Our email verification feature can return a few different text codes that helps you determine if an email is valid and safe to send. Attached below is a short table that will help you understand our results.
Text Code | Description | Safe to send? |
Valid | Verified email address. | Yes |
Invalid | Un-verified email address. | No |
Risky | Server is set to Catch-All but we’ve managed to find at least one data source that can validate the email. | Maybe |
CatchAll | Server is set to Catch-All. | Maybe |
Unknown | Non-existing mail server or no response. | No |
Not Found | When none of our datasets has found a result | No |
What is Catch All
This is also known as an “accept all”. This is a domain-wide setting where all emails on this domain will be reported as a catch-all. There is no definitive way to determine whether this email is valid or invalid.
A catch-all address is commonly used in small businesses to ensure a company receives any email that has been sent to them, regardless of typos. Oftentimes these are in-fact valid emails. However some organisations may utilise this setting as a security feature to prevent unsolicited emails.
How Risky is different from Catch All?
Risky means that the while the recipient’s mail server is set to Catch-All, we managed to find at least one data source that claim to validate the existence of the email. Even though we couldn’t give a certain answer about the address validity, there are good odds that the email indeed exists.