6 Easy Ways to Verify If an Email Address Is Real

Legit free and premium tools for verifying email addresses

Last Updated: August 4, 2024 Fact Checked

Email accounts receive high amounts of spam messages each day, many of which are from fake email addresses. There are a number of ways that you can check to see if the email address is valid, if you want to respond to a message. It is a good idea to use caution when responding to any potentially fraudulent email. You can learn how to verify if an email address is valid using online tools.

Quickly Verify If an Email Address Is Valid

Use email verification sites to verify email addresses without sending an email.
Search the email address online to see if it is tied to any online accounts.
Look at the email's syntax to quickly judge if an email is valid.

1

Use email verification sites.

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Go to an email verification site and enter the email address that you want to verify. You can easily find tons of sites like this that offer free email verification. Most offer a limited amount of verifications per month, and some require subscriptions to verify larger amounts of emails per month.
- Some examples are Email Checker , Verifalia , Email Hippo , and ZeroBounce .
- Copy the email that you want to verify. Select it and press Ctrl + C (Windows) or Command + C (Mac) to quickly copy it, or right-click (or Ctrl-click, on a Mac) the highlighted text and select "Copy."
- Use this method if you want to see if an email address is valid without sending an email.
- Paste the email address into the verification field and verify it. Follow the on-screen prompts to verify the email address, like clicking Start or Verify to see the results.
- You'll be able to tell with these tools which emails are valid and which are invalid. ^{[1]
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2

Search online.

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Enter the copied email address into a search. With most web browsers, you can simply paste the email address into the search bar at the top of the window, then wait to see if any results pop up.
- If the email is associated with a social media account or website, it is likely to be valid.

3

Check the syntax.

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A fake email address might look like this: john.smithconstruction.com , which doesn't include the @ (at) symbol.

4

Hover over emails in Google.

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If the email was entered correctly and isn't fake, you'll see the contact's first and last name and see their profile picture. ^{[2]
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5

Check the domain name.

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{"smallUrl":"https:\/\/www.wikihow.com\/images\/thumb\/5\/5e\/Verify-If-an-Email-Address-Is-Valid-Step-5-Version-5.jpg\/v4-460px-Verify-If-an-Email-Address-Is-Valid-Step-5-Version-5.jpg","bigUrl":"\/images\/thumb\/5\/5e\/Verify-If-an-Email-Address-Is-Valid-Step-5-Version-5.jpg\/v4-728px-Verify-If-an-Email-Address-Is-Valid-Step-5-Version-5.jpg","smallWidth":460,"smallHeight":345,"bigWidth":728,"bigHeight":546,"licensing":"<div class=\"mw-parser-output\"><p>License: <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer noopener\" class=\"external text\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Fair_use\">Fair Use<\/a> (screenshot)<br>\n<\/p><\/div>"}
Use online domain age checkers to see how new or old the domain is. There are plenty of sites online that offer to do this, and Small SEO Tools is one example.
- Look at the email and enter the domain name into the domain name checker. The domain name is everything after the @ and before the .com .
- Domains that are newer can be used for spam, so the email address you have can be valid, but still spammy.

6

Send an email.

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If the email is sent back to you, you'll find out easily if the email is valid. The email should have a warning message like, "This email could not be sent." High bounce rates, or getting undelivered emails sent back to you, have a negative impact on your email deliverability. As you get more and more emails bounced back to you, your chances of sending out emails to valid email addresses is less and less.
- Getting your email back can take seconds or minutes. However, if the email address is valid but un-monitored, you may never get a response.
- If you don't want to use your personal email to send a test message when you're trying to figure out of an email address is valid, you can create a new email quickly and easily.

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Checking the address location used to be another tool in validating emails. However, the rise of VPNs and proxies has made the method unreliable since those services send fake addresses or IPs.

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6 Easy Ways to Verify If an Email Address Is Real

Quickly Verify If an Email Address Is Valid

Steps

Use email verification sites.

Search online.

Check the syntax.

Hover over emails in Google.

Check the domain name.

Send an email.

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Tips

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