The all-in-one platform for stopping Fake accounts
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Temporary email domains. Duplicate email addresses. Bot generated accounts. These common and unsophisticated cyber attacks can ruin your email deliverability, allow users to get around paywalls, and ultimately prevent your company from understanding its customers base.
It’s a simple problem - luckily, there are lightweight, inexpensive solutions. Today, we discuss the four best software solutions for verifying email addresses. By the end of this article, you’ll have a better understanding of 1) what are fake email addresses, 2) why they're an issue, and 3) how you can combat it!
The four best temporary email detection softwares
ZeroBounce: Robust solution built with email deliverability in mind; priciest of the bunch
Verisoul’s Email CheckPoint: Low-cost solution that excels at checking linked accounts and disposable domains
VerifyMail: Singular focus on checking for disposable domains, lacking in other features
MailCheck: Leverages social networks to help make sure emails are real; questionable reputation
What is a fake email address?
Wow, look at you - you aren’t skipping to the the sparknotes on the different solutions. For that, we say THANK YOU. You can’t stop a problem you don’t know you have… and you don’t know what you don’t know.
Fake emails come in all shapes and sizes. The only thing scarier than a fake email address is the false sense of confidence most software companies have. The three most common types of fake emails:
Temporary emails: These are auto-generated emails that use temporary or disposable domains. A quick google search of “temporary mail” yields dozens of platforms like TempMail. These temporary email generators not only create disposable domains (domains that will go out of service in a few weeks), they also provide an inbox that allows you to bypass basic email verification checks.
Duplicate emails / aliases: An alias email address (where two emails “point” to the same address) or multiple email addresses made by the same user. These use periods and + signs to create unique aliases for the same email. For example: a) + Alias:[email protected], [email protected] - these are the same email b) . Alias:[email protected] is still the same email as the two above
Bot generated accounts: At the most extreme end of multi-accounting, you might have bots creating as many accounts as possible on your platform. If you’ve ever left an input form out on your website, odds are you’ve seen absolute JUNK come through from bots.
Who is making these, and why does this matter?
So who’s creating these fake emails? While it’s nice to think that the average person wouldn’t create fake emails, even honest people may use them to save time, save money, reduce marketing content in their inboxes, or remain private. Dishonest people love them for, well, dishonest reasons.
What’s the end impact on you and your business?
Fake Accounts: Users spam your promotional and referral programs
Lost revenue: Potential customers don’t convert, as they continue to leverage free trials and get around paywalls
Worsened lead/customer engagement: Your ability to connect with potential prospects or existing customers is hampered, as emails either don’t deliver or are never opened
Inappropriate access: Users outside of authorized jurisdictions gain access to your content
Cyber-risk: Bad actors rejoin platforms after being kicked off and continue to remain a threat
How do I combat these fake accounts?
There are generally two approaches: public lists or email authentication softwares.
Public Lists
Public lists are free and require no third-party engagement. Your dev team simply checks a public list of blocked domains. It’s a fairly passive approach for an active problem: these fake email generators are always one step ahead of the public lists. By the time the list gets updated with the fake account domains, the generators have switched to a new domain. A few examples of free, easy-to-use lists on Github:
Our recommended approach is email detection APIs. These providers actively maintain a list of blocked domains by checking social media profiles, manually reviewing new domains, visiting all new domain sites in an automated fashion, and/or scraping all available public lists daily.
Strong solution for email marketing (i.e., making sure emails are real and won’t bounce)
One of the best at checking for validity of emails
Reputable software with enterprise customers including Netflix and Disney
Integrations with other email marketing tools
Cons:
Expensive (~$0.01 per API call)
Limited functionality outside of deliverability
Does not detect duplicate or similar emails
Slow API takes 3 seconds
No dashboard / analytics
Free option: 100 free email validations upon sign-up
Summary:
ZeroBounce is a great option for marketing teams - it will help ensure your marketing emails reach their desired inboxes. However, it’s expensive, and only the right solution to one of many impacts to your business per our above list. If you’re in need of cybersecurity software, it likely isn’t suitable.
Checks email similarity / duplicate emails with AI
Strong domain checking database which is actively updated
Tests for business vs personal emails
Cons:
Checks deliverability only at the domain level
Includes private API key, but doesn’t include pre-built integrations with other marketing or cybersecurity tools
Free option: 100% free plan with rate limit
Summary:
Verisoul’s Email Checkpoint is the lightest, cheapest, and most accurate solution for IT professionals when it comes to checking email domains. It’s backed by reputable VC funds and has a strong founding team, but is smaller than ZeroBounce. The full Verisoul platform offers much more functionality than Email Checkpoint, is also more expensive.
Human checking team verifies whether sites are disposable
Offers multiple plan options with reasonable prices
Cons:
No email duplicate or similarity detection
No dashboard
Because they use manual labor, they are often slow to add new disposable domains
Unsure who is behind it / reputability - doesn’t seem fit for enterprise or production apps that need reliability
Free option: Only 3 API calls per day, which is essentially unusable
Summary:
VerifyMail is a lightweight solution. They’ve built a nice list of disposable domains, albeit in a manual fashion. The biggest knock on VerifyMail is their reliability / trust; there’s almost no online presence, and it’s not 100% clear who is behind the company. The dashboard is essentially non-existent, as the screenshot above highlights (only shows API usage over time).
MailCheck does a nice job of offering an affordable disposable domain checker, and is a quality point solution for domains specifically. The dashboard feels a bit more professional than VerifyMail, though it’s still unclear how reliable this product is. That said, their website does a nice job of answering all FAQs on what the problem is and how they address it.
So which offering should you use?
Like most authors, I’m inclined to say “it depends.” However, unlike other articles, I’m willing to draw a line in the sand.
If you’re searching for email deliverability tools, it’s clear that ZeroBounce is your best option. They offer a broad feature set in addition to simple email verification, and their tests on bounce rates are much more comprehensive than other users.
If you have an IT angle, Verisoul’s Email Checkpoint is who we’d recommend. It’s more robust as the other offerings, has unique features like AI email similarity scoring and detection of work vs. personal emails, and is the cheapest among all four offerings. In addition, you can go beyond basic email verification checks and get into network, device, and user behavior risk when you use the full platform.
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Joey Maddox
Head of Growth
Joey is the head of growth at Verisoul. Prior to joining, he worked on growing B2B Software companies as a Senior Associate at PE group Serent Capital. Joey was also a former consultant at Bain & Company.