Status Definitions

You may have noticed a status column in the email reports we send to you. These statuses are what we recommend you base your decisions on mostly vs a simple pass/fail. A pass/fail is too simplistic with email verification except in the most dire of circumstances. In addition to the categories we already use, this should give you more flexibility on how you want to analyze the verification results.

An email address will have a status of "undeliverable", "risky", "unknown", or "passed". They are based on the category definitions an email address gets categorized as.

These can't be delivered. It is strongly recommended to not send an email to these addresses. Categories that fall into this status are "invalid", "illegit", "nonexistent", "inbox_full", and "deactivated".

These email addresses failed one of our verification tests and it is generally recommended that you do not send an email to these addresses unless you are confident real users are on the other end and engaging with your emails. You can check the engagement levels of these email addresses in your email service provider. Categories that fall into this status are "spam", "role", "banned", "available", "complained", "bounced", "disposable", and "blacklisted".

We weren't able to definitively identify these email addresses. They passed nearly every test but it is unknown if these email addresses are valid because they failed with reason "accept_all" or "unverified". Proceed with caution. The categories under this status are "accept_all", "failed_exchange",  and "unverified".

These email addresses passed the tests assigned to them. Keep in mind that the floss aggressiveness settings determine how many tests are run. Safe floss runs fewer tests and is fastest, while aggressive runs the full gamut of tests and is slowest. Floss aggressiveness settings only apply to our email service provider integrations since file upload or copy and paste run the full gamut of tests.