What a free email finder can actually tell you
A work email is found by looking for an address somebody has already been seen using, then by filling in the domain's house style with the person's name, then by checking the result against the domain. Two independent sightings, or a check that reaches the mailbox, makes it verified. One sighting makes it risky, and it is shown with that sighting rather than dressed up.
- What a lookup needs
- A name and a company
- Verified
- Two sources agreed, or the mailbox answered
- Risky
- One sighting, shown with its source
- Domain not needed
- A name and a company will do
No card. Works on the search you already ran.
Three questions, asked in that order
Nobody has every mailbox on earth written down. What a finder has is sightings, a house style per domain, and a way to check a guess — and the order they are used in is what decides whether the answer is worth anything.
- Evidence first
Look for an address somebody has already seen
The first question is never what the address should be. It is whether anyone has seen this person use one. Two independent sightings of the same address settle it without a guess.
- One shape per domain
Read the house style off the domain
Most companies spell every mailbox the same way. Once a domain is known to be first.last, the next person there costs a name rather than a discovery — and a domain with no known style is a guess, and is treated as one.
- No rounding up
Check it, and say so when the check cannot
The address is put to the domain before it is handed over. Some domains accept every address anyone asks about, so the check proves nothing there. That result comes back as a single source with the source shown, not as a confirmation.
Every result state, and what to do about it
This is the table worth keeping. A finder that returns one undifferentiated column of addresses has moved the judgement onto you without telling you.
| Result | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Verified | Two independent sources have seen this address, or a check reached the mailbox and it answered for itself. | Send to it. This is the file your sequencer should get. |
| Risky | One sighting, or the domain house style at a domain that accepts anything. The single source is shown with the row. | Judge it. Reasonable for a first touch on a domain you already send to; not what you want to open a cold domain with. |
| Role mailbox | info@, careers@, billing@. Perfectly deliverable, and not a person. | Kept in the list so you can see it was considered, never promoted to the answer, never charged. |
| Provided | An address you supplied, which a lookup has agreed with or has not been able to improve on. | Nothing. Confirming what you already had is free, and your address is not overwritten by a weaker find. |
| Not found | Nothing came back that anyone would stand behind, and a guess nobody can support is not worth handing over. | Free, and listed separately so you know who is missing. Tried again after a cooling-off period rather than hammered. |
One person can produce several of these at once — the same mailbox spelled two ways, or a second domain the company answers on. They come out together, best first. What you are charged for is the person, not the number of addresses their row ended up with.
A single lookup is the expensive way to do this
Not expensive in credits. Expensive in the part nobody counts: retyping names, and never learning who you failed to find.
| Row | Over a search | One name at a time |
|---|---|---|
| What you type | Nothing — it reads the results page you opened | A name and a domain, per person |
| People per go | Everyone the page shows | One |
| Who was missed | Listed, in a file of their own | You find out by noticing |
| People you have already paid for | Skipped, and not charged twice | Looked up again from scratch |
| Where the answer lands | CSV, HubSpot, API | The clipboard |
| The lookup itself | Identical | Identical |
There is no lookup box on this page yet
A one-off finder — a name, a domain, one answer, no account — is on the way. It is not here today, and saying so is cheaper than a form that takes your details and promises a result by email.
What does the job today is the free plan: 50 addresses a month, no card, running over a whole search instead of one person at a time. It is the same lookup with the useful part left in. You get a result state on every row, a list of the people it could not find, and a file that goes where your lists already go. About 74% of a normal B2B search comes back with an address, so a free month is a real test rather than a demo.
No card, and nothing charged for the people it cannot find.
What people ask before they trust an address
Do I need a LinkedIn profile, or will a name and a company do?
A name and a company are enough, and a company name on its own is resolved to a domain first. A profile is better where there is one: it identifies a single person outright, while a name plus an employer is a guess that two people of the same name at the same company defeat.
Why does one person come back with two or three addresses?
Because more than one is plausible and discarding the rest hides the reasoning. Usually it is the same mailbox spelled two ways, or a second domain the company also answers on. They arrive together, best first, each with what it was arrived at from, and they cost one credit between them rather than one each.
Why do two tools give different addresses for the same person?
Because nobody holds a list of every mailbox in the world. Every tool in this market holds sightings and a house style per domain, and they have seen different things. Where the answers differ, the usual reason is that one of them has promoted a pattern guess to a confirmation. We keep the guess labelled as a guess and show the single source behind it.
What happens to a name with accents or a comma in it?
Accents are folded down to the letters the mailbox is actually spelled with: Nguyen for Nguyễn, sorensen for Sørensen. A name written surname-first, like "Moher, Brenda", is turned back the right way round before any pattern is applied — read as written it teaches the domain a reversed house style, and every address guessed at that domain afterwards comes out with the halves swapped.
Can you find an address if I do not know the company domain?
Yes. The company name is resolved to a domain before anything else happens, because the domain is what an address hangs off. Where that resolution is arguable — two firms of the same name, or a group trading under a dozen — the row comes back carrying the domain it used, so you can see what it looked at.
Is a pattern guess ever handed over as though it were confirmed?
No. An address derived from a domain house style and nothing else is labelled risky and shown with what produced it. It still costs a credit, because an address was handed over. The label is a statement about the evidence and the price does not soften it.