Bulk email verification with real SMTP handshakes, DNS MX checks, and catch-all detection. Verify emails before outreach to cut bounces and protect sender reputation.
All notable changes to the Email Verifier & Deliverability Checker actor.
Format follows Keep a Changelog ; versions track the
Apify actor version.
[0.2] — 2026-06-29
First hardened public release. Consolidates the correctness, cost, and clarity work
done over the 0.1.x build series into a single stable version.
Added
MX-host honesty rule. Custom domains whose MX points to a provider that blocks
external mailbox verification (Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Tutanota, Proton,
Zoho, Proofpoint, Mimecast, NetEase, Yandex, Mail.ru, Tencent QQ) now return
risky/provider_unverifiable deterministically via DNS, instead of a slow unknown.
Fail-fast SMTP. Short (~3s) connect timeout and single primary-MX probe, so
blocked or slow servers return unknown quickly instead of burning the full per-email
timeout. Keeps the compute cost of unavoidable unknown results low.
Buyer-facing README. "Understanding your results" status table, FAQ on why real
Gmail/Outlook addresses are risky, explicit billing (which statuses charge), and a
0–100 score guide.
Fixed
Role-account false positives. Prefix matching now requires a separator boundary, so
real names are no longer flagged as role accounts (priya via pr, newsom via
news, president via pr).
outlook.com / mail.ru mis-flagged as disposable. Removed from the disposable
set; they no longer short-circuit to risky/disposable.
Leading/trailing dot in local part (.user@, user.@) now correctly returns
invalid/bad_syntax instead of a charged risky.
mxFound correctness for major providers (now true; they have MX).
Crash on the charge-limit early-stop path (task.cancel() on raw coroutines).
Empty MAIL FROM (<>) for SMTP probes per RFC 5321.
Changed
Charging unchanged and explicit: valid / invalid / risky are charged
(email-verified), unknown is always free.
Build tag pinned to latest; stale Version 0.0 removed so every run uses current code.