How it works
Five steps, and one of them is admitting what we don't know
Finding a business email is not magic and it is not a database lookup. It is pattern generation plus a conversation with the company's own mail server — and the interesting part is how honestly that conversation gets reported.
- 01
You give us a person and a company
A first name, a last name, and the company's web domain. Not a Gmail address — a personal mailbox at a consumer provider cannot be derived from a pattern, and we refuse those before charging you rather than selling you a guess.
- 02
We build the candidates
Business addresses come from a small set of shapes: first.last, flast, first, and a handful more. We generate the candidates that fit this person's name and this domain, in order of how common each shape actually is.
- 03
We put them to the company's mail server
Each candidate is offered to the domain's own mail exchanger, which is the only party that truly knows whether a mailbox exists. We stop at roughly four candidates — enough to cover most companies, few enough that the search cannot run away on cost.
- 04
We tell you what we actually proved
If the server confirmed the mailbox, you get verified. If the domain accepts everything, you get accepts-all, because acceptance there proves nothing. If nothing conclusive came back, you get unverified. We never round any of those up.
- 05
You are charged only for an answer
An address costs 10 Ounie credits. No address costs nothing, automatically. Reading the result back later is free forever.
The candidate shapes
These are the shapes we walk. The first four cover roughly 85% of companies, which is where we stop by default — testing every remaining variant costs more than the answer is worth, and we would rather tell you the search was bounded than bill you for a wider guess you never asked for.
Candidate shapes
0/8
first.lastfirstflastf.lastfirstlastfirst_lastlastfirstlast
We pin the search to the four shapes that cover roughly 85% of real companies. Testing every possible shape would cost more than the answer is worth, and we would rather tell you we stopped than quietly bill you for a wider guess.
What the mail server actually tells us
Here is the same probe against three different domains. The middle one is why this product exists.
› RCPT TO: <dana.whitfield@northbeam.io>
‹ 250 2.1.5 OK
› RCPT TO: <zzq-not-a-person@northbeam.io>
‹ 550 5.1.1 No such user
The server distinguishes real mailboxes.
The mailbox was confirmed. Send with confidence.
› RCPT TO: <mhale@deltaworks.co>
‹ 250 2.1.5 OK
› RCPT TO: <zzq-not-a-person@deltaworks.co>
‹ 250 2.1.5 OK
It accepts nonsense too. The OK means nothing.
A strong guess, not a confirmation. This is where other tools show a green tick.
› RCPT TO: <p.raman@castlepoint.dev>
‹ 451 4.7.1 Greylisted, try again later
› RCPT TO: <p.raman@castlepoint.dev>
‹ 421 4.7.0 Too many probes
No conclusive answer was reached.
The shape matches how this company forms addresses. Nothing confirmed the mailbox.
What this is not
- Not a bulk enumerator. Email Finder answers one named person at one named company. It will not sweep a domain for whoever happens to exist there.
- Not a contact database. We do not hold a list of people and sell you rows from it. Every answer is derived at the moment you ask.
- Not a licence to send. A verified address means the mailbox exists, not that contacting it is appropriate or lawful where you are. That judgement stays yours.