Verify Email Before Sending
A bounce is not a failed email — it is a damaged sender reputation, a wasted send, and a domain that lands in spam for everyone on your team. The only reliable fix is to verify the mailbox at the moment you use it, not when the list was built.
Why unverified lists bounce
Contact data decays faster than most teams assume:
- 23% of contacts change jobs annually (ZoomInfo, 2025)
- 40% of emails are dead within two years (NeverBounce)
- Purchased databases carry 25–35% bounce rates (ZoomInfo, 2025)
A list that bounced at 4% on the day you bought it can be past 15% a year later — with the same file, the same filtering, and the same sending tool.
What an SMTP verification actually checks
- Syntax and domain — is this a valid address at a domain that accepts mail at all?
- MX records — does the domain actually have a mail server, and is it reachable?
- Mailbox handshake — the SMTP conversation asks the receiving server whether the specific mailbox exists.
- Disposable / role detection — catch-all domains and
info@-style role inboxes get flagged instead of silently poisoning your campaign.
Syntax checks alone catch roughly nothing that matters. The mailbox handshake is the part that separates a 2–5% bounce rate from a 10–35% one.
How to automate it
TAPAC returns the contact and its verification status in the same response, so there is no second tool and no CSV round-trip:
npx -y @tapacapi/mcp
Ask the agent for contacts — industry, titles, company size, location, source — and every record comes back with an email that passed SMTP validation. Two tools are exposed: tapac_find_contacts and tapac_status.
The REST equivalent is one call:
POST https://tapacapi.com/v1/contacts/search
Authorization: Bearer <key>
{"industry": "SaaS", "job_titles": ["VP Sales"], "location": "US", "limit": 20}
What it costs
Pay per contact, $0.10–0.50, after 100 free searches. No seat licence and no annual contract — you pay for verified contacts, not for a database dump you have to re-verify yourself.
Where to go next
- Install the TAPAC MCP server —
npx -y @tapacapi/mcp, no wiring for Claude, Cursor, Codex or Windsurf. - Get a free API key — 100 searches, no credit card.
- Pricing — pay per verified contact, no subscription.
- TAPAC compared to Apollo · compared to ZoomInfo