Email verification statuses
What Valid, Risky, Catch-all, Invalid and Unknown mean, how the 0–100 confidence score works, and what to do with each.
OmniLead verifies every email before you see it and again before you send. The result is one of five statuses plus a confidence score from 0 to 100. Hover a badge in the app to see the checks behind it.
The five statuses
Valid
The syntax is correct, the domain has working mail servers, the address isn't disposable, and the recipient's server confirmed the mailbox exists (or the address was published by the organization and matches a confirmed pattern). Valid addresses are the ones to build sequences on.
Risky
The address probably exists, but something could hurt delivery. Common reasons:
- It's a role address like
info@orsales@, often shared and filtered. - The mailbox is full or temporarily rejecting mail.
- The domain is very new or has a poor sending reputation.
Hover the badge to see which reason applies.
Catch-all
Some mail servers accept every address at their domain, real or not, and sort it out later. That means nobody can confirm a single address without actually sending to it. Universities and larger companies often work this way.
A catch-all address from a strong source, such as the person's own staff page, is usually fine. A catch-all address ranked from a pattern is a guess you can't check, so send to a small batch first and watch bounces.
Invalid
The domain has no mail servers, the syntax is broken, the address is on a disposable-email domain, or the server said the mailbox doesn't exist. OmniLead refunds the credit automatically and won't enroll invalid addresses in a sequence.
Unknown
The server timed out, greylisted the check, or refused to answer. It's not a verdict. Re-verify in a few hours; many unknowns resolve to valid or catch-all.
Confidence score
The score from 0 to 100 combines the status with the evidence behind it: where the address came from, how well it matches the domain's real pattern, and what the mail server said.
When you enroll leads, you can set a minimum confidence for the sequence. Leads below it are skipped and listed so you can review them.
How verification works
OmniLead runs checks in layers.
Built-in checks
Syntax, MX records (does the domain accept mail?), disposable-domain detection, role-address detection, and pattern confidence from real addresses the crawler found on the same domain.
Mailbox check
A verifier talks to the recipient's mail server, starts a delivery for the address and stops before any message is sent. The server's answer shows whether the mailbox exists. Your workspace uses a connected verification service for this step, or the self-hosted verifier if one is configured.
Score
OmniLead combines the results into a status and a confidence score, and stores them with the date.
Why port 25 matters
The mailbox check needs to connect to the recipient's mail server on port 25, the port servers use to talk to each other. Most cloud platforms, including the ones OmniLead runs on, block outbound port 25 to stop spam. So the mailbox check runs through a dedicated verification service, or through an optional self-hosted verifier on a server that allows port 25.
30-day cache
Verification results are stored for 30 days. Within that window, revealing or enrolling the same address uses the stored result. After 30 days, OmniLead verifies again before the address is used in a sequence, because mailboxes close and people move.
To force a fresh check, open the lead and choose Re-verify email from the email's menu.
Before you send
- Build sequences on Valid and high-confidence Catch-all addresses.
- Keep Risky addresses in a separate, slower sequence.
- Never send to Invalid. OmniLead won't let you.
- Watch the bounce rate. If a sequence reaches 5% bounces, it pauses automatically. See Auto-pause.