Email verification · comparison
ZeroBounce alternative
Same job. Ours runs on your machine and shows its working.
What ZeroBounce is
A dedicated email verification service. You upload a list or call an API, and each address comes back valid, invalid, catch-all or unknown.
Infrastructure. They operate their own IP pools with managed reputation, which is the hard and expensive part of verification at scale, and it is why they can process a million addresses without getting blocked.
Pick ZeroBounce when: You need to verify hundreds of thousands of addresses on a deadline and do not want to run anything. That is a real operational service and worth paying for.
You want to read the code that produces the verdict, and you would rather your contact list never leave your infrastructure.
Side by side
| ZeroBounce | Verdict | |
|---|---|---|
| Where it runs | Their servers, your list uploaded | Your machine, list never sent |
| Verdict evidence | A label | The raw SMTP reply and status code |
| Catch-all | Flagged, still billed | Flagged, and we say no tool can resolve it |
| Pricing model | Per address, credits expire | Flat, or free self-hosted |
| Source code | Closed | MIT |
ZeroBounce sells credits, commonly cents per address. Free and MIT, or $59/mo hosted.
The honest summary
Verdict has no contact database and does not send campaigns. It opens an SMTP connection to the receiving server, asks whether the mailbox exists, and reports what the server said. When the server refuses to answer, or the domain accepts every address, it says so instead of guessing. That is the whole product, it is MIT licensed, and it runs on your own machine so the list never goes anywhere.
Try it on a real list
Paste up to 500 addresses. Free, no signup, nothing stored. The fairest test is your last campaign's bounce list, since you already know which ones failed.