SMART EMAIL
VERIFIER

Every email comes back with one of four verdicts, based on Reacher's verification engine:

● Safe — The mailbox exists, is active, and is accepting mail. Reacher guarantees a hard bounce rate below 3% for these. These are your best leads.

● Risky — The address may exist but deliverability can't be fully confirmed. This happens with catch-all domains, role accounts, or disposable addresses. Use with caution.

● Invalid — Reacher is 99% confident this email won't deliver. The mailbox doesn't exist, is disabled, has a full inbox, or failed syntax/MX checks. Don't send to these.

● Unknown — Reacher couldn't complete the check. This usually means the mail server timed out, port 25 was blocked, or the provider (e.g. some Hotmail addresses) doesn't allow real-time verification. It's not a verdict on the email itself — it just means we couldn't confirm either way.

The first thing we check is whether the email is properly formatted — a valid username, an @ symbol, and a proper domain. Emails like user@gmail,com or @domain.com are caught here and skipped before any further checks run.

We check whether the email's domain actually exists and has mail server records (MX records) configured. If a domain has no MX records, no email can ever reach it — no matter how legitimate the address looks. This check happens before any SMTP connection is attempted.

We connect directly to the domain's mail server and simulate the start of an email delivery — without ever sending an actual message. This is the deepest check we run. It tells us whether the specific mailbox exists and is actively accepting mail. A Safe verdict requires this check to pass.

Some domains accept every email sent to them — even completely made-up ones like zzz999@company.com. These are called catch-all domains. Because the server never rejects anything, we can't confirm whether the specific mailbox exists. We flag these as Risky — the domain is real, but deliverability is unconfirmed.

We check if the email belongs to a known temporary email provider (like Mailinator, Guerrilla Mail, 10 Minute Mail, etc.). These addresses are created to be thrown away and are useless for outreach — whoever signed up with one didn't want to be contacted. We flag them as Risky.

Role accounts like info@, support@, admin@, or noreply@ aren't tied to a real person. They go to shared team inboxes or are completely unmonitored. We flag these as Risky — technically deliverable, but not a real individual contact.

We detect two dead-end conditions: a mailbox that's been disabled by the provider (suspended or deleted account) and a mailbox whose inbox is completely full. In both cases, any email you send will bounce. These are marked Invalid.

We identify whether an email belongs to a free consumer provider like Gmail, Yahoo, or Outlook. For B2B cold outreach, these are typically lower-intent leads compared to corporate addresses. This is a flag only — it doesn't affect the Safe/Risky/Invalid verdict. Use it to segment your list based on your campaign strategy.

When available, we check if the email address has appeared in any known public data breach via the HaveIBeenPwned database. This doesn't affect deliverability — an email can be fully valid and also have been part of a breach. It's an additional signal for list hygiene and security awareness. If flagged, it means the address is publicly known and may attract higher spam filtering.