Only the best: The Top Email Validation & Verification Tools

Benefits of Email Verification Tools

Sender reputation is crucial when it comes to running effective email marketing campaigns. If your sender reputation is low, emails to potential new customers will go straight to spam. What causes your sender reputation to be low? Low engagement with your existing emails and high bounce rates.

Invalid email addresses (fake emails, unused emails, spam traps, and other defunct email addresses) are the biggest reasons for low engagement and high bounce rates. By removing inactive email addresses from your mailing list, you improve your sender reputation and ensure that your emails will make it into inboxes and get seen.

Types of Email Verification Tools

There are a couple of different ways to weed out invalid email addresses from your list. Most email verification tools offer at least one of these methods, and the best email verification services offer all three.

Real-Time Email Verification Tools

This is the most important thing you can do to ensure that invalid email addresses don't end up on your list. Validating email addresses in real-time means capturing the user input at the time they attempt to sign up to your list, and ensuring that the email address they give you is correct, well-formatted, and a real, active email address.

The process for doing this is simple - you can do some validation in your own code (for example, checking that there are no unexpected characters in the string or making sure that the user has input something that looks like an email address.)

For more advanced real-time email verification, use an email verification API. This type of email verification tool accepts an email address and runs several checks against it to look for invalid addresses, spam traps, inactive email addresses, do disposable email detection, and more.

Bulk Email Verification Tools

If you already have a list of addresses and you suspect there may be some invalid email addresses or inactive addresses on the list, you can use a bulk email list verification process to clean those addresses from the list.

To do bulk email list verification, you typically upload a CSV file containing a list of the addresses. The bulk email verification service will check each email in the list and let you know whether it is valid or not.

Email List Cleaning

Even if you do real-time validation, you will still need to do regular email list cleaning to ensure that your list stays healthy. You should use a bulk email list verification service at least once every 6 months to find and remove invalid email addresses from your list.

Top 10 Email Verification Services

Let's take a look at the top 10 email verification tools available to help you maintain an active, engaged, healthy email list.

AbstractAPI

AbstractAPI's Free Email Validation and Verification API exposes a simple REST endpoint that can be used for real-time email list verifications and offers a bulk uploader for validating a list of emails.

The service validates emails against several criteria: formatting, disposable emails, role-based emails, MX records, SMTP validation, and spam trap detection. It provides a quality score for the deliverability of the email.

Abstract has a quick and easy onboarding process - just sign up for a free account by providing an email address and password (you don’t need to verify the email address and it doesn’t have to be a business email) and you land on a dashboard with options for documentation, pricing, etc.

You get 100 free requests every month on the free tier. There is a sandbox you can use to send a single test request and view the API JSON response. We’ll go into depth on how to use the AbstractAPI later in this article (see Integrating Email Validation Services.)

AbstractAPI is free to get started with, and plans start at $9 for a monthly subscription.

Pros

• The cheapest option on the list
• Quick and easy to get started
• Offers bulk and real-time validation

Cons

• The free tier offers only 100 requests
• No customer support at the free level

Price: $9 for 5000 requests/month, $49 for 50,000/month, $99 for 100,000/month

ZeroBounce

ZeroBounce specializes in email list cleaning through a bulk email verifier. They also have a REST API that is accessible through network requests and secured with an API key.

The free trial period is one month, and you get up to 100 requests during that time. They offer pay-as-you-go and monthly subscriptions. Pay-as-you-go starts at $0.008 per email for 2,000 email addresses. If you purchase a monthly subscription, the cost drops to $0.0075 per email.

ZeroBounce has the most intuitive dashboard of any service I tested. Once you sign up for a free account (you must provide a business email but don’t need to verify it) you land on a dashboard with a clear option to validate your list.

Once you upload your list, it will ask you to verify that the columns/rows in the CSV file are correctly labeled, then ask if you also want to score catch-all emails. It costs one additional credit to score each email for catch-alls.

Results are delivered in an easy-to-read printout directly in the UI, and can also be downloaded as a CSV. Overall, the interface is very clean, clear, and easy to navigate.

Pros

• A well-established email verification and validation company
• Bulk email verification and real-time validation
• Excellent support

Cons

• Pricier than some other options
• Minimum purchase of 2000 credits

Price: $16/2000 addresses (pay-as-you-go) or $15/2000 addresses (monthly), $390/100,000 (PAYG) or $350/100,000 (monthly), $1910/1,000,000 (PAYG) or $2050/1,000,000 (monthly)

NeverBounce

People understandably get confused between ZeroBounce and NeverBounce. NeverBounce is slightly cheaper than ZeroBounce and less well-known. NeverBounce does not offer a free trial - you can just test the service on their website by uploading one email into their demo.

NeverBounce's prices are very reasonable. They offer a monthly subscription or pay-as-you-go pricing. Customer support is available but has been reported to be less consistent than ZeroBounce support.

NeverBounce’s dashboard is less easy to navigate than ZeroBounce’s. When you first land, it isn’t immediately apparent whether “Clean” or “Verify” is the right option to choose. When you choose “Clean” you are also given the option to “Verify” for free first, which feels confusing.

The uploader for bulk validation itself is clear and easy to use, though not as slick and shiny as ZeroBounce’s.

If you choose the option to verify before you clean, the app will tell you whether or not cleaning the list is necessary.

If you do choose to clean the list, you’ll be presented with a download dialogue that asks if you want to download the entire list, just the valid emails, or just the invalid emails.

Pros

• Cheaper than ZeroBounce
• Bulk email verification and real-time validation

Cons

• No free trial
• Customer support may be less than stellar

Price:

BriteVerify

BriteVerify serves some of the biggest names in online business. They have been around for a long time and process over 1.5 million emails a day. Despite this, they are competitively priced. They offer a complete suite of email verification tools including bulk email verification and real-time validation.

Pros

• Over ten years of experience
• Integrates with existing platforms
• Very reasonably priced

Cons

• No free trial
• Monthly subscription pricing is not readily available

Price: $40/5000 verifications, $325/50,000 verifications, $2250/500,000 verifications. Call for subscription pricing.

MailTester

MailTester offers a bulk and real-time verification process for email addresses, as well as an inbox checker to help you track and improve the metrics that are most affecting your deliverability.

The email verification service has several facets: duplicate email removal, spam trap detection, risk validator, syntax verifier, complainer verifier, anti-grey listing, MTA validations, and more.

MailTester’s UI was again slightly confusing. You’re presented with an option to verify only a single email, and below it the option to verify multiple emails, which you have to copy and paste yourself into a text box. Only after some hunting is it revealed that you can choose the “List Verification” tab at the top to upload a CSV email list.

It seems clear from the language on MailTester’s progress page that the app is made by non-English speakers. Which is fine - we’re here to verify emails not grammar.

When the list is finished analyzing, you receive an email with results. 

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Pros

• Combines both verification and deliverability tools
• Support readily available via phone
• Cheaper than ZeroBounce or NeverBounce

Cons

• Less well-known so possibly less reputable

Price: $19/5000 emails up to $2039/5,000,000 emails (PAYG), $39/month up to $299/month for a full suite of tools including inbox monitoring and email campaigns

XVerify

XVerify is the best email verification service for affiliate management companies. They provide bulk email verification, as well as a real-time email verification API. They also offer phone validation and physical address validation.

XVerify offers pricing that is a little more costly than other services on this list, and on their website, it is not clear if the prices listed are for a monthly subscription or pay-as-you-go.

XVerify wants you to provide credit card information as part of the sign-up process, despite claiming to offer a free trial/tier. However, you can skip providing your credit card information - if you do this, you’ll land on a page that tells you to look for en email from a sales representative in a couple of days to help you finish setting up your account.

You can actually bypass this too - just close that window and log back into XVerify, and you’ll land on a dashboard with 10 free credits to use. I think this attempt to push you to provide payment info and talk to a sales rep is shifty, especially given that you can just get around it.

Once you land on the dashboard, you realize that XVerify doesn’t actually offer a bulk verification option. You have to implement their API into your own code and do real-time validation that way, and results are displayed in the UI. They provide a handy Javascript snippet that you can download directly from the dashboard and paste into your code.

Pros

• Real-time email verification tools and bulk uploader
• Mobile app

Cons

• Pricey
• The pricing structure is not clear on their website

Price: $5/500 emails, $10/1000, $750/250,000, $2500/2.5 million

Bouncer

Bouncer offers a top-notch, straightforward email verification service, ensuring high-quality, GDPR-compliant data for your email campaigns. With a validation accuracy rate of over 99.5%, it stands out from the competition.

Use Bouncer to identify email bounce rates effectively, keeping your messages out of spam and safeguarding email deliverability.

Pricing: Bouncer provides flexible pricing, starting at $0.008 per email for 1,000 to 4,000 checks, and monthly plans from $50 for up to 10,000 verifications.

Features Include:

• Email Check
• API Access
• Easy Integrations
• Spam Risk Check
• Delivery Assurance

Pros:

• User-friendly.
• Excels in bulk catch-all email verifications.
• Dedicated customer support.

Cons:

• May fail to process complete email lists occasionally.
• Response time varies, testing patience.

EmailChecker

The EmailChecker API is the only completely free option on this list, which may make it a good option for freelancers or developers looking to validate a few addresses, or for small businesses who are just getting started with email marketing.

EmailChecker offers a simple input on their website that accepts a single address at a time for validation. There is no real-time verification API or bulk upload option in the browser.

You can get to a bulk upload option if you sign up for a free account. You’ll be taken to a dashboard similar to other services on this list. Unfortunately, when I tested the bulk uploader, it failed to work:

Pros

• Completely free
• Easy to use

Cons

• Will not work at scale
• May not even work at all

Price: free account

QuickEmailVerification

The QuickEmailVerification API is trusted by some of the biggest names in industry, and has over 100,000 satisfied customers. They offer bulk email list verification, an email verification API and a suite of free tools.

Their free trial is the most generous on the list, offering 100 verifications per day for life. They offer pay-as-you-go pricing and monthly subscriptions.

The Quick Email Verification dashboard is simple and easy to navigate, however it is plagued by an annoying popup that seems to come along at every possible moment. There is also an automatic onboarding tutorial that you are immediately dumped into, but you can skip it.

Quick Email Verification doesn’t show you any results in the UI - you have to download a CSV file and open it in Excel or some such service.

Pros

• Generous free trial
• A simple website makes it easy to get started

Cons

• On the higher side, price-wise

Price: $4/500 emails (PAYG) up to $3500/5 million, $25/month for 500 emails per day, up to $900/month for 50,000 emails per day.

Kickbox

Over 150,000 companies use Kickbox for their email verification tools, which include a bulk email list verification option, a real-time email validation service, blocklist monitoring, inbox placement, DMARC monitoring, and deliverability consulting.

Kickbox also offers some free tools, such as the email spam tester and disposable email detection API. That will automatically prevent invalid email addresses entering your CRM system.

Kickbox’s dashboard reminded me a lot of ZeroBounce’s - it was more intuitive and easy to navigate than most others on this list. They offer you 100 free credits, so you can test it against a good sized chunk of emails to verify accuracy.

Kickbox’s results may not be as accurate as ZeroBounce: of the 10 emails I tested, ZeroBounce found one that may have been invalid, while Kickbox found none. Kickbox detected that 9 of my 10 emails were free emails.

Pros

• A comprehensive suite of solutions that go beyond email verification tools
• Trusted by many
• Lots of easily accessible support channels (Slack, chat, email)

Cons

• Pricey
• Additional tools are costly

Price: $5/500 emails up to $4000/1 million emails. $250/month for additional deliverability tools, up to $500/month for an advanced suite of tools.

SendInBlue

SendInBlue is now Brevo, and its services include a full selection of email marketing solutions including email verification tools, a marketing platform, a transactional email API, and more.

Brevo offers Brevo Academy to help people learn how to use their email verification services, marketing platform, and other tools. They also offer a generous free tier that allows up to 300 email verifications per day for life.

I didn’t realize until I signed up for a free account and landed on the dashboard just how extensive Brevo’s services are. They are more like an email marketing platform than an email verification service - in fact, I couldn’t even find any email verification tools in the UI.

After clicking around and uploading a portion of my mailing list, I determined that the only way to use Brevo’s verification is to use their complete suite of tools to create and send marketing campaigns, and that verification is included as part of this suite. You can’t just do one-off or bulk verification like you can with the other services on this list.

Pros

• Full spectrum of tools is available to help with every aspect of email marketing
• Competitively priced, with good support

Cons

• May be overkill for people just looking for email verification services

Price: $25 per month for 20,000+ emails and basic tools. $65/month for 20,000 emails plus advanced tools and support.

Comparing Email Verification Services

Best Practices for Email Validation

When it comes to email list cleaning service solutions, there are a few things you can do to make the most of your investment. It isn't enough to simply bulk clean your list once and then be done with it, or rely on real-time validation to handle all your needs.

Regular List Cleaning

Use an email verification service at least once every six months to find and remove invalid addresses from your list. Even if you are using real-time validation to capture email addresses at sign-up, there will inevitably be some that slip through the cracks.

Track the email addresses on your list that are the least engaged and purge them diligently.

Double Opt-In

You should always require users to double opt in to your list. This means that once they have signed up, you send them a verification email that they must open and click a link to confirm their address before they are added to the list.

This might mean that a few people drop off during sign-up. But it is worth losing those few people to prevent spam traps and other bad actors from ending up on your list.

Real-Time Verification

This is your best defense against invalid addresses and should be your frontline email verification and validation strategy. Capture all email addresses and attempt to verify them before they are added to your list. This will make your overall list stronger and more engaged.

Integrating Email Validation Services into Your Workflow

Let's take a look at how to integrate an email verification service into your application. We'll use AbstractAPI as our example in this walk-through, as their service is very easy to get started with.

Get Started With the API

Sign up for a free account and get an API key. The key authenticates you and allows you to make requests to the API.

Click "Get Started" on the API homepage

You'll sign up with an email address and create a password. Next, you'll land on the dashboard, where you'll see your API key, and links to documentation, pricing, etc.

Send an Email Validation Request to the API

Let's look at the Javascript implementation for this tutorial. Copy the Javascript snippet provided in the testing sandbox.

This is a simple AJAX request that sends a GET request to the API with an email address for validation included as a query string argument. You will also need to paste your API key as a query string parameter.

The response from the API will look something like this:

{
  "email": "eric@abstractapi.com",
  "autocorrect": "",
  "deliverability": "DELIVERABLE",
  "quality_score": "0.80",
  "is_valid_format": {
    "value": true,
    "text": "TRUE"
  },
  "is_free_email": {
    "value": false,
    "text": "FALSE"
  },
  "is_disposable_email": {
    "value": false,
    "text": "FALSE"
  },
  "is_role_email": {
    "value": false,
    "text": "FALSE"
  },
  "is_catchall_email": {
    "value": true,
    "text": "TRUE"
  },
  "is_mx_found": {
    "value": true,
    "text": "TRUE"
  },
  "is_smtp_valid": {
    "value": true,
    "text": "TRUE"
  }
}

You can pull values off this JSON object and use them in your code to determine the validity of the email.

Bulk Email Verification Service

Let's also quickly check out the bulk email verification tool.

Provide Your Email List as a CSV

Most email services provide an easy way to download your mailing list as a CSV file. This is what you will upload to the API to validate email addresses from the list.

Upload the CSV to the Bulk Uploader

Log in to the API and click "Bulk Upload (CSV.)" This opens a dialogue where you can upload your CSV file. The uploader will check all the email addresses on the list for the following things:

• formatting and spelling
• disposable addresses
• MX records
• SMTP records
• role emails
• catchall emails
• free emails
• deliverability

get the results

The results of using the bulk email verification tool will be emailed to you as a separate CSV. Click "Download CSV" in the email to view the results.

Evaluating the Effectiveness of Email Validation Services

Once you've used an email verification tool to validate email addresses, you'll want to monitor your results to make sure that the changes are having an effect. These are the things to look for when evaluating the success of your email verification tool.

Reduction in bounce rates

You should see a reduction in bounce rates. Email bounces occur when an email cannot be delivered to the intended recipient. There are many reasons for bounced emails, but the number one cause is attempting to deliver emails to invalid domains or addresses. Once you remove the invalid addresses from your list, your bounce rates should improve.

Improved Email Deliverability

A secondary effect of your email verification tools should be improved email deliverability. Fewer bounces mean your deliverability score will go up. Removing invalid addresses from your list will also increase the percentage of engaged users on your mailing list, which will also improve your deliverability.

Enhanced Sender Reputation

All of these benefits add up to an improved sender reputation, which will ensure that any new emails you send will get delivered to their intended inboxes and will not end up in people's spam folders.

Potential Drawbacks of Email Validation Services

There are a few drawbacks to using email verification tools, however, we believe that these drawbacks are minimal compared to the benefits you will reap from implementing them. Let's quickly take a look at some things to watch out for when using an email verification tool.

Cost

This is the number one reason people and businesses shy away from using an email verification tool. It can certainly become costly to verify email addresses if your list is very large or if you have a lot of incoming traffic. Again, however, we believe that the cost of having invalid domains on your list is much greater than the cost to verify email addresses.

False Positives

No email verification tool is perfect. There will always be some email addresses that slip through the cracks, or that appear to be valid when they are in fact not. This is just something that can't be avoided with email verification and validation.

If you find that your email verification tool is failing to catch a lot of invalid addresses, you might consider switching to a different solution.

Privacy Concerns

Always read the terms and conditions of any email verification tool you choose to ensure that they are compliant with all relevant data security policies and regulations. In particular, you need to be aware of GDPR concerns and CCPA if your customers reside in the EU or in California.

Summary

A healthy, engaged mailing list is the cornerstone of all online marketing efforts. Email marketing campaigns have the highest ROI over all other online marketing platforms. It's important to have a list full of real, active email addresses.

Email verification is an important step in building your strong, robust mailing list. You should be verifying all email addresses in real time before they sign up for your list, and you should be periodically cleaning your database to remove invalid and inactive addresses.

Utilizing an email verification tool is the easiest way to maintain a healthy, active email list.

FAQs

What makes AbstractAPI's Email Validation API unique from other email validation services?

AbstractAPI's Free Email Verification API is the only API dedicated wholly to verifying and validating emails. We do not offer any email marketing services or platform integrations. This enables us to focus on providing an extremely accurate verification process for your mailing list.

How can I integrate AbstractAPI's Email Validation API into my existing applications or systems?

It's easy to get started with AbstractAPI's email verification tools - simply follow along with the documentation, or check out one of our API guides for help with specific languages and frameworks like Javascript, React, Python, Django, and more.

What programming languages does AbstractAPI's Email Validation API support?

AbstractAPI's Email Validation API is language-agnostic, meaning it can be integrated with applications written in any language. It exposes a simple REST endpoint, accessible via HTTP request.

On the API dashboard, you will find code snippets for Python, Ruby, Javascript, Node, Java, PHP, and Go. These are not the only supported languages - they are provided as examples and quick-start options.

Is there a free tier or trial available for AbstractAPI's Email Validation API?

Yes - you can use the AbstractAPI Free Email Verification API free for life. You get 100 requests per month. This translates to 100 email addresses verified by either the real-time API or the bulk email verification API.

Can AbstractAPI's Email Validation API be used for both real-time validation and bulk validation?

Yes. There is a REST endpoint that accepts network requests in real time for validating email addresses as users sign up for your service. There is also a bulk upload interface where you can provide a CSV file containing a list of addresses for verification.

What are the pricing plans for AbstractAPI's Email Validation API?

The API is free to use for up to 100 email addresses per month. Monthly subscriptions start at $9/month for 5000 emails, $49/month for 50,000 emails plus domain whitelisting and email/chat support. Upper tiers offer $99/month for 100,000 emails at 25 requests per second with dedicated support and multiple API keys, and the enterprise solution is $499/month for 750,000 emails, at 100 requests per second.

How accurate is the email validation provided by AbstractAPI's Email Validation API?

The AbstractAPI Email Validation service is trusted by companies like Accenture, Nokia, Stanford, and Shopify. They are backed by a powerful API and protected by bank-level security.

Does AbstractAPI's Email Validation API offer any additional features or functionalities?

AbstractAPI focuses on email validation and verification to ensure that they provide the best possible accuracy and service for this solution. They do not offer marketing tools, analytics, or help to create email campaigns.