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Ask HN: Has anyone ever used an email validation API?

13 points by federiconitidi ↗ HN
Title says it all, pretty boring topic but hey :) Have you ever implemented apis to perform SMTP email validation?

I'm talking about those services generally used to clean CRM from inactive/expired emails, helping to reduce bounce rates and keep a good deliverability. Example of providers are BriteVerify, DataValidation, NeverBounce, etc.

I’m doing a little market research and was curious to hear about use cases, volume of email verified in your situation, general developer feedback.

Thanks & enjoy your we!

11 comments

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twunde
I worked at one company that used them (after a domain was disabled for high bounce rate). We found that most of the invalid emails were from transcription errors, typically typos in yahoo.com, gmail.com etc. Most don't catch the none@email.com type of errors, although frankly those are easy enough to validate yourself. My general feeling is that if you're collecting emails electronically you don't need it, but if the email list is created via someone doing data entry for paper records, then they're helpful.
federiconitidi
Thanks for sharing, that's a great point! Do you remember what volumes of email were dealing with/ validating roughly?
DarthGhandi
I wish there was some sort of way to keep this sweet, sweet, hn knowledge for later rather than relearning it years down the line.
federiconitidi
Totally, sorry if this was asked before. Do you have any experience implementing such a validation too?
alam2000
Do you have any issue with the ESP for high bounced rate? If yes, then cleansing is a good way to recover from it.

Otherwise, your list is just fine and you do not need to have email validation.

federiconitidi
Thanks, that’s true howver I’ve found that For example in b2b (target audience professionals in mid market companies) the “lifespan” of an email address is no more than 2 years. People change jobs all the time. So I’m wondering if someone implemented a cleansing api in a more continuous way for regular validation
zhte415
Sure, this could be a critical customer requirement.

Use case: A client has signed up for a service and is paying to receive a report. In this case, they receive a link to download. No tracking embedded in emails.

Verification: 2 review cases. Monthly review.

Case 1: Email bounces from server.

Case 2: Email doesn't bounce but not checking report.

In both cases, sales/customer service get in contact with the customer.

For Case 1, to check an appropriate email address (client contact leaving, mailbox full/disused, etc).

For Case 2, largely to check if reporting can be more useful (i.e. actually look at the report) which can result in interesting ideas about better integrating into their workflow/needs, though spam-whitelisting is also sometimes a factor here.

I tried the links you provided with an email address on my personal domain that I know not to be deliverable, and it was reported as deliverable.

federiconitidi
Interesting use case, have you seen this adopted in practice in your experience? Also, what validation provider did you use for your test?
zhte415
Yes, it was implemented globally after being trialed in a region. It should be standard practice but I know a lot of peers that don't do it.

Was implemented internally, using internal APIs, basically API'd logs. I'd call it less a test than as being part of client workflow/relationship management.

piadsurvey
validation Api, nice argument i would read more about that
federiconitidi
Thanks, thought it was perhaps a little boring - but useful! These services are typically based on creating a smtp handshake with the receiving server to check for the existence of the address before sending. Works with most receiving providers