Selecting an email verifier tool might be very challenging, as this market is quite crowded. Some providers will offer their services for free, however, there might be additional risks in using such. In this article we would advise you as of why using zero cost verification might be very risky for your business, and give you a few tips on how to select the best email verifier for your needs.
Free verification tools might not be your best possible pick!
First of all, you have to understand that infrastructure behind email verification, generates costs, therefore if someone is offering to provide you with their service for free, they might use some other ways of bringing income to their businesses. Most common is stealing and selling on your email database. They would collect your requests, and pull all the deliverable/risky emails out of your data, to create lists, that later they resell to others. Additionally, the verification process itself might not be of high quality. They might either use some dodgy technologies, store your data in unsecured places, where others might have access to your emails, or use some spammy verification techniques. Your results may not even be accurate! Overall you could end up with some incorrectly verified emails, that are now also being emailed by those that decided to use purchased emails lists.
Even though free email validators use some bad practises, the market is still full of trustworthy and decent providers. And such don’t have to be associated with expensive pricing. Email verification can be affordable but robust at the same time, with costs as low as $0.70 per 1000 email addresses! Additionally, some providers offer trial periods or free credits, so you can test the solution before purchasing a larger amount. Like Bouncer, where you receive 100 free credits, once registered.
How to select your email verifier?
Finding the best provider might be tricky, but below you will find a few tips on what to look for in your email verifier, and what additional steps you can take to verify their credibility and trustworthiness:
- Security and privacy policy – conduct research to find what measures do they take to keep your and your clients’ data safe. Look for information as of where is your data being stored, what infrastructure do they use to verify emails and how do they prevent a data breach. If applicable for your country, investigate their GDPR compliance.
- Pricing – you don’t need to go for the most expensive solution on the market, to get the best results, however, if something is too cheap to be true, it should raise a red flag straight away. Compare pricing lists of different providers, and find out which features are included.
- Support – before making a purchase, always check the support response time! Use their chat, or email the support team with some questions, and measure how long it will take them to reply. If someone is taking longer than one business day, avoid! You might need help, especially at the beginning of your verification journey, so make sure you will be able to receive it!
- Accuracy – most of the providers does state somewhere on their web what is their overall accuracy, but the best way to validate that is to actually register an account and test the solution. You can run the same sample list with a few providers and then compare the results.
- Testimonials – it is also worth to check if any testimonials or other customer proof is visible on the website. Find out who is using it, and what do they have to say about it. You might even want to get in contact with some, to verify if those testimonials are in fact real.
- Team, about us section – are there any names behind the product that you are going to pay for? It is a great way to check if the people that build and run the tool, are available for example on LinkedIn.
- Reviews – if after looking at the website of verification provider, you still feel unsure if you could trust them, check the reviews websites! G2 Crowd or Capterra might be a good starting point – is the tool listed there, are there any opinions available? It is a good practice to see if the reviews are written by verified users.
Bouncer – your free email verification sampling
It might be slightly overwhelming, but it is a necessary process of selecting the most suitable tool for your needs. Although it is safe to skip free email verifiers, you can now verify a sample of your list completely free of charge, with Bouncer! Bouncer allows you to test the quality of your list, without actually verifying it! Just simply upload your list and the free sampling will start – within a few minutes you will receive a result (based on a randomly selected sample of your list). Bouncer will advise you if you should proceed with your email verification, or if your list is actually pretty clean and safe to send to! This will help you reduce some cost, time and energy, but keep your deliverability high!
Wrapping up
By combining all of the above, you will be able to find yourself a decent, accurate and legitimate verification platform, that won’t cost you an arm and leg, but at the same time will keep your data safe! We are proud to say that Bouncer is exactly that type of tool – robust and reliable but affordable – simply sign up, and see for yourself!
Izabela is a leading contributor to the Bouncer’s blog. She is inspired to help companies all around the world to get emails into their recipients’ inboxes
