🎯 Decision-Maker Email Finder — Cheapest & Most Reliable

Give it a company domain, get back the decision-makers — name, job title, best-guess work email, the detected email pattern, an honest confidence grade, and MX validation. It reads the company's own team / leadership / about pages, infers the domain's email format from real addresses on the site, and permutes it per person. No paid API, no login, no seat licence.

🕒 Last updated: 2026-07-09 · 🧭 Domain → named decision-makers → email · 🔎 Pattern-inferred + MX-validated · 🚫 No API key or login · 💵 $0.80 / 1,000 leads

Most email finders charge $50–200/mo for a credit bucket. This one is pay-per-lead at $0.0008 each and shows its work: every email is labelled observed (derived from a real address published on the site) or guessed (the standard first.last pattern), MX-checked, and graded high / medium / low so you know exactly what you're sending to.

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What it does

• 🧑‍💼 Finds the humans, not a mailbox — pulls decision-maker name + title from the company's team / leadership / about pages (schema.org structured data first, then a resilient card parser).
• 🧩 Detects the email pattern — scans any real emails on the site and works out the format (first.last@, flast@, first@, …) by matching addresses to names.
• ✉️ Builds the email per person — permutes the detected (or standard) pattern for each decision-maker; if a person's real address is on the page, it uses that verbatim.
• ✅ MX-validates the domain — confirms the domain actually accepts mail (dns.resolveMx), and returns the mail server.
• 📊 Grades confidence honestly — high (pattern observed on-site / email published), medium (pattern observed but this address inferred, or valid MX), low (guessed pattern, no MX).
• 🎚️ Filter by seniority — C-suite only, all leadership (C-suite + VP + director + head), or anyone.

📊 Output fields

Field	Description
domain	company domain
name / firstName / lastName	decision-maker name
title	job title as published
seniority	c_suite · vp · director · head · other
email	best-guess work email
emailObserved	true = this exact address was published on the site
pattern	email format used, e.g. {f}{last}
patternSource	observed (from a real on-site email) or guessed (default first.last)
confidence	high · medium · low
mxValid	domain has MX records (accepts mail)
mailServer	primary MX host
catchAll	null — not determined (see note below)
candidateEmails	alternative permutations to try
source	team_page · jsonld · google_serp
sourceUrl	page the name came from

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Who it's for

• 🧲 Sales & GTM teams — build outbound lists straight from a domain; feed email + confidence into Clay, Instantly, Smartlead, Make, or n8n.
• 🧑‍💼 Recruiters & agencies — reach the hiring manager / department head, not info@.
• 📈 Founders & BD — get to the CEO/CTO of a target account in one run.
• 🛠️ Data teams — enrich a CRM list of domains with named contacts + inferred emails.

How to use it

1. Click Try for free.
2. Add one or more company domains (e.g. 8thlight.com, stripe.com).
3. (Optional) pick a role tier (C-suite / leadership / anyone) and a max per domain.
4. Click Start, then export from the Dataset tab (JSON, CSV, Excel, Google Sheets) or pull via API.

Examples

Leadership at three companies:

{ "domains": ["8thlight.com", "stripe.com", "andela.com"], "roleTier": "leadership" }

Only the C-suite, capped at 5 per company:

{ "domains": ["8thlight.com"], "roleTier": "c_suite", "maxContactsPerDomain": 5 }

Pull via API (run-sync):

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/scrapersdelight~decision-maker-email-finder/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{ "domains": ["8thlight.com"], "roleTier": "leadership" }'

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❓ FAQ

Do I need an API key or a paid email-finder subscription? No. It reads public company web pages and does a DNS MX lookup. No account, no key, no credits bucket.

How accurate are the emails? Every record is labelled. emailObserved: true means the exact address was published on the site (as accurate as it gets). patternSource: observed means we saw the company's real email format on the site and applied it to this person (high accuracy). patternSource: guessed means we fell back to the standard first.last@ format (verify before sending).

Do you verify the email actually exists (SMTP)? No — Apify blocks outbound port 25, so we do not SMTP-probe. We validate the domain's MX records (that it accepts mail) and grade confidence honestly. catchAll is returned as null because it cannot be determined without SMTP. Run a deliverability check before a large send.

How much does it cost? $0.80 per 1,000 leads ($0.0008 each) — pay only for decision-makers returned. Domains with no contacts found (or blocked) are returned free.

What if a company has no team page? Turn on the optional Google fallback (useGoogleFallback) to pull names from LinkedIn search results — best-effort, paced, and needs a residential proxy.

Which pages does it read? The company's own /team, /about, /leadership, /our-team, /people and similar pages, discovered from the homepage.

Can I schedule it? Yes — schedule the Actor over a list of domains to keep your contact data fresh.

Notes & fair use

This Actor reads publicly available company web pages and performs a DNS MX lookup. Emails are inferred from the domain's public pattern, not verified deliverable. You are responsible for complying with each site's Terms of Service and with all applicable email/outreach and data-protection law (CAN-SPAM, GDPR, ePrivacy, etc.) in the recipient's jurisdiction.