What is email address validation?
Email address validation checks each address in your mailing list before sending. It confirms that addresses are correctly formatted, exist, and can receive mail. This helps you remove invalid, risky, or low-quality addresses to improve deliverability.
Supported capabilities
The service combines multiple detection mechanisms for high accuracy:
|
Supported capabilities |
Description |
Purpose |
|
RFC-compliant address check |
Validates email address syntax against RFC 5322 (Internet Message Format). |
Blocks addresses with format errors such as |
|
Typo check |
Detects typos through contextual analysis and dictionary matching, such as |
Catches input errors to avoid sending to non-existent addresses and reduce bounce rate. |
|
MX record existence check |
Verifies that the email domain has a Mail Exchange (MX) record configured. |
Prevents sending to domains without a mail server. |
|
Free email detection |
Identifies addresses from free email providers such as Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, qq.com, or 163.com. |
Distinguishes corporate from personal addresses for B2B validation scenarios. |
|
Disposable address check |
Checks whether an address uses a temporary (disposable) mailbox. |
Prevents spam registrations and fake accounts, improving sign-up quality. |
|
Catch-all address |
Identifies addresses on catch-all domains, where the server accepts all emails regardless of whether the specific mailbox exists. |
Avoids sending to invalid catch-all mailboxes, improving accuracy and reducing waste. Some service providers with catch-all domains include qq.com, mail.ru, and Microsoft 365 mailboxes (depending on whether the catch-all feature is enabled for the domain). |
|
The following features currently support detection for selected ESPs only, such as Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, Tencent, Netease, iCloud, Proton, Zoho, GMX, Web.de, Mail.com, Mail.ru, Kakao, Naver, Nate, GoDaddy, Namecheap, Yandex, Mimecast, Proofpoint, Barracuda, Cisco, Trend Micro, and Symantec. Support for other ESPs will be added later. |
||
|
SMTP probe |
Simulates an SMTP interaction to verify whether an address is valid. |
Confirms whether the mailbox exists and can receive emails. Identifies hard bounces (user not found) and some soft bounces (mailbox full or disabled), significantly reducing bounce rate. |
|
Spam trap check |
Detects recycled spam trap addresses to prevent triggering anti-spam mechanisms. |
Prevents blacklisting by email providers caused by sending to spam traps. |
For supported ESPs, the validation may still return `Unknown`. This can happen because of insufficient system resources or an error from the recipient's server. Records with an `Unknown` result are not billed.
Usage
The address validation service is available primarily through API, enabling integration into your existing systems and workflows. The API returns real-time validation results and supports single and batch validation.
You can also validate addresses in the Address validation in the console.
API operations and examples: How to use the email address validation API operation?
Pricing
Each validated address counts as one check. Addresses with an `Unknown` result are not counted. Each Direct Mail instance includes a free trial of 10 checks.
To purchase the service, go to the Direct Mail console. On the Overview page, find the Email Validity Check section and click Purchase Service.
Pricing:
|
Specification (Number) |
Total Price (CNY) |
|
10,000 |
300 |
|
30,000 |
750 |
|
50,000 |
1,000 |
|
100,000 |
1,500 |
|
200,000 |
2,600 |
|
500,000 |
5,000 |
|
1,000,000 |
8,000 |
Email address statuses returned by the validation are described in Validate email addresses.