Mailgun rolls out changes to email validation API including new features and pricing model

Today, we are announcing several major changes to our email validation API. These changes include the addition of new features to improve the service, the incorporation of the product into our general SLAs, and lastly the transition to a usage-based pricing model.

As an email service provider, one major aspect of our offering is to help educate customers on email delivery best practices. In these discussions, we frequently emphasize the importance of capturing a valid and accurate email address during the registration or signup process as one of the best ways to build and maintain a strong email reputation. This type of verification helps reduce the number of typos in both the mailbox and domain name ensuring that your messages reach the right user’s mailbox.

In 2013, we launched the first version of our email validation API. Since then, the rate of growth has exceeded our expectations and we’re now validating over 200 million email addresses every month. With validation being such an integral part of deliverability, we decided to invest in this feature and make it a much more valuable part of our offering.

New features

As part of this effort, several new features have been implemented and are available immediately to new and existing customers:

• Mailbox Verification – For supported mailbox providers, Mailgun can check to determine if a mailbox exists on the target domain. This check is an additional safeguard that can be leveraged to detect typos.

• Role-based Address Check – For all validation requests, we can designate whether an address is a “role-based address.” These addresses are typically distribution lists with a much higher complaint rate since unsuspecting users who are part of the list can receive a message they were not expecting.

• Disposable Mailbox Detection – Disposable mailboxes are commonly used for fraudulent purposes. We can tell you whether the address is on a known disposable mailbox provider, and you can choose how to proceed based on your own risk decisions.

• Reporting Dashboard – Within the “Validation” menu, you can view your usage by day/hour for the validation API. We also include the number of valid/invalid addresses along with the type of API call that was made to help measure the impact of email address validation.

• Rate Limiting of Validation API Key – Rate limits can now be applied to the validation API key to manage costs and the potential for abuse.

Usage-based pricing

Like our messages product, we are implementing a tiered pricing model based on usage. Your first 100 email validations per billing cycle are free. Subsequently, your price per validation will decrease substantially as you validate more addresses. You can use our pricing calculator here to estimate your monthly cost. Also, like our messages product, we will be packaging this offering with premium support alongside our other products for a discount.

Service level agreement

For many of our customers, our validation API has become a core infrastructure component in their application. To accommodate these customers, we have extended our service level agreement to cover all usage fees associated with our validation API to ensure that this rollout

goes smoothly. For more details, please refer to section 2 of our SLA.

Existing customers

We realize that this will be a big change for some of our existing customers, and we want to make sure that we provide the best support possible through this transition. Thus, over the last several weeks we’ve been working with our largest customers and, prior to the public announcement, have contacted all existing validation API users directly to communicate these changes. Moreover, we will be providing existing customers with free access to the API and its new features for the first 30 days beginning June 27, 2017.

We greatly value your business and are always here to help. Our support team will be available 24/7/365 to help review your validation API usage and assist with any additional questions you may have. Please don’t hesitate to reach out.