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Ask HN: Registration email confirmation, good or bad?

8 points by adilsaleem ↗ HN
I realize that a lot of people (including myself) get really irritated when they have to confirm their email address upon registration. The email (mostly) goes to the spam/junk and the user gets annoyed and leaves. Plus it doesnt seem to serve any purpose.

I am recently making some updates to my site and I was wondering if its a good idea to remove the email confirmation upon registration. Are there any disadvantages to this approach?

11 comments

[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 36.6 ms ] thread
oldgregg
Keep the confirmation but go ahead and let them into the site... If they haven't clicked the link for a few days send a couple reminders... after a week just disable their account.
pclark
this is what Dopplr does, I like it.
gommm
That's what I do except that I don't disable the account (except in the case of blatant spam) but just forbid the user to upload more than one photo until his email has been confirmed...
adilsaleem
This is what I am currently doing. They can browse the site and need to register to comment/add content. I also plan to add support for OpenID. However, ive had feedback from some people that the two step registration process is very annoying (even if just once).
gstar
It depends. I have an industry website with a very narrow focus, and get about 80% verification rate.

I'm considering dropping email verification, but I believe that 80% I get now is a very good rate.

Biggest thing to consider is your MTA. You have to have SPF at a minimum and domainkeys is getting pretty important too. Outsource your email if you can.

oscardelben
If the user's email is not important for your application, then you could just insert a captcha to prevent spam and remove the email verification.
ROFISH
It depends upon the application. I run a semi-popular forum, so I require email addresses to keep the ban evaders, trolls, and spambots out. If you think you're going to have problems with the former two, keep the email requirement. However, if you're not doing a community related thing where everybody has to play nice, like a service app like Basecamp, feel free to not require it.
oscardelben
If there are money involved (I'm thinking about Basecamp), email address should be required.
jwilliams
Are there any disadvantages to this approach?

Only that it's the most common method of recovering or verifying an account if something goes wrong (e.g. forgotten password).

Doesn't necessarily mean it has to be part of registration though.

Have you considered using OpenID? You can get the user's email from that.

jacquesm
It depends. If you have a pre-existing relationship with your users (because of a large free portion of your site) and posting privileges require registration then you'll see a good conversion and people won't mind much. It also helps if you explain why you need their email address, in general I find that is one of the key elements in dealing with users, communicate clearly and frequently.
andhapp
It should not be mandatory to click the like because I do not want to log on to my email and click the link to access the site. They should be allowed to browse the site as a guest and if should be reminded of the link every few days.

oldgregg is bang on target...and I would second his notion.