows you how many of your email addresses from your list are valid, invalid, catch-all, with a syntax error, unknown or disposable.
After you glance through the results, you are able to download the full report.
The full report is downloaded in a sheet-based format and features three new columns to your list, which you can use to filter out your email list and upload it to your email manager.
As a whole, the process is relatively simple and easy to do.
However, due to the manual nature of things, it’s not something I’m keen to do every time.
NOW, is the price worth it? Yes, to an extent.
However, whether this is the right tool for you is a decision that you’ll have to make.
It will depend on your particular business case for the use of an email verifier.
TowerData
TowerData is one of the oldest email verifies and it’s still growing strong today.
It has flexible scalability and is completely free for the first 100 email addresses.
The cost of the tool is fairly reasonable, especially compared with the other tools on the list.
Of course, like other enterprise-level bulk email lists, it also has a relatively straightforward API integration.
The top three main features, as expected are the following:
- Syntax Error Check – Validates the syntax of the email address
- Toxic Email Removals – Removing Spam Traps and Toxic Email Domains
- Role Address Checker – Flags role accounts
However, the tool also provides you with an Actives Check option.
This means that TowerData will check the email addresses against its own database of activity and help you prioritize the best addresses for your particular list.
ZeroBounce
ZeroBounce is an email verifier tool that takes the word “integrations” to a whole new level.
In fact, the tool has 46 active integrations and the team are working on 3 more at the time of writing.
Actively creating recipes through Zapier, while adding official integrations, ZeroBounce is a GREAT tool to integrate within your existing marketing automation to be able to check and validate the emails of your users.
You are even able to integrate the tool with GOOGLE FORMS right out of the box.
And when it comes to price, it isn’t actually unreasonable.
You are able to use the tool completely for free for up to 100 emails per month.
Once these 100 credits are depleted you can go to a monthly plan with up to 3-7,5 million credits each month, depending on your specific needs.
This makes the tool a relatively good choice, both for small startups and marketers, but also for growing businesses.
In fact, they even have a section for their enterprise clients, allowing you to tailor the service in a manner that would be the best for you to use.
Keep an Eye for ZeroBounce!
Now, while Hunter.io is my top choice and I’ve featured numerous other email verification tools on this list, I would be actively keeping an eye to ZeroBounce.
The reason?
ZeroBounce is actively developing and implementing the “ZeroBounce A.I.” system to their scoring.
The ZeroBounce A.I. adds another level to the granularity of your email address verification by analyzing numerous aspects of the emails in your list and returning a score from 0 to 10 for each one. (0 being the lowest, 10 being the highest)
Even today, the system does seem to work quite well, but I’m certain it will only continue improving in the future. What are your thoughts?
Snovio
Another email verifier that is extremely similar to Hunter.io is Snovio.
Snovio offers both single and bulk email verification and also has its own chrome extension.
Featured as the #3 product on ProductHunt, Snovio has an email verifier that is quick, simple and easy to use.
The keyword here is “has a feature” that is an email verifier.
Yes.
Snovio is not SIMPLY an email verifier.
Snovio is a full-featured outreach automation service.
It allows you to search emails by domain, verify them and create email drip campaigns right from the tool.
In addition, you can know when your emails have been opened with their Gmail ready tracker, find new emails with the professional email search and even identify your competitors with the technology checker.
As a whole, Snovio is a great fully-featured suite for those who are just starting out on their cold outreach automation journey.
However, the reason why this tool is not high on my list is exactly that. It’s a full-feature suite.
Of course, it has numerous integrations with other tools and each of its features is good to stand on its own, including their email verifying tool.
However, it’s my personal preference that SOMETIMES, it’s best to be good at ONE thing rather than trying to do many at the same time.
Granted, their pricing is also fairly reasonable.
So if you want, I definitely recommend trying it out.
Rocket Reach
Rocket Reach is another tool that is designed to FIND emails for you, rather than help you verify your lists.
It’s sleek, efficient and easy to use.
In addition, it’s pricing is fairly competitive.
However, it is an email LOOKUP tool, rather than an email verifier tool.
And the differences between the two are fairly obvious.
While one set of tools allow you to verify a list of emails with the primary purpose to drive your conversions and lower your bounce backs, LOOKUP tools help you FIND specific emails of specific people you seek.
Now, as mentioned in the beginning, I still advise that you use such tools with caution.
Although, it is quite powerful and you can easily find the results that you need in pretty much no time.
All you have to do is enter the desired name and create your account.
Once you do, you will be prompted by the “Install Chrome Extension” screen.
Yes, the tool also has an awesome chrome extension.
But you can also skip this step.
Once you do, and you type in your search, you will have a list of available information for your selected person.
Granted, as far as I understand, to get the actual emails you do need to be a paying customer.
Of course, as mentioned, the pricing is fairly competitive, so this shouldn’t be an issue if you are planning to use this tool in your everyday marketing.
What is the best email verifier for 2020?
It depends. For me it’s Hunter.io, for you it might be Snovio or MyEmailVerifier.
You should choose an email verifier based on your specific use case and at a pricing that works for you and your business.
I hope this article was helpful. Let me know your thoughts on email verifiers below.
What do you use them for?
What’s YOUR use case?
