The Top 10 Email Verification Tools to Maintain Hygiene of your Email List

» What is an Email Verification Tool?

Validating an email address to check if it is active and still in use, is known as email verification in the simplest terms. It includes identifying spam traps and other possible discrepancies before the email addresses are blocked by the ISPs (Internet Service Providers) or Email Service Providers (ESPs) causing permanent damage to your reputation!

Email verification tools help clean up your email lists, by removing invalid & junk email addresses, letting you reach the actual prospects thus improving the deliverability rate.

» Why does a Business need Email Verification?

Anything you want to grow requires nurturing. If you want your plant to grow into a tree, you feed it with fertilizers and water it regularly. Similarly, if you want to grow your business, you need to reach out to the right prospects, nurture them by understanding their needs and keeping in regular touch.

This runs true for email address databases as it requires a tune-up every now and then to ensure that there is an actual individual at the other end of the address.

To gain the benefits of email marketing such as higher opening rates, better customer retention, phishing prevention, and superior ROI, regular email verification becomes necessary. Lists loaded with fake and inactive email addresses are very much capable of hurting your deliverability statistics and bringing permanent damage to your sender reputation and financial damage to your balance sheet. And that's where email verification tools come in handy.

» What are the features that make a perfect Email Verification Tool?

There are multiple tools available in the market, to judge the perfect one for you deep dive into the features you need and the features that are available. A few features that you should consider have been mentioned -

1. The level of accuracy

How to trust the result of the email verification tool? How to know which tool is performing better? The quality of the result depends on the level of accuracy. Different tools provide a different level of accuracy like Clearout guarantees the level of accuracy above 98% while some tools do not mention the accuracy level. As a smart user, you should go ahead and try multiple tools (using their free accounts), compare the results, and reach on to a conclusion.

2. The types of verification services

Different users can have different needs. Like a lead generation company would prefer a regular verification of data in bulk. On the other hand, a product company looking for sign-ups would prefer the verification of a user during sign-up to avoid malicious users. We also have users with requirements of quick validation once in a while. While selecting the right email verification tools for you to ensure you get the kind of verification services you need - bulk, real-time, or quick.

3. What kind of Integrations are supported

The motive to bring in an email verification tool is to reduce your workload and not to create chaos or confusion. Ensure the tools you are using for sending out your email marketing campaigns are in sync with the email verifier.

For example, I use Mailchimp for my email marketing campaigns. I will look for an email tester that integrates with Mailchimp so that all my subscriber details are automatically updated.

Some tools let you verify the email addresses directly on Google Sheets, people using Google Sheets for storing their data, or those who are not willing to invest in a CRM or ESP should choose tools with this feature.

Look for the kind of files supported as some tools allow the only CSV, while others accept xls too!

4. The turnaround time

It means the time taken to verify an email address. This feature is of high importance as you cannot wait for days for the bulk email addresses to be verified. Test and compare the response time taken by different email testers.

5. Requirements to run the tool

Does the email verified work on any device? Does it require any further software to be installed? Compatibility with different devices, the feasibility of using the tool based on location. You must look out for these features before selecting the one for you.

» What Factors must be Considered for buying the Best Email Verification Tools?

Features play a major role in deciding the most eligible email verification tool to go with but there are certain other factors which cannot be ignored. The major ones are

1. Pricing

Everyone wants the best, but everyone cannot afford the best. But in online marketing higher price does not always mean better services especially when it comes to email marketing tools. If you compare the prices of email verification tools mentioned below you will realize that even for the same number of credits, there can be a difference of $20 or more. So why pay more when you can get better at a lower price. Continuous comparison, remaining updated with the latest developments is the quality of a smart marketer, so never lose that.

2. Data Security

In the digital age, a person with data is the king and you are handing out your treasure to someone else. Such a situation demands high security to avoid any misuse or theft of data. Spend some time examining the terms & conditions relating to data retention and the actions they take to ensure the best security. Confirm and re-confirm that all client services, including uploads, downloads, and reporting are always taking place over HTTPS/SSL connections. Know complete details on where your data will be stored and precautions are taken to protect it. Data security law is not taken equally seriously in all countries, so don’t put your data at risk to save a few dollars with a discount provider.

3. Reviews

Nothing builds up trust quicker than the word of mouth so go through the experience of other users with the email verification tools in consideration. The good reviews, bad reviews, the kind of issues the users have faced, and was the tool able to resolve it. An attractive website should never be considered the sole reason to judge a tool. Visit review platforms to actually know and understand the tool. Try and reach out to the users personally if possible.

4. Easy to use

One of the reasons that make email verification very popular amongst other marketing channels is that it’s easy, so should be the email verifier. Any complications or hard to understand features will repel the user. Choose the tool that is easy to understand and use.

5. Support System

A paid customer always expects all his problems to be resolved as a priority, and there is nothing wrong with it. If you are stuck at any point the support system should always be there to cover your back. Test and review the support system until it pleases you.

» What are the Benefits of Email Verification Tools?

1. To Maintain an Updated Email List

Every year 25% to 30% of email addresses become invalid due to numerous reasons. This means approximately 1 out of every 5 email addresses in your email list cease to exist every year.

Can you imagine the number of junk emails stored in your database right now? Sending emails to such addresses will bring down the campaign ROI and affect the sender’s reputation badly.

Regular email verification of the email database ensures your list is up to date and safe to reach out to. Wouldn’t you be more confident knowing that all your efforts are pointed in the right direction instead of wasting money and time on addresses the expired long ago?

2. Higher Conversions and Increase in Campaign ROI

Email marketing results are based on quality rather than quantity. Sending out 100 emails per day may not serve a good result if the quality of leads is doubtful. Whereas 50 emails per day can fetch expected results if the quality of leads has been established. Better targeting results in better engagement; as a result, the conversion rate of a prospect is higher.

By verification of emails, you ought to put resources to better and more efficient use leading to lower costs and better returns.

3. Higher Deliverability

An email- sender is notified about the emails not getting delivered. Not paying attention to email deliverability issues arising repeatedly establishes you as a spammer by the ISP’s. To avoid any abuse with people’s inbox, the ISP’s begin pushing your emails into spam folders of recipients.

Once the emails are being pushed into spam folders there are chances that some of your most engaged recipients will also not get emails in their inbox! And with the time you drop out radars.

4. Saves Efforts in Fixing Bounces

Another consequence of not verifying your email list is, as soon as you have sent out the campaign, the bounces start kicking in which can be either - a hard bounce or a soft bounce.

Developing a mechanism to analyze the hard bounces becomes necessary for survival. For people using an Email Service Provider (ESP), tracking becomes a little easier as the ESP notes the number of bounces received. Crossing the limits set by ESP will have a bad impact on the campaigns and you will be asked to improve your list building practices. By integrating an email verification tool within the ESP, you can automate email verification and ensure the emails are sent to valid addresses only.

The integration becomes obligatory as repeat offenders can be banned by the ESP. A verified list removes all undeliverable addresses in the first place preventing all this trouble.

5. Protects Sender Reputation

A sender’s reputation is built on multiple factors and the most common is how the recipients react to your email. Whether they flag your email as spam, do they open it and engage with it, or what proportion of your sent emails bounce back.

Using an email verification tool regularly ensures that you are not sending out emails to invalid addresses or the ones which are meant to bounce back thus avoiding any damage to your sender reputation as projected by the Internet Service Providers and/or the Email Service Providers.

» The top 10 Email Verification Tools

1. Clearout

Clearout is an email verification and validation tool with 98%+ accuracy that carries out more than 20 refined validation checks to conclude the status of every email address in your list. The easy-to-use email verifier has 10 times faster turnaround time to detect spam traps, disposable addresses, syntax errors, and invalid, toxic, and catch-all domains ultimately improving the deliverability rate. It provides bulk, real-time and quick validation services.

› Pricing starts at $25 for 5000 credits.

› Features

• Distinctive plugins –WordPress and Google sheets Add-on
• Team account together with the Enterprise model
• Subscription model – both monthly & annual
• Integrations with top CRM’s and ESP’s
• 35% lower rates on credits
•24*7 availability of support
•100 free credits on sign up
• 5 awards within a year

2. Pabbly

Pabbly Email Verification tool enhances your mailing lists hygiene by excluding unknown addresses, minimizing false positives, and reducing the catch-all addresses.

It verifies the emails manually which may get slightly delayed but provides highly accurate list verification results.

All the email addresses with inactive or invalid domains are eliminated automatically to provide you a valid email list.

› Pricing starts at $5 for 1000 credits.

› Features

• Syntax Eliminator which discards invalid email addresses immediately from the list
• Anti-GreyListing secures your list from spammers using advanced grey-listing technology
• Manual verification
• Risk Validation to ensure the reliability of the list.
• Spam-Trap Removal to safeguard your list from spammers.

3. Xverify

XVerify is considered as a real-time email verification tool that helps in improving email marketing performance by reducing the probability of hard bounces. It even helps in reducing spam complaints and frauds by detecting malicious sign-ups.

Xverify takes into use a cloud server to process the data. It does not have a setup fee that allows you to pay as per the usage. It is a mobile-based application which enables you to verify in transit as well.

› Pricing - $37 for 5000 credits.

› Features

• No minimum limitation on credits
• Use of Cloud server for data processing
• Built-in fraud protection
• Autocorrect feature

4. Debounce

Debounce is a simple email validation platform providing a deliverability guarantee of 97.5%. It provides multiple integrations and can connect, validate, and update the email lists from much integration such as Mailchimp, Mailerlite, Sendinblue, and more.

DeBounce is also known to validate some of the famously hard to validate email servers for example QQ, G-Suite, free.fr, GMX, Web.de, and more.

› Pricing starts at $10 for 5000 credits.

› Features

• Disposable Email Checker
•Catch-All Domain Checker
• Antigrey listing Technology
• Team Account available
• Spam-tram Removal
• The MTA validation helps in keeping a check on the Email Transfer Agent to identify whether or not it has a valid MX record.

5. Mailfloss

Mailfloss can be used to automatically remove hard bounces, typos, and fake email addresses from your email list. Currently, it connects with more than 16 ESP’s and once the preferences are set, it will automatically clean and verify the email addresses every day on autopilot.

It works on a ‘set and forget’ automated solution. Has the option of uploading and Zapier integration too.

› Pricing starts from $17 for 10,000 email validation.

› Features

• Daily automated email verification.
• Automatic unsubscribe/delete.
• Automatic update of contacts via tagging or custom fields straight to the ESP.

6. Quick Email Verification

With an accuracy of 99%, you can opt for bulk email verification or verify individual email verification. Integrations with top ESPs and CRMs to directly scrub email lists.

› Pricing starts from 4$ for 500 email verifications.

› Features

• 99% accuracy in email verification
• Real-time validation
• 100 free credits
• Integrates with top ESP’s and CRM’s

7. NeverBounce

NeverBounce online email verification adheres to strict ESP guidelines in the list cleaning services to improve deliverability.

NeverBounce’s email list cleaning service offers a custom API that can be embedded in an online form using a JavaScript widget and a webhook for developers.

› Features

• Bulk email verification is achievable for multi-sized lists
• 20+ validity checks
• Integrates with top ESP/CRM
• Instant bounce analysis
• 1000 free verifications for new users

8. Atomic Email Verifier

Atomic Email Verifier is a program, rather than a tool, for checking emails for existence in an endless mode. It does not require extra payments; as a result, you get a clean email database that can be exported in any format. It is a program perfect for newbies in email marketing or those who just want to try how email validation can improve their results.

› Features

• Correct spelling of email according to the RFC registration;
• Domain existence.
• The response of the SMTP mail server.
• The variety of export and import formats options.
• Free trial version for new users.

9. Aero Leads

If you are struggling with a high bounce rate, lower deliverability, and thus falling click-through rates? Well, AeroLeads can be one possible solution to all the above problems. With the inbuilt feature of bounce analysis, it can suggest to you whether the email list needs to be cleaned or not.

Further, upload your CSV/xlsx file and get a clean list with a 99% deliverability rate. With just one click and get a saturated bulk list within seconds. With additional features such as detecting abuse accounts, fake domains, spam trapping, and disposable emails make AeroLeads one of the best email validation software.

The user is allowed to append personal data and IP related information for improved cleaning purposes. It uses an SMTP verification system which comes along with an email address syntax checker.

› Pricing starts from $49 for 1,000 email validations.

› Features

• Email list cleaning with 99% deliverability rate.
• Bulk features.
• Detects fake domains, abuse accounts, spam trapping.
• SMTP verification system.

10. Zero Bounce

ZeroBounce email validation system is designed to protect your sender reputation for email marketing by pulling out the inactive, invalid and junk, email addresses. This tool will help you in removing invalid addresses, identifying spam domains, preventing bounces, and improving deliverability.

This email list cleaning service also detects and removes known abuse and spam trap emails, temporary addresses, invalid, toxic, and catch-all domains. With this email validator, you can identify disposable email accounts, used to mask genuine email addresses, as can addresses which will bounce if emailed.

This email verifying service helps to reduce the bounce rate of the emails that are sent during the email marketing campaigns. This tool can also let you verify single and/or bulk email addresses at once.

This email verifier facilitates the upload of contact and subscriber email lists in TXT, CSV, or XLSX file format, and verification results can be downloaded as a CSV file. The user can either upload the data manually Users can upload data manually, or connect ZeroBounce through API to integrate email validation with their software.

Conclusion

Be it cost-saving or better analytics, from the reduction in email bounces to lesser complaints, email verification benefits are multiple and meaningful. Successful marketers know this and always make sure they use cleaned lists. But choosing the right tool for you is equally important.