There are three email marketing non-negotiables—warmups, using automation tools, and email verification. Warmups protect your domain and improve deliverability, automation helps you scale, and email verification pre-qualifies leads before running campaigns.
If you’ve ever bought a list online or used lead finder tools to get emails, you need to verify it. According to studies, 22.71% of email lists decay yearly. That can seriously affect deliverability.
This applies to any campaign, whether it's cold emails, follow-ups, or newsletters. Luckily for marketers, there are hundreds of verification tools to choose from from.
We’re here to help you find which one fits your business best! By the end of this guide, you’ll understand the following:
- What are email verification tools
- What to look for in an email verification tool
- 14 paid and free best email verification tools going in 2024
- Limitations of free email verifiers
- Email verification best practices
What is an Email Verification Tool?
Most email verification tools work the same—they check if an email in your list is active and can be sent an email to. What differs is how they validate an email.
Validation typically starts with syntax checks. Algorithms compare emails against valid email address structures—user names, address signs, subdomains, or top-level domains.
Next, it compares your list against known blacklist lists, bots, or spam traps. Then, it checks your domain’s mail exchanger (MX) record (if mail servers accept emails from your domain).
Finally, an SMTP protocol pings the email service providers of the contacts in your list. If the mail server receives the ping, it responds with “OK,” “Doesn’t exist,” or “Disabled.”
But, there are still discrepancies, sometimes large ones, between email verification tools. Some can check a list and say 90% are valid; another can check the same list and say it’s 70% valid.
So, what should we look for when choosing an email verification tool?
What to Look for in an Email Verification Tool?
The best email verification tools must excel in the following criteria—accuracy, speed, pricing, integration, support, and security. Here’s a closer look at each factor:
Accuracy
The top email verifiers boast a 95-99% validation accuracy. It’s the standard since most follow the same validation process. The issue is some email verification tools don’t include catch-all filters.
Catch-All Email Identification
Catch-all emails are accounts used by multiple people. Think of [email protected], [email protected], or [email protected]. For example, if you sent an email to [email protected] but the correct address was [email protected], your email can be redirected to [email protected] instead.
Sending to addresses like these can hurt your deliverability rates. It can also have strong email firewalls like Baraccuda that can automatically send your emails to spam or blacklist your entire domain.
Speed
You’d ideally want a tool that can verify around 10,000 emails within 4-40 minutes. But some tools can verify 100,000 emails within 30-78 minutes. For example, MillionVerifier can validate 1,000,000 emails within 6 hours.
Email verification is fast, but it’s never instant. There’s a lot of back-and-forth pinging between your tool and email providers, so verification can take time, especially when verifying in bulk.
Bulk Verification Capabilities
Most free verification tools have limited features, and bulk verification isn’t one of them. These tools can validate emails individually, but you want the ability to verify in bulk.
Your email verification tool should allow you to upload a CSV or spreadsheet of your email list, enabling you to scale email campaigns in the future.
Integration
Remember that a verification tool is an entirely different product/service. You need to switch between apps constantly when running a campaign.
So, ensure you use a verification tool that integrates with your CRM and email marketing tool to streamline the sales process.
For example, after uploading your CSV and completing validation, integration allows you to send the validated list to your email marketing tool, enabling you to run campaigns instantly.
10 Best Free and Paid Email Verification Tools For 2024
Here are our recommendations for the top 14 paid and free email verification tools that can help you improve deliverability rates and scale campaigns.
Instantly B2B Lead Finder
Although it’s not an email verification tool, Instantly's B2B Lead Finder provides users with pre-verified leads, streamlining the entire sales process.
No more switching between apps, clunky integration setups, and expensive third-party services. B2B Lead Finder gives users all the tools needed to find the right leads for your business.
Key benefits for users:
- Access to over 160 million verified B2B leads around the world
- Advanced search filters to pinpoint buyer personas and ICPs
- Ability to immediately start campaigns after building an email list
- Find leads similar to clients using the “Lookalikes” feature
- Intuitive with an easy learning curve
Pricing:
- Growth Leads: $37.9/mo
- 1000 Verified Leads Monthly
- Only Pay For Verified Leads
- Advanced Filters
- Keywords + Lookalike Domains
- Enrichment + Domain Search
- HyperLeads: $169.3/mo
- All features of the Growth Leads plan
- 10,000 verified leads monthly
MillionVerifier
MillionVerifier is one of the most popular verification tools in the market, and for good reason. It’s simple, affordable, and has zero fluff in its features and services.
If you’re not using B2B Finder to get pre-verified lead lists, you can use alternatives like Apollo or buy from lead sellers. Once you have the list, just upload and MillionVerifier does its thing.
Key benefits for users:
- Affordable and flexible pricing options based on the number of emails you need verified
- Fast verification runtime (4 to 49 minutes for 10,000 emails)
- Ability to block/disable temporary emails from lists
- Integrations to 17 major marketing platforms/CRMs
- Automated email verification
Pricing:
- $37 for 10,000 verification credits (never expires)
- Email Checker
- Email List Cleaning
- Bulk Email Verification
- ESP Integrations Import
- Email Verification API
- The more emails you want to be verified, the cheaper the price-per-verification ($389 for 1 million emails = $0.000389 per verification)
Reoon
Reoon is another solid email verification tool. It’s fast, costs less than MillionVerifier, and has been known to be more accurate, according to our community of email marketers.
Users are promised a 99% email accuracy when validating. They can also see an in-depth report on the precise condition of your email list.
Key benefits for users:
- Temporary email detection
- Automatic email categorization
- Spamtrap detection
- Intuitive user interface
- Multiple server setup for faster email validation time
Pricing:
- Free Tier:
- Single/bulk email verification.
- Email list verification.
- Live API validation (0.5 Seconds).
- Totally free. No credit card is required.
- Verify up to 600 emails per month.
- Free 100 instant credits included.
- Lifetime Credits: $12 for 10,000 credits
- Single/bulk email verification.
- Email list verification.
- Live API validation (0.5 Seconds).
- Starts from $11.90 only (10k credits).
- As low as $0.0007 per verification.
- Daily Credits: $9/mo
- Single/bulk email verification.
- Email list verification.
- Live API validation (0.5 Seconds).
- 500 daily credits
- Renew credits daily (15,000 credits/mo)
Neverbounce
Just from the name, you already know that Neverbounce helps users run campaigns with email lists that never bounce. The best part is that they stake their reputation on it.
If your list was verified and more than 3% of the verified emails bounced, you receive a refund for the difference. Similarly, Instantly B2B Finder also gets credit refunds for non-verifed leads.
Key benefits for users:
- One of the fastest verification times (10K emails in 3 minutes)
- 99.9% email verification accuracy
- Responsive customer support
- Centralized data for email marketing teams and other departments
Neverbounce has a pay-as-you-go model. The more leads you want verified, the lower the price. Here’s how it’s broken down.
Pricing:
- up to 10,000: $0.008
- up to 100,000: $0.005
- up to 250,000: $0.004
- up to 1,000,000: $0.003
Debounce
Debounce flips the script in how they sell their service. While others lock better features behind higher-tiered plans, Debounce has every feature available to users regardless of the plan.
If you want something with no setup costs and no strings attached, Try out Debounce. Here are some of the main features you can expect.
Key user benefits:
- Disposable Email Checker
- Catch-All Domain Checker
- Syntax eliminator
- Automated duplicate email remover
- Domain, MTA, and SMPT validation
Just like Neverbounce, Debounce also uses a pay-as-you-go payment scheme.
Pricing:
- $10: 5,000 verifications
- $15: 10,000 verifications
- $90: 100,000 verifications
- $140: 200,000 verifications
- $500: 1,000,000 verifications
Kickbox
Kickbox is a solid email verification tool that utilizes its proprietary Sendex™ Score to ensure the validity of your email list.
It can do everything from a simple domain check and has advanced features like role address identification. Your credit gets refunded if Kickbox isn’t certain of an email address’s status.
Key user benefits:
- Disposable domain checker
- Role address identification
- Syntax and Typo issue detection
- Accept-all detector
- Free trial of 100 verifications
Pricing:
- 100 email verifications: Free
- 500 email verifications: $5
- 1,000 email verifications: $10
- 2,500 email verifications: $25
- 5,000 email verifications: $40
- 10,000 email verifications: $80
Zerobounce
Zerobounce is an email verification tool with an interface that greets newcomers and non-tech-savvy marketers with open arms thanks to its user-friendly interface.
But don’t let the user-friendly interface fool you. It also has killer features, including email scoring, a built-in email finder, and sender reputation monitoring.
Key user benefits:
- 99% email verification accuracy
- 24/7 customer support
- High-speed email validation (100,000 validations done in 45 minutes)
- Military-grade data encryption
Pricing:
- From 2,000 emails/mo: $0.0075/credit
- From 5,000 emails/mo: $0.007/credit
- From 10,000 emails/mo: $0.0064/credit
- From 25,000 emails/mo: $0.006/credit
- From 100,000 emails/mo: $0.0035/credit
- From 250,000 emails/mo: $0.00255/credit
- From 1,000,000 emails/mo: $0.00191/credit
Bouncer
Security and compliance is necessary when validating emails. Luckily, Bouncer has that down pat with its SOC2 and GDPR compliance.
On top of validation, Bouncer provides users with a blacklist notification tool. Now you can figure out which email provider blacklisted your domains.
Key user benefits:
- High email verification accuracy
- Automatic data deletion for unused lists
- Development support for advanced use cases
- Enterprise-level features (for higher pricing tiers)
Pricing:
- Free trial for every plan
- Pay-as-you-go payment scheme
- Apprentice: $40/mo.
- 10,000 email verifications
- Adept: $200-$625/mo
- 50,000-250,000 email verifications
- Master: $1000/mo.
- 500,000 email verifications
Custom pricing options, including 1 million email verifications, custom processing set-ups, and dedicated account management, are also available for enterprises.
MailChecker
MailChecker boasts an impressive 98% accuracy for its email validations. It also has automated and real-time verification features that update your lists when you add new leads.
What’s more impressive is the addition of analytics tools that provide insight into campaigns and offer solutions to fix authentication issues that might pop up.
Key user benefits:
- Email content checker (checks for spam words in your email copy, broken links, or missing file attributes)
- Real-time email verification
- Multi-layer verification process
- Zapier integrations
Pricing:
- Free plan: 200 credits
- $10: 1,000 credits
- $80: 10,000 credits
- $160: 20,000 credits
- $300: 50,000 credits
Emailable
Emailable is another user-friendly email verification tool with a 99% validation accuracy. It’s best known for bulk validations, custom settings, and list enrichment features. You can even monitor deliverability metrics to ensure your campaigns run smoothly.
Key benefits for users:
- 99% email verification accuracy
- Bulk email verification
- User-friendly interface
- Role-based email address detection
- Deliverability metrics
Pricing: Emailable has a pay-as-you-go pricing model, but validation is expensive due to the number of user features available.
Pricing starts at $30 for 5,000 credits, $40 gives you 10,000 credits. There’s also a monthly plan for 5,000 credits per month for $25.5.
Key Takeaways
Email verification tools are essential in every email marketing campaign. They ensure the highest deliverability rates, protect our sending accounts, and reduce bounce rates.
So, when you’re choosing which email verification tool to get, consider the following:
- Find an email verification tool with high validation accuracy (95-99%)
- Use a validation tool that includes catch-all email identification features
- Validation tools should be able to validate emails in bulk
- Integrations with CRMs/Email tools are necessary to streamline the sales process
Email verification tools are great! But they do take a lot of work to learn and master. But if you want something that you can learn in a few clicks and is integrated into one of the best email tools, look no further than Instantly B2B Finder! Start finding pre-verified B2B Leads for your next email campaign today!