Why Is an Email List Cleaning Service Important?
You should clean your email list at least once every six months to avoid sending messages to invalid and useless addresses. Your sender reputation is dependent on the engagement you receive from the people who receive your emails, so if your emails are going into spam folders, it will hurt your sender reputation and email deliverability.
Additionally, an email verification service saves you money by removing emails that aren't returning any profit to you from your list. Since your email service provider probably requires you to pay a monthly fee once you have a certain number of subscribers on your list, you want to make sure you're not paying for inactive addresses and spam traps to stay on your list.
Finally, having a clean email list will increase your email marketing campaign ROI by ensuring that emails only go to those users who are most engaged and most likely to buy from you.
Overview of the Best Free Email List Cleaners
There are lots of email verification services out there, but many require you to pay a monthly subscription or pay-as-you-go for each email you want to verify. Fortunately, there are plenty of free email list cleaners out there too, and lots of the top paid email list cleaning services have free tiers.
Top 10 Best Email List Cleaning Service Options
AbstractAPI Free Email Verification and Validation API
AbstractAPI provides an easy-to-integrate API that can be used to validate addresses one at a time when users sign up for mailing lists through online forms, and also provides a bulk validation service for existing email lists.
Simply log on and create a free account, then navigate to the API dashboard and click "Bulk Upload CSV."
You can upload a CSV file of up to 100 addresses. Abstract checks for things like incorrectly formatted addresses, misspellings, SMTP validity, MX records, spam traps, blacklisted emails, free emails, role-based accounts, and disposable emails.
The email verification API looks at all the addresses and weeds out invalid email addresses, then returns the results to you as a CSV file via email.
After registering for a free plan, you will need to upgrade your service before you can upload a CSV file.
Related: How to validate email addresses in Excel
JitBit
One of the easiest, and only truly free email list cleaners out there is JitBit, which provides a very simple online interface for adding email addresses to be verified. Simply paste a list of email addresses, one per line, into the text box in the browser and hit "Clean the List."
The tool runs directly in the browser and outputs results into another text box just below the first. The results are bare bones and appear as terminal output, telling you what’s been checked and which emails have passed.
The tool looks for invalid mailboxes, typos, duplicates, malformed addresses, non-existing domains, invalid MX-records, spam traps, and disposable mailboxes. There is a technical limit of 20,000 email addresses, but that should be more than enough for most people.
The only issue with this tool is that it is clunky and time-consuming to use. You have to add the addresses one per line to the box directly in the browser and keep the tab/window open while the tool runs. For a few email addresses, this is fine and fairly quick, but for a list thousands of emails long it becomes painful very quickly.
If you don’t need to clean your whole list and just want to do a quick, one-off validation here and there, this is certainly a viable option.
Email List Verify
Email List Verify is a paid service that provides free credits for up to 100 emails. They guarantee quick list processing and can process up to 100K requests per customer per hour.
To use the free trial, register for a free account via the website (no credit card is required) and log in. The UI is very easy to use, simply upload a CSV file into the space provided, and click the button to run the tool. You can also verify one email at a time by pasting it into the text box at the top of the dashboard. Results are output as a downloadable CSV.
There is also a suite of easily accessible free tools under the Free Tools tab at the top of their home page to help you check the health of your sending domain. This offers the option to check DNS health, MX records, sending IP or domain. Unfortunately, each tool works separately - there’s no way to do everything at once.
Their pricing options are all pay-as-you-go, and the pay-as-you-go credits never expire. Once you pass the 100 free email limit, their pricing is reasonable. Just $4 to process 1000 emails ($0.004 per email) up to $3290 to process 10,000,000 emails (just $0.0003 per email.)
Proofy
Proofy's email list cleaning service provides the first 100 checks for free and also has an email verification API that you can access for one-off checks in your web forms or mobile app. The free email list cleaner looks for duplicate email addresses, high-risk emails, invalid MX records, syntax errors, and role emails. They also do spam trap removal and domain verification.
The company also provides a bulk trial plan with 500 free credits for bulk email verification services, with the opportunity to earn more free credits with their program.
To get started, sign up via the button on the homepage. After you verify your email and log in, you’ll land on a dashboard. Navigate to the upload page, which is laid out similarly to Proofy’s dashboard. You can enter a single email for verification in the text box, or upload your full list here.
Once uploaded, the results will be output into the UI. They check syntax, MX records, role-based emails, free and disposable emails, and overall deliverability.
ZeroBounce
One of the best-known names in email validation, ZeroBounce has a great reputation for improving the email marketing campaigns of top companies like Airbnb, Netflix, and Disney. Fortunately, you don't have to be a Fortune 500 company to use their service: they have a free tier for up to 100 validations.
Zerobounce allows you to test the tool against your entire list without even logging in, which is cool. Navigate to their “Free Email Verifier” and you’ll see the option to test by either inputting a single email or uploading your list.
Results are presented right there in the browser window, through a nicely-formatted interface. Checks are run for MX and SMTP records, deliverability, and free emails. One slightly disappointing thing was that the verifier was not able to determine whether the email I tested was free or not. I expected Zerobounce’s tools to be more accurate than that.
ZeroBounce provides an easy-to-access input right on the homepage that allows you to test the service for free by uploading a CSV list of bulk emails or inputting a single email address into a text box.
NeverBounce
NeverBounce is used by top companies like MailChimp, HubSpot, Doordash, Uber, and Mailerlite, and the company claims to process billions of email addresses. They offer three services: bulk list cleaning, an integrative email verification API, and automated cleaning that syncs to the top email marketing service providers.
NeverBounce has a limited free tier at just 10 email addresses using their online free email verifications tool, but you can book a demo to receive more free credits.
NeverBounce’s UI is fairly straightforward, laying out easy buttons for whatever service you might need to use. Clicking the “Clean” option takes you to a page where you can upload a CSV file.
The process runs fairly quickly and results are output to the dashboard, and can be downloaded.
I was slightly disappointed that Neverbounce incorrectly labeled one of my test email addresses as invalid when it was not. I was expecting greater accuracy from this service.
MailerCheck
MailerCheck's service claims to be the "smarter alternative to NeverBounce." The service allows you to upload email addresses via a CSV file, text file, or import email addresses directly from popular email platforms like MailChimp and Mailerlite.
Mailercheck has a straightforward, clean UI with similar options to upload bulk CSV files for verification, or verify one email at a time. One thing they have that other platforms don’t have (at least, not easily visibly) is a quick integration with leading email service providers like Mailerlite. I’m sure other services provide this, but it was not obviously accessible in the UI.
By obtaining an API key from Mailerlite and providing it to Mailercheck, I was able to efficiently verify my entire email list without having to export it to CSV and re-upload it to Mailercheck. This makes the service much easier to use, IMO.
Mailercheck has a slightly more generous free offering than most other platforms: up to 200 free credits for validating email addresses. After the free email list cleaner credits run out, their pricing is more pricy, however: $0.01 per email for every email up to 1000, then a sliding scale from there. The company is currently offering 10% off to new customers.
Bouncify
Bouncify has some of the cheapest pay-as-you-go options available at just $0.0005 per email for a million verifications. From there, the tiers increase in price from $0.0007 per email at ten thousand verifications, up to $0.019 per email for up to ten thousand verifications.
When I attempted to test Bouncify’s service, I was thwarted before I even got through signup. It’s unclear why, but after inputting my name, email address and a password, the button to sign up remained grayed-out and unclickable. I refreshed the page several times, tried different passwords, unchecked and re-checked the box to accept the terms of service, all to no avail. Eventually, I gave up. Honestly, if I can’t even get through signup without hitting a bug, it doesn’t give me a ton of confidence in the service, especially when there are literally hundreds of other services available out there.
The Bouncify free tier offers up to 100 free credits, with free removal of duplicate addresses and free list quality analysis. The company also offers an API that can be integrated into online web forms and mobile apps.
Bouncer
Bouncer's main draw is that it has many mail server options hosted on AWS instances in the EU, and is fully GDPR compliant. The company offers 100 free credits to try out the service, and their pricing once you max out the free tier is reasonable.
Bouncer’s UI is friendly and inviting, with the usual buttons to verify a single email or upload your list as a CSV. They also offer easily accessible integrations with leading services like Mailerlite and Mailchimp. I imported my list directly from Mailerlite via an API key and received a validation quickly. The service was fairly accurate, with about 95% of my email addresses being validated correctly.
Bouncer's pay-as-you-go starts at $0.007 for up to 1000 email addresses, and monthly plans start at $40 for up to 10,000 verifications per month.
DeBounce
DeBounce offers up to 100 free credits, and then pricing starts at $0.002 per verification for emails up to 1000, and drops to just $0.0003 per address for 5 million verifications. The company is offering a 10% discount right now for new customers.
When I attempted to test Debounce, (April 2024) I was presented with a message that they are not longer accepting new customers, in order to focus on giving their current clients a better experience. It’s unclear if this is because their service was lacking and they were receiving complaints from current clients, or because they are pro-actively trying to provide the best experience. Currently, you can provide your email address to be notified when registrations for the service open up again.
DeBounce checks for disposable email addresses, catch-all addresses, syntax errors, duplication issues, and spam traps. They also do MTA validation and domain health check and validation.
Side-by-side Comparison of the Top Email List Cleaners
How to Use An Email List Cleaner
Most email list cleaning services operate in the same way. Always check the docs for the specific service you are using, but in general, you can assume that you'll take the following steps:
- Download your mailing list from your email marketing campaign provider as a CSV
- Upload the CSV file to the email verification service bulk upload option
- Wait for the email verification service to check all the email addresses on your list
- Get a results file with information about the addresses on your list
- Use the results file to remove problem emails from your email list
Tips and Tricks to Optimize the Use of An Email List Cleaner
In general, you'll get the most out of your email list cleaning service if you utilize it regularly. The longer you wait in between cleanings, the more invalid emails will be on your list, and the longer it will take to clean.
We recommend doing an audit of your email list using an email list service at least once every six months, and continuously weeding out non-performing addresses using your email service provider bulk unsubscribe feature in between cleanings.
Conclusion
If you're looking for a quick and dirty free email list cleaner, you can't go wrong with JitBit for simplicity. However, if you need something a bit more robust, with proven results, opt for one of the other names on the list, like NeverBounce or ZeroBounce. If you're looking for a generous free tier, Proofy offers the most free credits for removing invalid emails.
Whichever email cleaning services and email verification tools you opt for, the most important thing to remember is to clean your email list regularly and do thorough email validation when users first sign up to your list.
Email deliverability is one of the most important components of your online marketing efforts - try one of the best email list cleaning service solutions today to make your next email marketing campaign a success.
FAQs
What is an email list cleaning service?
An email list cleaning service is an online tool that allows you to check and remove invalid, non-existent, or duplicate email addresses from your email list.
Why is an email list cleaning service important?
An email list cleaning service is essential because it helps you maintain a healthy and active email list, which can lead to better engagement and higher deliverability scores for your email campaigns.
How often should I clean my email list?
We recommend cleaning your email list at least once every six months to avoid sending messages to invalid and useless addresses.
Are there any free email list cleaning services available?
Yes, there are many free email list cleaning services available, including JitBit, AbstractAPI Free Email Verification and ValidationAPI, Proofy, ZeroBounce, NeverBounce, MailerCheck, Bouncify, Bouncer, andDeBounce.
How do I use an email list cleaning service?
To use an email list cleaning service, you'll typically need to download your email list from your email marketing campaign provider as a CSV, upload the CSV file to the email verification service bulk upload option, wait for the email verification service to check all the email addresses on your list, get a results file with information about the addresses on your list, and use the results file to remove problem emails from your email list.
How can I optimize the use of an email list cleaning service?
To get the most out of your email list cleaning service, we recommend utilizing it regularly and doing an audit of your email list at least once every six months. In between cleanings, you can continuously weed out non-performing addresses using your email service provider bulk unsubscribe feature.
What are some tips for maintaining a healthy email list?
Some tips for maintaining a healthy email list include regularly cleaning your list, providing valuable and relevant content to your subscribers, and utilizing opt-in and opt-out processes to ensure that your subscribers are engaged and interested in your content.
How can a clean email list improve my email marketing campaign ROI?
A clean email list can improve your email marketing campaign ROI by ensuring that emails only go to those users who are most engaged and most likely to buy from you. Additionally, a clean email list can help improve your deliverability score and avoid sending messages to invalid and useless addresses.
