📧 Email Address Validator — Bulk MX, Disposable & Role Detection

A blazing-fast, production-grade email validation actor that scores any list of email addresses and tells you which ones are worth keeping. Built for marketers, sales teams, fraud-prevention engineers, and anyone who needs to clean a contact list before it costs real money.

⚡ Why choose this Actor?

• 🚀 Built for bulk — async DNS lookups, in-memory de-duplication and caching, configurable concurrency up to 50.
• 🧠 4 independent checks — syntax, MX records, disposable domains, role-based addresses — each weighted into a single risk score.
• 🚫 5,400+ disposable domains tracked out of the box (Mailinator, 10MinuteMail, Guerrilla Mail and friends).
• 👥 Role-based detection with fuzzy matching — catches info+sales@, support.team@, noreply2@, etc.
• 🌍 Smart proxy fallback — starts direct, escalates to datacenter, then sticks with residential if a network keeps blocking.
• 💾 Live saving — every result is pushed to the dataset as soon as it's validated. A crash never wipes finished work.
• 📊 Six dataset views — Overview, Syntax, Mail Server, Disposable, Role-Based, and Full Details for quick filtering.

✨ Key features

• ✅ Bulk input (paste hundreds of addresses)
• ✅ Live, friendly progress logs with per-email decisions
• ✅ Output filtering (accept, review, reject, all)
• ✅ Configurable timeout, concurrency, and fail-fast behavior
• ✅ Per-section dataset views for easy slicing in the Apify Console
• ✅ Summary blob saved to the key-value store (OUTPUT)
• ✅ Works with the standard Apify proxy or zero-proxy direct DNS

📥 Input

{
  "emails": [
    "raisulislam998@gmail.com",
    "info@example.com",
    "user@mailinator.com"
  ],
  "checkMX": true,
  "checkDisposable": true,
  "checkRoleBased": true,
  "failFast": true,
  "timeout": 5000,
  "concurrency": 25,
  "outputFilter": "all",
  "proxyConfiguration": { "useApifyProxy": false }
}

Field	Type	Default	What it does
emails	array	—	Email addresses to validate. Required.
checkMX	boolean	true	Verify the domain has a working mail server.
checkDisposable	boolean	true	Flag throw-away email providers.
checkRoleBased	boolean	true	Flag generic mailboxes (info@, support@, …).
failFast	boolean	true	Skip MX lookup when earlier checks already fail.
timeout	integer	5000	DNS lookup timeout in milliseconds.
concurrency	integer	25	Number of parallel validations (1–50).
outputFilter	string	all	Restrict dataset to accept / review / reject.
proxyConfiguration	object	direct	Optional Apify proxy config used only when direct DNS is blocked.

📤 Output (dataset row)

{
  "email": "raisulislam998@gmail.com",
  "valid": true,
  "score": 1.0,
  "risk": "LOW",
  "recommendation": "ACCEPT",
  "processingTimeMs": 76.87,
  "domain": "gmail.com",
  "localPart": "raisulislam998",
  "normalizedEmail": "raisulislam998@gmail.com",
  "syntaxValid": true,
  "syntaxMessage": "Valid email syntax",
  "mxValid": true,
  "mxMessage": "5 MX records found",
  "mxRecords": [
    "alt1.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com",
    "alt2.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com",
    "alt3.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com",
    "alt4.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com",
    "gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com"
  ],
  "disposableValid": true,
  "disposableMessage": "Not a disposable email",
  "roleBasedValid": true,
  "roleBasedMessage": "Not a role-based email",
  "validation": {
    "syntax": true,
    "domain": true,
    "mailServer": true,
    "disposable": true,
    "roleBased": true
  },
  "fullDetails": {
    "syntax":      { "valid": true, "message": "Valid email syntax", "normalized": "raisulislam998@gmail.com", "local": "raisulislam998", "domain": "gmail.com" },
    "domain":      { "valid": true, "message": "Domain is not reserved" },
    "mxRecords":   { "valid": true, "message": "5 MX records found", "records": ["…"] },
    "disposable":  { "valid": true, "message": "Not a disposable email" },
    "roleBased":   { "valid": true, "message": "Not a role-based email" }
  }
}

The same fields appear in the dataset views (Overview, Syntax, Mail Server, Disposable, Role-Based, Full Details), so you can slice the results without writing transformations.

Risk scoring

Score	Risk	Recommendation
≥ 0.80	🟢 LOW	✅ ACCEPT
0.50 – 0.79	🟡 MEDIUM	⚠️ REVIEW
< 0.50	🔴 HIGH	❌ REJECT

🚀 How to use the Actor

1. Open Apify Console → Actors.
2. Find Email Address Validator and click it.
3. Paste your addresses into the 📧 Email Addresses field.
4. Tweak the toggles and concurrency to match your batch size.
5. Click ▶️ Start and watch the progress log paint your results in real time.
6. Open the Storage → Dataset tab — pick a view (Overview, Mail Server, …) and export as JSON / CSV / Excel.
7. The full summary blob (counts, timing, proxy mix) is stored as OUTPUT in the key-value store.

💡 Best use cases

• Cleaning newsletter / CRM / outbound lists before sending campaigns
• Real-time signup validation (server side, behind your own API)
• Lead quality scoring in sales pipelines
• Fraud / abuse triage — auto-rejecting disposable-only signups
• Pre-flight checks before any costly downstream enrichment

❓ Frequently asked questions

Does this verify the inbox actually exists? No — verifying delivery requires sending real SMTP traffic, which is rate-limited and detectable. This actor checks everything you can confirm without contacting the destination, which catches the vast majority of bad addresses.

Why is info@example.com flagged? info@ is a role-based mailbox and example.com is a reserved test domain — that combination is rejected by design.

What about Gmail aliases like john+sale@gmail.com? Syntax is valid, the local part doesn't match a role prefix, and Gmail has working MX records — so the address scores fine.

Can I run this on millions of addresses? Yes. The default 25-way concurrency comfortably hits a few thousand validations per minute. Increase memory and concurrency for higher throughput; the actor caches DNS results per domain so duplicates are essentially free.

What happens if my network gets blocked? The actor escalates: direct → datacenter proxy → residential proxy (sticky, 3 retries). Each escalation is logged so you can see exactly when the switch happened.

🆘 Support and feedback

Found a bug or want a new feature? Open a run with the failing input and share the run ID. Issue reports and feature requests are welcome via the Apify Console messaging.

⚠️ Legal & ethical notes

• Validate only addresses you have a lawful basis to process (consent, contract, legitimate interest).
• Respect applicable laws (GDPR, CAN-SPAM, CASL, …).
• This actor does not contact the mail server during validation — it relies purely on DNS and pattern checks.