What is ZeroBounce?

ZeroBounce is one of the best-known email service verification tools.

It checks whether email addresses are valid, active, and capable of receiving messages. Companies can use this software to clean their email lists and remove invalid email addresses.

Since its inception in 2013 and further development, ZeroBounce has gained a solid reputation in the world of email marketing. It can reduce the rate of email bounces, improve sender reputation, avoid spam traps, and overall – make your email campaigns more effective. Its popularity also lies in its intuitive user interface, attractive accuracy, and good customer service.

Or at least, that’s what they say about themselves.

Now, based on the provided information and clients’ reviews, let’s see if that’s still the case in 2024.

Main features

ZeroBounce offers a comprehensive suite of tools and services, not only for email address validation. Here’s a brief overview of what you can expect.

The tool offering includes:

• Services (like email validation, email activity data, email score, DMARC monitor, and email finder)
• API (API overview, email validation API, and email finder API)
• Free tools (such as list evaluator, email verifier, blacklist checker, email send time, and email calculators)

At its core, the platform focuses on an email validation service. Besides this, ZeroBounce offers email activity data, which sheds light on contacts’ engagement levels. The email score feature further enhances this by grading email addresses on their quality and engagement potential.

ZeroBounce also provides a DMARC monitor that protects email domains from unauthorized use, alongside a blacklist monitor that ensures email domains or IPs aren’t blacklisted. In addition, the email finder service helps users expand their contact lists by locating the email addresses of potential leads.

On the technical front, ZeroBounce offers an API overview that opens up its services for integration into custom applications – you will find out more about ZeroBounce API in the following sections.

While ZeroBounce also extends a range of free tools, such as a list evaluator, email verifier, blacklist checker, and various calculators and generators for email send times and risk assessments, you must note that these come with limitations. 

These tools provide a snapshot of ZeroBounce’s capabilities and may not be sufficient if you have more advanced needs for your email campaigns.

And what do clients say about the ZeroBounce features?

They are generally satisfied with them. Some see no drawbacks and love the tool, while others see room for improvement but still like it and make it their preferred choice.

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Although some functions often do not work as they should (it’s a common occurrence, as you will observe in the following reviews), what we see here is mostly satisfied clients who are glad that they can do a lot with one tool for their email marketing campaigns.

Accuracy

Email verification accuracy directly influences the success of email marketing campaigns, and team ZeroBounce prides itself on offering one of the highest levels of accuracy in the industry – at a level of 99%.

What do customers say about it?

Well, although ZeroBounce is a generally recommended tool and has a lot of five-star reviews, they are encountering some challenges regarding accuracy.

This honest review confirms that the accuracy of the results is not as good as the website claims. Contacts rated as valid still bounce back, which causes additional issues.

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Above that, there are problems with terminology and other options, like catch-all emails and Do Not Mails, which are sometimes not scored properly and require manual checking.

Another review highlights accuracy concerns. Some emails are listed as a catch-all bounce when the message is sent to them. As well as that, there are difficulties with spam trap markings. If not for the customer’s perceptiveness, this could have harmed their email campaigns.

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As you can see, accuracy is not as well polished as promised on the website. Customers often have to manually verify the accuracy of the results, which extends the work time and consumes more energy than if they trusted a reliable email software vendor.

Speed of validation

Speed is another critical aspect of every email verification service. Every email software vendor should not only provide accurate but also timely results.

The ZeroBounce platform is designed to process email lists rapidly and wants to help users quickly clean and validate their every email database without significant delays.

 It places a high value on speed, but what does it look like in practice?

As for the speed of the platform and email validation, there are different opinions, too.

For example, here, a customer shares their problems with the slow platform speed when processing large email lists. However, overall, they rate the platform well.

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The case is similar in both reviews below.

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So again: overall, the tool is rated well, but the speed of the platform and validation services are unfortunately different.

ZeroBounce API

ZeroBounce API offers email validation API and email finder API, to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of email marketing campaigns through accurate data validation and enhancement. There is also an API overview.

Here’s more about them.

In the API overview, developers can learn more about how to incorporate ZeroBounce’s features into their own applications or websites.

Email validation API is a tool for checking the validity of email addresses in real-time. It helps users determine whether an email address is correct, active, and able to receive messages.

And the email finder API aids in locating the email addresses of professionals based on their domains or names. This service is geared towards businesses and marketers who need to reach out to potential leads or contacts but lack their email information.

Email validation API and email finder API are available in 13 languages, including PHP, iOS, and Javascript.

Regarding API, there aren’t many reviews yet this year, but we’ve managed to find quite fresh ones. Here, for example, a client found the API documentation to be really great.

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Another client thinks the API is very helpful and has integrated it with various applications.

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If you want to learn more details about ZerBounce API, check out our comprehensive article about ZeroBounce API here.

In spite of this, however, the API solution from ZeroBounce is not as powerful as one might expect. While comprehensive documentation is offered, you can experience, for example:

• imperfect accuracy – the rate is not at 99% but lower, around 98% or, according to some reviews, even less,
• high bounce rates – despite the advanced API, bounce rates can be high, up to 9%,
• difficulties in using – without technical knowledge, it may be difficult for you to work with the API, and you will need a support team whose availability might also vary.

So before you bet on ZeroBounce API, wait until you know Bouncer’s API capabilities in this area. We’ll tell you about it in just a moment, but before that let’s touch on the topic of pricing.

ZeroBounce pricing

ZeroBounce offers pay-as-you-go rates, monthly rates, and subscription packages. You can also build your own monthly toolkit at a custom price. Moreover, you can access 100 credits for a free and freemium subscription plan, but it’s really limited.

ZeroBounce prices are often said to be high, and for good reason.

Take a look at this example: to validate 10,000 email addresses with ZeroBounce, you have to spend as much as $80 in pay-as-you-go rates, or $75 with monthly rates. Meanwhile, at Bouncer, you only have to pay $60 to validate the same number of emails.

So, you see where the savings are.

What do customers say about ZeroBounce pricing in 2024?

Well, it’s not off to a great start.

The following review on Trustpilot says that the service made a subscription for monthly payment without warning, while the client always bought only credits with the required volumes. They also highlighted zero support and assistance from ZerBounce.

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What does the company say about this? The vendor response includes an apology for any confusion, explains how monthly payments work, says the company is not forcing any decisions and encourages contact to clarify the matter.

On the other hand, here we have a simple, honest review (from 2023) that says ZeroBounce is simply more expensive than other tools on the market. What’s more, the accuracy problems are emphasized again. This reduced the software’s rating to four stars.

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But there are also positive opinions about the pricing (and features), which say that for some customers, it is not a high payment for what the tool offers.

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Looking at the prices of the alternatives, ZeroBounce is quite an expensive email marketing tool.

Looking at reviews, ZeroBounce is worth the price for many. They accept that they have to pay more because they appreciate the features.

But what if we told you that you can have a tool even better than ZeroBounce, for a cheaper price?

Yes, that’s possible with Bouncer.

The better Zerobounce alternative – Bouncer

Bouncer is as a worthy alternative to ZeroBounce, offering products like:

• email list verification so you can get rid of email bounces and maximize the impact of your email marketing,
• email verification API, which is powerful, robust, secure, ultrafast, and affordable,
• toxicity check that lets you identify toxic email addresses,
• deliverability kit with email deliverability tools,
• and many integrations.

Here’s how Bouncer differentiates itself and outperforms ZeroBounce in certain aspects:

Accuracy

Bouncer takes pride in its verification accuracy, reported at 99.5%. This high level of precision ensures minimal false positives, contributes to maintaining a cleaner email list, and improves overall deliverability.

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Premium support

Bouncer is renowned for its exceptional customer support. Users can access premium assistance via email, contact forms, and even video calls. This level of assistance helps when navigating challenges or integration needs and makes the user experience smooth and efficient.

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Speed

Bouncer’s system is designed for rapid email verification. For example, you can its API can process up to 500,000 emails in a batch. The rate limit is 200 requests per minute for batch and 1,000 requests per minute in real-time. This makes Bouncer one of the fastest email verification services available.

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Pricing

Bouncer offers competitive and attractive rates, especially for businesses looking to manage costs without compromising on quality. The pay-as-you-go pricing model and monthly plans, along with volume discounts, allow users to scale their verification efforts according to their needs​.

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User ratings

In G2, ZeroBounce has 4.6/5.0 stars.

In contrast, Bouncer has 4.8/5.0 stars.

Bouncer user ratings show a high level of satisfaction. They reflect the tool’s quality and effectiveness as an email verification service. High satisfaction scores show that Bouncer meets clients’ expectations in terms of functionality, ease of use, pricing, and support.

As you can see, Bouncer can do more than validate email addresses. It’s more accurate, faster, cheaper, and offers great customer service – and all of this is shown in our user reviews.

Improve your email validation services & more with Bouncer

ZeroBounce offers a comprehensive suite of tools that cater to a broad spectrum of email marketing needs, from list cleaning and optimization to security and deliverability enhancements.

In a balanced view, while ZeroBounce provides a solid foundation for email marketing efforts, like any tool, it’s not without its areas for enhancement. If, despite using this service, spam emails arrived again in your inbox, you’ve experienced technical issues, or you can’t afford to use this tool anymore, it’s possible that you need to look for another.

Luckily, there are better alternatives to ZeroBounce, like Bouncer.

Learn more about Bouncer, read reviews, see what it can do, and decide for yourself what is your best email validation software.