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Every address is checked before the first email

Before the first email to someone, we ask their mail server whether the address exists and can get mail. Nothing is sent to find out. You get one of four answers, and the reason.

Ask for access

For now we open each account by hand and answer by email. If your mail app doesn't open, write to us at [email protected].

What it does

The answer is Valid, Risky, Couldn't tell or Invalid, with one sentence on why. Valid addresses get the first email. Invalid ones get nothing. Risky ones, and ones we couldn't tell about, wait until you let them through.

A check is evidence, not permission. An address can stop working the next day, and a check never takes anyone off your suppression list.

When we can't tell, we say so. We never turn a missing answer into a verdict.

Example: six addresses from Sam's list of cafés.

How it works

  1. Add contacts. A new address is checked on its own, unless you switch that off for an import. A campaign checks its leads before their first email anyway.

  2. First we look the domain up in DNS, the internet's address book. A domain that can't get mail ends the check here, at no cost.

  3. Then we ask the address's mail server ourselves, from a machine that never sends mail. We say who is writing and who the mail is for, and stop before any message. Servers that answer honestly settle it here.

  4. Some servers give the same answer for every address. Large providers such as Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL and iCloud are among them, so their answer tells us nothing. For those we ask a paid checking service.

  5. You get the answer and its reason, in your language. The answer stays fresh for 30 days.

What you control

What a campaign does with doubt
Risky addresses, and ones we couldn't tell about, wait by default. Two switches, one for each, let a first email go to them.
Let one address through
If you know an address gets mail, say so on the lead, and its first email goes.
Switch the automatic check off
The switch is on the import. A campaign still checks its leads before their first email.
Check again
Ask for a new check any time. Within 24 hours you get the last answer back, at no cost.
Another tool's answer
An import can carry another tool's check. We keep it as that tool's, never as ours.
When the checks run out
Each answer counts once toward your plan's checks for the month. When the month is spent, new checks wait on hold, and a hold is never a verdict. If the checking service is down, the check waits too.

Limits

Address checks a month
100 to 10,000, by plan
How long an answer stays fresh
30 days
Asking again
The same answer for 24 hours, at no cost
Addresses in one batch
Up to 50,000
Invalid share of a campaign's list
Warns at 2%, refuses at 4%, from 50 leads

Where to go next