Cold Email Compliance Check

Check every address before you cold email it. For each one you get:

• a verdict: ok to email, consent needed, blocked or unknown
• the rule that decided it, with its source
• what your email's footer must include
• the next step
• a signed receipt you can show later

Covers the UK (PECR and UK GDPR), the US (CAN-SPAM), Canada (CASL), Germany (UWG) and France. Powered by Precleared.

Why use it

The rules turn on details that are easy to get wrong. In the UK you can usually cold email a limited company, but usually not a sole trader without their consent. In Germany you need consent even when the recipient is a business. This Actor works it out address by address:

1. It checks the domain's mail server, the company register (Companies House for UK companies) and the company's own website.
2. It applies the rules for the recipient's country and yours.
3. It saves the answer as a receipt signed with Precleared's key, so you have a record of the check.

Nothing is sent to the recipient.

How to use it

1. Paste the addresses into Email addresses, one per line.
2. Choose where your business is based and where the addresses came from.
3. Run it. You get one row per address in the dataset, plus a summary.

To check leads as they arrive, connect the Actor to Google Sheets, Make, Zapier or n8n with Apify's integrations. AI agents can call it as a tool through Apify's MCP server.

Input

Field	What it does
Email addresses	One per line. Each address is one check. Duplicates are checked once.
Where your business is based	United Kingdom or United States.
Where the addresses came from	Published by them, bought, scraped, given to you, or not sure. Some rules treat a bought or scraped list differently.
What you're offering	Optional. Helps where a rule depends on whether the offer is relevant to the recipient's job.
Recipients' country	Optional. Used only when the country can't be worked out, which mostly matters for .com addresses.
Leads with details	Optional. Objects with email and, if you have them, address_source, company_number and recipient_country.
Your Precleared API key	Optional. Use your own Precleared allowance instead of paying per check here.

Example:

{
  "emails": ["jane@northwind-example.co.uk", "sam@samsplumbing-example.co.uk"],
  "senderCountry": "GB",
  "addressSource": "published",
  "pitch": "bookkeeping software for small agencies"
}

Output

One row per address:

{
  "email": "jane@northwind-example.co.uk",
  "verdict": "ok_to_email",
  "confidence": "high",
  "rule": "Under PECR the consent rule for marketing email applies to individual subscribers only. This recipient is a corporate subscriber (a company, LLP, Scottish partnership or public body), so no prior consent is needed. Where the address names a person, UK GDPR still applies to their name: rely on legitimate interests, say who you are, and make it easy to object.",
  "source_title": "PECR 2003 regulation 22(1) and ICO Guide to PECR, electronic mail marketing",
  "source_url": "https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2003/2426/regulation/22",
  "footer_requirement": "Say who you are and who the email is from, include a valid postal address, and give a simple free way to stop further emails (PECR regulation 23). Never disguise the sender.",
  "next_step": "Send. Log the receipt against the lead.",
  "recipient_country": "GB",
  "legal_form": "corporate",
  "company_name": "NORTHWIND EXAMPLE LTD",
  "receipt_id": "cc_rcpt_0123456789ABCDEF",
  "receipt_url": "https://precleared.dev/api/v1/receipt?id=cc_rcpt_0123456789ABCDEF",
  "checked_at": "2026-10-16T09:00:00.000Z",
  "billed": true,
  "error": null
}

What the verdicts mean:

• ok_to_email: send it, with a footer that meets footer_requirement. The requirement describes what to include; it isn't wording to paste.
• consent_needed: don't send a cold email. Follow next_step.
• blocked: don't send.
• unknown: a fact couldn't be established. Treat it as consent needed, unless you can add the missing fact, such as a company number or the recipient's country.

The run also saves a summary with the counts for each verdict in the key-value store, under OUTPUT.

Pricing

$0.03 per address checked, charged through Apify. Invalid addresses, duplicates and addresses that couldn't be checked aren't charged. If you set a maximum cost for a run, the Actor stops before it goes over.

Already a Precleared customer? Paste your key into Your Precleared API key. Checks then come out of your Precleared allowance and packs, and Apify doesn't charge per check.

FAQ

Is this legal advice? No. It's decision support with the rule quoted and a dated source. You decide, and you remain responsible.

Which countries? The UK, the US, Canada, Germany and France. Other European countries get a cautious default.

Do I need it for invoices or password resets? No. It's for cold or unsolicited marketing email. Transactional emails don't need a check.

What's stored? Precleared keeps each check and its receipt, with the address masked on public receipt pages. To count customers, it records a one-way hash of your Apify user ID, not who you are. Email support@precleared.dev to have a check deleted.

How fast is it? A check usually takes a few seconds. Lists run four addresses at a time.

Support

Email support@precleared.dev. The full API and MCP docs are at precleared.dev/docs.