Email Finder & Verifier

Turn a name plus a company domain into a verified work email. No paid API keys. Built to close the loop on the AI Sales Personalizer pipeline: scrape leads, find emails, personalize, send.

How it works

1. Normalize the name into first/last and the domain (accepts bare domains or full URLs).
2. MX lookup confirms the domain can receive mail and finds its mail server.
3. Pattern generation builds the common B2B address formats (first.last, flast, first, etc.), ranked by real-world frequency.
4. Catch-all detection probes a random address. If the server accepts it, the domain is catch-all and individual mailboxes cannot be confirmed, so confidence is capped.
5. SMTP verification probes each candidate with RCPT TO (no mail is ever sent). The first address the server accepts is the verified email.

Graceful degradation

Some networks block outbound port 25. When SMTP probing is unavailable, the actor automatically falls back to pattern-plus-MX confidence (the same model Hunter.io uses for unverifiable domains) and labels the result probable_pattern. You always get the best-guess email.

Output per contact

Field	Meaning
best_email	The resolved (or best-guess) email
confidence	0 to 100
status	verified, probable_pattern, unverified_pattern, catch_all, or no_mx
mx_valid	Whether the domain has a working mail server
catch_all	Whether the domain accepts everything
candidates	All patterns considered
smtp_results	Per-candidate SMTP outcome when probing ran

Input

{
  "contacts": [
    { "name": "Jane Smith", "domain": "acme.com" },
    { "first_name": "John", "last_name": "Doe", "domain": "https://www.example.com" }
  ],
  "verify_smtp": true,
  "detect_catch_all": true,
  "preview_mode": false
}

Pricing

Free preview (first 3 contacts). $0.02 per resolved contact after that. Compare to Hunter.io at $34/mo for 500 (about $0.07 each) or Apollo at higher tiers.

Pairs with

• Show HN Lead Scraper / Greenhouse Jobs Scraper to source the companies
• AI Sales Personalizer to write the opener once you have the email

Notes

• Respects standard SMTP etiquette: one connection per candidate, never sends mail, short timeouts.
• Catch-all and greylisting are detected and reported rather than guessed past.
• No personal data is stored beyond the run dataset.

Pairs well with

• contact-details-extractor: When email finder returns null, scrape the contact page for fallback emails. $0.01 per site.
• ai-sales-personalizer: Resolve, then write the opener that the email will carry. $0.10 to $0.20 per lead.
• ats-job-aggregator: Resolve named recruiter contacts at hiring companies. $0.005 per job.

Integrations

This actor works out of the box with every Apify-supported integration:

• API: call via Apify API or any official SDK (Python, JavaScript, PHP, .NET). Returns a clean dataset URL.
• Schedule: set a daily, weekly, or custom cron cadence in Apify Console. Combine with notification for fresh feeds.
• Webhooks: wire ACTOR.RUN.SUCCEEDED to Slack, Discord, Zapier, Make, n8n, Pipedream, or any HTTPS endpoint.
• MCP: this actor is discoverable through Apify's hosted MCP server at mcp.apify.com for Claude, Cursor, Cline, Windsurf, and other MCP clients.
• n8n / Make / Zapier: native HTTP-Request integration. Trigger the actor on schedule, pipe results to Google Sheets, Airtable, your CRM, or any database.

Try it free

Every Apify user gets $5/month in free platform credits (around 250 events at this actor's per-event price). Run preview mode first to confirm output shape before scaling.

New to Apify? Sign up here to get free credits on signup.

What's New

• 2026-06-03: Metadata, categories, and SEO refreshed. Latest version live on Apify Store.

Last Updated

2026-06-03