Email List Hygiene

Validate and clean email lists before sending campaigns. Checks format validity, MX records, disposable domains, role-based addresses, and domain blacklists — with one record per email and full breakdown of every check performed.

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What does Email List Hygiene do?

Email List Hygiene validates every email address in your list and classifies each one as valid, risky, or undeliverable. For every email, it runs up to 5 independent checks and returns a structured result you can filter, export, and act on immediately.

Core checks:

• ✅ Format validation — RFC 5322-compliant regex to catch malformed addresses before any network call
• 📡 MX record lookup — DNS query to verify the domain can actually receive email
• 🗑️ Disposable domain detection — matches against 50,000+ known temporary email domains (Mailinator, Guerrilla Mail, Temp Mail, and more)
• 👤 Role-based address detection — flags generic inboxes (admin@, info@, noreply@, support@, billing@, and 40+ more) that deliver to shared queues and hurt engagement metrics
• 🔴 Domain blacklist check — optional Spamhaus Domain Block List (DBL) lookup via DNS to flag domains flagged for spam activity

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What data can you extract?

Field	Description
email	Normalised email address (trimmed, lowercased)
domain	Domain portion of the email
status	valid / risky / undeliverable / invalid
checks.formatValid	Whether the address passes RFC format validation
checks.mxValid	Whether the domain has a valid MX record
checks.isDisposable	Whether the domain is a known disposable provider
checks.isRoleBased	Whether the local part is a role-based prefix
checks.isDomainBlacklisted	Whether the domain appears on Spamhaus DBL
reason	Human-readable explanation of any failures

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Can I validate email lists for Mailchimp, Klaviyo, HubSpot, or Salesforce?

Yes. Email List Hygiene works with any list of email addresses regardless of the platform they came from. Export your subscriber list from Mailchimp, Klaviyo, HubSpot, ActiveCampaign, or Salesforce, paste the addresses into the input, and get a clean, validated list back in minutes.

The output is standard JSON/CSV — import it back into any email platform after filtering out risky and undeliverable addresses.

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How does Email List Hygiene work?

The process:

1. You provide a list of email addresses (paste directly or upload via API)
2. Each address is normalised (trimmed, lowercased)
3. Format validation runs first — malformed addresses are flagged immediately without network calls
4. For valid formats: MX lookup, disposable domain check, and role-based check run in parallel
5. Optionally, Spamhaus DBL check runs via DNS for each unique domain
6. Each email gets a status and a reason field explaining any issues
7. Results are exported to a dataset — filter by outputFilter to get only the emails you care about

Domain-level results (MX and blacklist) are cached per domain, so a list of 10,000 emails from 500 domains only makes 500 DNS calls — not 10,000.

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Why use Email List Hygiene?

Feature	Manual checking / generic validators	Email List Hygiene
Disposable domain coverage	Varies	50,000+ domains (updated regularly)
Role-based detection	Manual review	40+ role prefixes detected automatically
MX verification	Separate tool	Built-in DNS check
Blacklist check	Separate tool	Spamhaus DBL via DNS (opt-in)
Output format	Platform-specific	Clean JSON/CSV, one record per email
Batch size	Limited by UI	Unlimited via input array
Cost per 1,000 emails	$8+ (ZeroBounce, NeverBounce)	~$1.5

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What can you do with the data?

Email marketers — clean lists before a campaign: Run Email List Hygiene on your full list, filter by outputFilter: "risky_and_invalid", and remove those addresses before importing into Klaviyo or Mailchimp. Lower bounce rate → better sender reputation → higher deliverability on future campaigns.

Sales teams — validate CRM leads: Before a cold outreach sequence, validate every lead email from your lead generation tool. Filter out role-based inboxes (they go to shared queues, not decision-makers) and disposable domains (throwaway sign-ups).

SaaS onboarding — gate registrations: Use the Apify API to call Email List Hygiene at sign-up and reject disposable or role-based emails before they enter your user database.

Agencies — deliverability audit: Run on a client's existing list before migrating to a new ESP. Identify what percentage of their list is undeliverable — a typical unmanaged list has 10–20% problematic addresses.

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How to use Email List Hygiene?

1. Create a free Apify account
2. Open Email List Hygiene from the Apify Store
3. Paste your email addresses into the Email addresses field (one per line)
4. Set Output filter — use Risky and invalid only to export only addresses that need action
5. Enable Check domain blacklist for higher-confidence results (adds ~200ms per unique domain)
6. Click Start and wait for results in the Output tab

To process large lists programmatically, use the Apify API to pass emails as an array in the input JSON.

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How much will it cost?

Email List Hygiene runs on Apify's pay-per-event model. You pay only for what you use.

Approximate cost:

• ~$1.5 per 1,000 emails validated
• A list of 10,000 emails typically costs less than $0.25 in compute (domain caching keeps DNS calls minimal)

Cost optimisation tips:

• Set outputFilter: "risky_and_invalid" to reduce dataset writes if you only need the bad emails
• Disable checkDomainBlacklist unless you specifically need Spamhaus coverage — it adds DNS calls per unique domain
• Use the API to pass emails as an array for large batches without manual copy-paste

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⬇️ Input

Validate a list of emails

{
    "emails": [
        "john.doe@gmail.com",
        "admin@shopify.com",
        "user@mailinator.com",
        "noreply@example.com"
    ],
    "outputFilter": "all",
    "checkDomainBlacklist": false
}

Export only problematic emails

{
    "emails": ["..."],
    "outputFilter": "risky_and_invalid",
    "checkDomainBlacklist": true
}

Full input reference

Field	Type	Default	Description
emails	array	required	Email addresses to validate. One per item.
outputFilter	string	"all"	Which results to return: all, valid_only, or risky_and_invalid
checkDomainBlacklist	boolean	false	Check each domain against Spamhaus DBL via DNS
concurrency	integer	20	Parallel validations (1–100). Higher = faster but more DNS load.

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⬆️ Output

Results are saved to the default dataset — one record per email.

Sample output records

[
    {
        "email": "john.doe@gmail.com",
        "domain": "gmail.com",
        "status": "valid",
        "checks": {
            "formatValid": true,
            "mxValid": true,
            "isDisposable": false,
            "isRoleBased": false,
            "isDomainBlacklisted": false
        },
        "reason": null
    },
    {
        "email": "admin@shopify.com",
        "domain": "shopify.com",
        "status": "risky",
        "checks": {
            "formatValid": true,
            "mxValid": true,
            "isDisposable": false,
            "isRoleBased": true,
            "isDomainBlacklisted": false
        },
        "reason": "Role-based address"
    },
    {
        "email": "user@mailinator.com",
        "domain": "mailinator.com",
        "status": "risky",
        "checks": {
            "formatValid": true,
            "mxValid": true,
            "isDisposable": true,
            "isRoleBased": false,
            "isDomainBlacklisted": false
        },
        "reason": "Disposable domain"
    },
    {
        "email": "test@nonexistentdomain99999xyz.com",
        "domain": "nonexistentdomain99999xyz.com",
        "status": "undeliverable",
        "checks": {
            "formatValid": true,
            "mxValid": false,
            "isDisposable": false,
            "isRoleBased": false,
            "isDomainBlacklisted": false
        },
        "reason": "No valid MX record"
    }
]

Status values:

• valid — passed all checks, safe to send
• risky — valid MX but flagged (disposable, role-based, or blacklisted) — send at your own risk
• undeliverable — no MX record, email cannot be delivered
• invalid — malformed email address

Export formats: JSON, CSV, Excel, XML — available from the dataset view in Apify Console or via the Apify API.

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Are there other tools in the Apify Store?

If you work with email marketing and lead generation, these actors complement Email List Hygiene:

• 🛍️ Shopify Store Finder — Discover Shopify stores by niche with prospect scoring and app detection
• 📡 Ad Pixel ID Extractor — Extract Facebook Pixel, TikTok Pixel, and Google Ads IDs from any website
• 🛒 Shopify App Store Intelligence — Research and compare Shopify apps by category, pricing, and rating

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FAQ

Can I validate email lists for cold email outreach?

Yes. Email List Hygiene is well-suited for cold email workflows. Before loading a lead list into tools like Instantly, Lemlist, or SmartLead, run it through Email List Hygiene to remove role-based addresses (admin@, info@, contact@) and undeliverable domains. This reduces bounces and protects your sender reputation.

How many email addresses can I validate in a single run?

There is no hard limit — pass as many emails as you need in the emails array. Domain-level DNS results are cached, so validating 10,000 emails across 500 domains only requires ~500 MX lookups instead of 10,000. For very large lists (100k+), use the Apify API to trigger the run programmatically.

What is the difference between risky and undeliverable?

undeliverable means the domain has no MX record — the email cannot be delivered to any mail server. risky means the email is technically deliverable (MX record exists) but has characteristics that harm campaign performance: it may belong to a disposable provider, a shared role inbox, or a domain flagged by Spamhaus.

Does Email List Hygiene do SMTP verification?

No. SMTP verification (sending a test EHLO/RCPT TO handshake to the mail server) is blocked by most cloud providers including AWS and GCP. Email List Hygiene uses DNS-based validation (MX records, Spamhaus DBL) which is reliable and does not require SMTP connectivity.

Which disposable email domains are covered?

Email List Hygiene uses the disposable-email-domains open-source list, which covers 50,000+ domains including Mailinator, Guerrilla Mail, Temp Mail, 10 Minute Mail, YOPmail, Throwam, Sharklasers, and thousands more. The list is regularly updated with new disposable providers.

Can I use Email List Hygiene with the Apify API?

Yes. Every actor on Apify is accessible via the Apify API. Pass your email list as a JSON array in the emails field of the input, trigger the run via API, and retrieve validated results from the default dataset. This makes it easy to integrate email validation into your own tools, CRMs, or onboarding flows.

Can I use Email List Hygiene through an MCP Server?

Yes. Apify provides an MCP (Model Context Protocol) server that exposes all actors — including Email List Hygiene — as tools for AI agents and LLM applications. Connect it to Claude, Cursor, or any MCP-compatible client to validate email lists directly from your AI workflow.

Is the Spamhaus blacklist check accurate?

The Spamhaus Domain Block List (DBL) is one of the most widely used domain reputation lists. A domain listed in DBL is highly likely to cause deliverability problems. However, DBL checks domain reputation only — not individual email addresses. Enable checkDomainBlacklist for higher-confidence results when cleaning high-value lists.

Is validating emails legal?

Email List Hygiene does not scrape email addresses — it only validates emails you already have. MX record lookups and DNS queries are standard internet operations. Checking against public blacklists like Spamhaus DBL is permitted for non-commercial use. Always ensure the email addresses in your list were collected with appropriate consent under GDPR, CAN-SPAM, or applicable regulations in your jurisdiction.

How often should I run Email List Hygiene on the same list?

Run it before any major campaign send. For actively growing lists, run it monthly — new sign-ups may include disposable or role-based addresses that slip through your registration form. For cold lead lists purchased or scraped externally, always validate before first use.

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Your feedback

Found a bug or missing a disposable domain? Open an issue or contact the actor author directly via the Apify Store.