Email verification is an important but often overlooked step in the process of email marketing. Email validation lookups prevent invalid and incorrect email addresses from ending up on your mailing list, taking up valuable space and potentially increasing your bounce rate, and harming your sender reputation.
What is Bulk Email Verification?
Bulk email verification is the process of uploading your entire email list to an online reverse lookup service, which examines the list and either removes invalid addresses or returns a readout that allows you to find and remove the invalid address yourself.
With a rapidly growing market, Bulk email verification helps you detect disposable email addresses, free email addresses, spam traps, blacklists, emails with typos and syntax errors, and other undeliverable addresses.
Benefits of Bulk Email Verification
Performing bulk validation on your email list will improve your deliverability and increase your sender reputation. When your email marketing provider attempts to deliver to an address that cannot receive emails, it causes hard bounces, which hurt your deliverability score.
Enough hard bounces and undelivered emails will cause email service providers to mark you as a spammer, and your emails will not make it to users’ inboxes.
The best time to do email verification is at the moment that a user signs up for your email list. This prevents the bad emails from ever making it onto your list. However, it’s also important to do periodic bulk validation of the email addresses on your list.
We took a look at the best bulk email validation and verification tools for 2023 in terms of features, price, customer support, integrations, and ease of use.
Best Bulk Email Validators for 2023
We evaluated these email verification tools across a range of criteria, including feature set, pricing, compatibility, ease of use, customer support, free trial availability, and customer reviews.
Let’s dive in!
NeverBounce – Best Overall
NeverBounce primarily does bulk email verification and real-time verification. They don’t have a lot of additional features geared toward marketing, which means their verification service is focused and high-quality. They guarantee 99.9% accuracy and also offer instant bounce analysis to help you understand the health of your email list.
NeverBounce is one of the most trusted and widely known names in email verification and marketing services. They’ve been providing their services to over 100,000 clients since 2014, including Harvard, Dell, and Uber.
As with any service, NeverBounce is not perfect, and its cost may be prohibitive for small businesses. The features offered may also be too much for those looking for a quick and easy solution. We recommend it for enterprise users and those with extremely large email lists.
Pros
- High accuracy, targeted service
- Recognized and trusted name
- Easy to use
Cons
- The price is high compared to most others
Customer Reviews
“Neverbounce is the most accurate tool in the market. I have used it many times in the past and was happy with the results. Highly recommended if you want to verify your email list.”
“I wish there was an easy-to-use Chrome extension to verify emails quickly. This feature would allow me to confirm emails without switching tabs. Aside from this, the tool is easy to use and understand.”
“The User interface and experience of NeverBounce are good! One can rely on the “Clean My List ” feature to obtain a good clean list and keep the bounce rate to a minimum!”
Pricing and Usage Limits
NeverBounce offers pay-as-you-go and monthly pricing. You’ll get 1000 free credits when you request a demo, and then pricing starts at $0.008 per email for up to 10K emails, and up to $0.003 per email for up to 1,000,000 emails. Automated cleaning starts at $10/month for 1000 emails.
Best for: Overall bulk email verification
DeBounce – Best for Price
DeBounce is easy-to-use and offers both bulk and real-time verification. The email checker can find catch-all, disposable email addresses, spam traps, invalid emails, and more. It can also do data enrichment by finding email addresses for contact information you provide or finding names, etc when provided with an email address.
DeBounce is cheaper than other options on this list, while still maintaining reasonable accuracy and speed. It uses anti-greylisting technology to prevent IP blocking and has integrations with over 100 other services. We highly recommend it for those looking for a reliable service at a very low price point.
Pros
- Low-cost: plans start at just $10/month for 5000 emails
- Many integrations with other services
- Also handles email data enrichment
Cons
- Some users report that it is slow
Customer Reviews
“It’s the cheapest out there that actually works. It cleaned my email and reduced my bounce rate incredibly.”
“The program got stuck for a few hours in the middle of the process.”
“I love how easy Debounce is to use. The results are great so you can rely on them. You don’t want to send emails that are spam traps, bounces, or catch-all emails. If you have a list of emails that you need to validate, then you need an easy way to validate hundreds or thousands at a time.”
Pricing and Usage Limits
DeBounce offers only pay-as-you-go pricing, which starts at $0.002 per email for up to 5000 emails. Pricing drops even lower at you verify more addresses, with 5 million verifications costing just $0.0003 per email. They offer 100 free credits at signup.
Best for: price
AbstractAPI – Best for Beginners
AbstractAPI’s free email verification API is a simple interface that allows you to upload a CSV bulk email list for validation or offers a REST endpoint that can be accessed from any online app or website. The email validation API is free to use for life, with up to 100 emails per month. Check out their bulk email validation tutorial.
AbstractAPI handles catch-all servers, spam traps, typos and invalid addresses, SMTP verification, MX record verification, and blacklist checking. It will also help you detect duplicate emails.
AbstractAPI has minimal features and is reported to be among the least accurate options on the list. For this reason, we don’t recommend it for enterprise users – however, for those just getting started with email verification, or devs looking to implement a quick and easy solution into a demo app or testing environment, AbstractAPI is a solid option.
Pros
- Free to use for life
- Easy to get started and great for quick testing
- Monthly subscription pricing
Cons
- Customer support is not dedicated or easy to find
- Accuracy can be low
Customer Reviews
“Love the simplicity and the pre-built code snippets.”
“More than 40% of emails are still bouncing after verification and charged me for 3 Months even after I don’t want to use their service.”
“Lots of beneficial tools here that every maker should be bookmarking and using.”
Pricing and Usage Limits
AbstractAPI offers 100 free credits. From there, plans start at $9/month for 5000 emails per month and range up to $499/month for up to 750,000 verifications per month.
Best for: beginners and testing
ZeroBounce – Best for Features and Add-Ons
Like NeverBounce, ZeroBounce is a well-known and highly reputable email list verification service used by top companies like TripAdvisor and AllState. They offer all the usual email verification tools: spam trap checking, blacklist checking, MX records, etc., and also top-level security with GDPR, SOC2, and PCI compliance.
Besides their email list cleaning tool, they also offer data enrichment and demographic data and have a social-media add-on that helps you track and verify customers across multiple channels. They have integrations with 45 other platforms.
While the platform can feel overwhelming for beginners, ZeroBounce is an excellent option for businesses or individuals who have some previous experience with email marketing and are looking to up their game to the next level.
Pros
- Very secure
- Recognized and trusted name
- Data-driven add-ons and features
Cons
- Can be slow at times
- The platform can feel overwhelming for beginners
Customer Reviews
“I like using ZeroBounce because it’s super easy to use. The reported results are segmented into separate spreadsheets and are straightforward and easy to understand. The results also include any data ZeroBounce has gathered on each contact in the past. Finally, the cost is more than competitive.”
“The only thing I dislike about ZeroBounce is the need to purchase credits ahead of time. I want to be able to upload the contact list and be presented with the cost of cleaning the list.”
“The best I like about ZeroBounce is that it utilizes advanced algorithms and real-time email address verification checkups to guarantee the maximum level of accuracy and reliability.”
Pricing and Usage Limits
ZeroBounce’s pricing is straightforward, with pay-as-you-go and monthly plans available. A monthly plan starts at $15/month for up to 2000 emails and increases to $1910/month for up to 1 million emails. Pay-as-you-go pricing starts at $0.008 per email for up to 2000 emails.
Best for: features and add-ons
MailerCheck- Best for Comprehensive Email Marketing
MailerCheck is provided by MailerLite, one of the top email marketing campaign providers. You can include MailerCheck as an add-on to your existing MailerLite subscription. The email validation tool guarantees 98% accuracy, which is on par with top-tier services like NeverBounce.
MailerCheck also has a handy inbox-testing tool that lets you test the effectiveness of your campaigns. It detects issues like spammy words, broken links, and missing file attributes and allows you to test the content of your emails and evaluate analytics. MailerCheck is an excellent choice if you‘re looking for a comprehensive solution for all your email marketing needs.
Pros
- Provided by MailerLite, a recognized name in email marketing
- Allows you to test email content
- Guarantees 98% accuracy
Cons
- Automation workflows can be limiting
- Pricey
Customer Reviews
“Quick to implement and easy to use. Even the most inexperienced users can use this tool with ease.”
“The only thing that can be better is to allow users that are on a monthly subscription to transfer contacts from one month to the other if they don’t use them all.”
“Instant integration with MailerLite and can start using the tool right away.”
Pricing and Usage Limits
MailerCheck offers simple pay-as-you-go pricing. For email verification, pricing starts at $10 for 1000 email checks (around $0.01 per email.) For email deliverability testing, monthly plans start at $125/month.
Best for: comprehensive email marketing
Clearout – Best for Reliability
Clearout offers email validation, client prospecting, data enrichment, and more. The service is trusted by thousands of companies including Adobe and InMobi and is compliant with GDPR, SOC 2, and PCI.
Clearout can handle up to 1 million emails with their bulk email checker at one time. They have been certified or accredited by multiple institutions for their efficiency and reliability, and their customer service is reported to be excellent. If you’re looking for a service as reputable as NeverBounce or ZeroBounce at a lower price point, Clearout is the way to go.
Pros
- Excellent customer service
- Massively capable bulk email verifier
- REST API for real-time verification
Cons
- Importing many addresses can be taxing
Customer Reviews
“The bulk uploading featured for verifying large contact lists is what drew our team to the software. We often make use of the detailed verification reports to report to our clients why we opt to include or exclude certain contacts from a campaign.”
“I find this tool to be highly user-friendly and effective in filtering out unwanted emails. It’s one of my top five go-to options for finding prospects. I highly recommend it.”
“Due to the sheer amount of contacts that we require to be verified regularly, our team often finds ourselves having to purchase more credits. Options for larger credit amounts would solve this.”
Pricing and Usage Limits
Clearout offers both pay-as-you-go and monthly pricing plans. Their one-time payment plans start at $21 for 3000 credits. Monthly plans start at $58 for 10,000. You can save 20% by signing up for a monthly or annual plan.
Best for: reliability
Hunter – Best for Data Enrichment
Hunter is primarily an email enrichment tool, but they also offer email verification and validation. Their interface is incredibly easy to use and straightforward, and you can get started for free. You don’t even need to create a free account, you can simply access the tools on their homepage.
Their bulk email checker allows you to upload a list of subscribers and returns a clean email list without invalid email addresses, syntax errors, etc. They also provide a data enrichment tool. If you need to find email addresses for cold-reach campaigns and lead generation in addition to verifying those addresses, Hunter is an excellent option.
Pros
- Easy to get started
- Clean and intuitive UI
- Data Enrichment
Cons
- Pricey
Customer Reviews
“I love how easy it is to use the Chrome extension and find emails for a particular domain that are unavailable on the website. This is helpful for anyone working in a field requiring email outreach. One click and voila! You get a bunch of emails along with the department they are in.”
“As good as it is, you won’t be able to get emails from every site – so yea, it can fail sometimes. But that is to be expected; no tool can offer a 100% success rate.”
“I use it for sales campaigns. Email verifier and Email finder come in very handy whenever I upload bulk leads. Also, the option to follow up in the same thread just by keeping the subject line blank is something I like.”
Pricing and Usage Limits
Hunter has a free plan that allows for up to 25 data enrichment searches and 50 verifications per month. From there, plans start at $49/month for 500 searches and 1000 verifications and range up to $499/month for 50,000 searches and 100,000 verifications.
Best for: data enrichment
Best Bulk Email Verification Tools: Side-by-Side Comparison
| Provider | Free credits | Real-time verification | Data enrichment | Best For | Price for basic plan |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
NeverBounce | 1000 | X | X | Best overall | $0.008 up to 10K emails |
DeBounce | 100 | X | Price | $0.002 up to 5K emails | |
AbstractAPI | 1000 | X | Beginners and testing | $9/month up to 1000 emails | |
ZeroBounce | 100 | X | Features and add-ons | $0.008 up to 2K emails | |
MailerCheck | 100 | X | Email marketing | $10 for 1000 emails | |
Clearout | 100 | X | X | Reliability | $21 for 3000 emails |
Hunter | 50 per month | X | X | Data enrichment | $49 for 1000 verifications and 500 searches |
Conclusion
At the end of the day, choosing the right bulk email verification tool will come down to the service’s accuracy, ease of use, customer service, and price. Which one of these factors you choose to prioritize will depend on your specific needs, budget, and use case.
For those customers needing an easy-to-use interface at a reasonable price, we recommend DeBounce or AbstractAPI. For businesses requiring high accuracy, reliability, and excellent customer service, and who can afford to spend a little more, we recommend NeverBounce or ZeroBounce. If you’re looking for a complete solution to handle all your email marketing needs, go with something like MailerCheck in conjunction with Mailerlite.
FAQs
How do I bulk verify emails?
There are many services and tools online that allow you to verify a bulk email list. Simply upload your list in the accepted format (usually a CSV file) and the tool will run a check on the provided emails that looks for things like typos, invalid email addresses, syntax errors, MX records, blacklist emails, spam traps, and disposable email addresses. When the verification process is complete, the service will return a file with the targeted emails removed or marked for removal.
How does bulk email verification help improve email deliverability and reduce bounce rates?
Bulk email verification removes addresses from your list that might cause hard bounces, or that might result in spam complaints. These two issues are the main culprits of email list problems. By removing invalid and undeliverable addresses from your list you are preventing email service providers from marking you as a potential spammer.
What are the top bulk email verification services available in the market?
Some of the top email verification service providers include NeverBounce, ZeroBounce, DeBounce, Bouncer, Hunter, MailerCheck, and Clearout.
How often should I verify my email list to maintain its quality?
It’s recommended that you verify and clean your email list at least once every six months to maintain a healthy delivery rate. Make sure to remove all subscribers who are not opening or checking your emails, and definitely remove any invalid addresses, spam traps, etc.
Experienced software engineers and avid supporters of the developer community, specializing in APIs.
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