email-verificationlisted

# Email Verification Verification exists for one reason: mailbox providers treat a high bounce rate as evidence that you're sending to a list you didn't earn. Cross the threshold and your domain's reputation drops, which affects every email you send from it, including the ones to real customers. The threshold is lower than most people assume. **Keep hard bounces under 2%, and treat 3% as an emergency.** Some providers start filtering well below that. Verification is cheap. A damaged sending domain takes weeks to recover and sometimes never fully does. ## How verification actually works A real verification is a staged process, and each stage is cheaper than the next. ``` 1. Syntax check Is it a well-formed address? Free 2. Domain and MX lookup Does the domain exist, and does it Free have a mail server at all? 3. Disposable check Is it a throwaway-address provider? Free 4. Role account check info@, sales@, support@ Free 5. SMTP probe Connect to the mail server and ask Costs money whether the mailbox exists, without delivering anything ``` The SMTP probe is the part that matters and the part cheap tools skip. Some services guess from pattern databases — "firstname.lastname@ is usually right at this company" — and report a confidence score. That's not verification, and the bounce rate reflects it. Ask any provider whether they run a r