Where
Leads→Prospects
Your role needs
Read access to Prospects
read-leads. Admin, Member and Viewer have it by default.To create or change
create-leads to add one, update-leads to change one, on top of the permission above.If you cannot find this in your sidebar, your workspace may have a custom menu configuration. Contact support and we will check it for you.
How it behaves
Two engines, and when the second one runs
When an address is checked, the in-house verifier answers first: a live handshake with the receiving mail server. It comes back with one of four readings (deliverable, undeliverable, risky, or unknown), which become one of five verdicts:ok, invalid, disposable, catch_all, or unknown.
Not every address is checked. During lead generation, an address that arrives already reported as verified by the source it came from is stored as verified without a probe. Everything else gets one.
Only an unknown goes further. When the first check can’t get a clean answer (the receiving server greylisted the probe, blocked the connection outright, or the check timed out), we ask our data provider to break the tie, so the second engine is spent on the genuinely hard cases only.
That tiebreak runs only from the product’s own queued work. A check you start yourself settles for inconclusive instead: press Verify on a row and an unknown stays unknown. The same address, checked again later by a background job, can still come back verified or failed.
Five verdicts, three words you actually see
catch_all and unknown look identical to you: nothing is written against the address, so it stays usable (we don’t stop sending to it), and the row keeps offering to check it again.
A lead whose address comes back verified is also marked chargeable: the flag that decides whether it counts against your credits. The check itself never spends one; what consumes credits has the whole rule.
A recent verdict for the same address is reused
Before probing, we look for the same address on another record that was verified or failed in the last 30 days, and reuse that verdict instead of checking again. This applies everywhere a check happens, including the Verify button, which is why a check sometimes comes back instantly. Only verified and failed are reusable. An inconclusive result is never stored, so it is never reused, and the next check starts from scratch.Running a check by hand needs permission to change leads
The Verify button only appears for a role that can update leads. Without that permission you still see the green badge and the red icon, but nothing to press: the failed icon’s tooltip drops its “Click to verify again” half, and clicking it does nothing. Both markers are tooltips: “Email verified” on the badge, “Email verification failed. Click to verify again.” on the icon. The result of a check you run arrives as a notification: “Email verification result: verified”, “Email verification result: failed”, or “Email verification was inconclusive — the address stays unverified”.In a workflow, the same five verdicts become three branches
Add a Verify Email block to a canvas and it hands you three branches instead of a word: Valid, Risky and Invalid.ok becomes Valid, invalid and disposable both become Invalid, and catch_all and unknown both become Risky rather than stalling it, because a flow has to send a lead down some path. A check that fails outright also resumes down Risky, and a lead with no email address at all goes straight down Invalid without a check.
Repeated failures stop the digging at one company
Lead generation works through a company’s people one at a time. If the addresses found at one company keep failing, trying every remaining name there spends lookups on a domain that is probably dead. After 3 consecutive failed verifications at a company, the remaining candidates there are not looked up: each one ends in error instead. One address that comes back verified clears the streak, and inconclusive results neither count towards it nor clear it. The count is scoped to that one company (not the domain in general, not your whole workspace), and it expires 7 days after the first failure in the streak. Only failures from lead generation feed it; a bounce during sending does not.A stale “verified” gets checked again before a send
Before a campaign email goes out (first outreach, follow-up or reply), we check the recipient again if it wasn’t confirmed verified in the last two weeks, unless the lead has already sent a genuine reply on some channel, which proves the address is live. This only applies when the recipient is the lead’s most recent address. If that check comes back failed, the lead is closed and the message doesn’t go out: the same path a bounce takes, which for progressive lead generation moves on to the next person at the company. An inconclusive result doesn’t stop anything: the send goes ahead as planned.Limits
Related
Verify a lead's email address
The Verify button itself, step by step.
Find & Enrich blocks
The Verify Email block alongside Find Phone, Find Email and Company.
Email verification was inconclusive
Why the same address can keep asking to be checked.
Leads troubleshooting
Including leads that end in error and leads that close on their own.