Understanding Your VerifyEmail.io Deliverability Results

A Deep Dive into Your VerifyEmail.io Deliverability Results

Welcome to VerifyEmail.io! This guide provides a comprehensive breakdown of our email verification results to help you build powerful, data-driven list hygiene strategies. Understanding our multi-layered approach will empower you to protect your sender reputation, increase inbox placement, and maximize your campaign's success.

Our Core Verification Components

Every email you submit is analyzed through three core lenses, giving you the power to make simple or granular decisions based on your risk tolerance.

1. The Verdict: This is our top-level classification, categorizing each email as Valid, Risky, Invalid, or Unknown. It’s designed for quick, at-a-glance decision-making.
2. The Risk Score: For finer control, we provide a numerical score from 0 to 100. This represents the statistical likelihood that an email is safe to send to. A score of 95 can be interpreted as a 95% confidence level. This allows you to set custom risk thresholds (e.g., "only accept emails with a score of 75 or higher").
3. Detailed Checks: This is the granular data behind the verdict and score. We provide a detailed list of all checks performed—such as syntax, domain records, and historical bounce data—so you can create highly specific rules for your list segmentation.

The Verdict: Valid

Score: 90-100These are high-quality email addresses that our system has determined are active, correctly configured, and safe to email. Sending to Valid addresses should result in a bounce rate of less than 2%.

• Sub-statuses for Valid emails:
• Alias_Address: A valid forwarding address (e.g., info@company.com forwards to a personal inbox). Your message will be delivered.
• Alternate_Email: A valid email that appears to be a secondary address (e.g., cool_surfer_88@domain.com), which may see lower engagement.

The Verdict: Risky

Score: 30-89 Risky emails are technically deliverable but carry an elevated risk of bouncing, generating spam complaints, or having low engagement. We recommend segmenting these addresses and proceeding with caution.

• Common reasons for a Risky verdict:
• Catch-All (Accept-All): The server is configured to report that every email address at that domain is valid, whether it exists or not. This makes it impossible to confirm deliverability without sending, so some will inevitably bounce.
• Spamtrap: The address is a known trap used by ISPs to identify spammers. Hitting a spamtrap can severely damage your sender reputation. We strongly recommend against sending to these addresses.
• Role_Based: The address represents a group, not a person (e.g., support@, admin@). These have a high correlation with spam complaints.
• Disposable: A temporary email address designed to self-destruct. Sending to these will lead to future bounces.
• Abuse or Toxic: The address is associated with users who frequently report spam or is linked to known fraudulent activity.

The Verdict: Invalid

Score: 0-29 These emails have been confirmed as inactive or incorrect and will result in a hard bounce. You should remove all Invalid emails from your mailing lists immediately to protect your sender reputation.

• Common reasons for an Invalid status:
• Mailbox_Not_Found: The user account does not exist.
• Failed_Syntax_Check: The email address is malformed (e.g., missing the "@" symbol).
• Possible_Typo: The domain contains a common misspelling of a popular provider. We will often return a suggestion for the correct domain (e.g., suggesting "gmail.com" for "gmial.com").
• No_DNS_Entries: The domain is not configured to receive email.
• Has_Known_Bounces: Our system has historical data showing this specific address has resulted in a hard bounce in the past.

The Verdict: Unknown

Score: Not Applicable Our system was unable to receive a definitive response from the recipient's mail server. This can happen for several reasons, and you are never charged for Unknown results.

• Common reasons for an Unknown status:
• Anti-Spam_System or Greylisted: The server has a security system that temporarily blocked or deferred the verification attempt.
• Failed_SMTP_Connection or Timeout_Exceeded: We were unable to establish a stable connection with the mail server in our allotted time.

Actionable Insights & Best Practices

• Set Your Risk Threshold: Don't rely on the verdict alone. Use the Risk Score to define your own tolerance. For critical transactional emails, you might only accept a score of 90+. For marketing outreach, you might accept scores down to 50.
• Advanced Segmentation: Use the Detailed Checks for fine-tuned control. For example, you might decide to reject all Role_Based addresses but allow Catch-All addresses with a high score.
• Handle Typos: Use our suggestion field to programmatically correct typos in your signup forms, rescuing potentially valuable customers.
• Secure Your Integration: When using our API, always call it from your back-end server code after a form submission. Never expose your API key in client-side code like JavaScript.