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What an address check does

An address check asks a checking service whether each address on hold has a mailbox that will accept mail. Emailing only mailboxes that work is one of the basics of good deliverability, and a check is a quick way to know which of your addresses you can reach. No email is sent to anybody. This page says what each answer does to that person, here and in your Shopify store, so nothing that happens afterwards is a surprise.

What it costs

A check costs $0.008 an address for the first 10,000 each billing period, $0.006 from 10,001 to 50,000, and $0.005 beyond. We pass these charges on at our cost. The button names the count and the price before you press it, and that is the most you can be charged. Addresses already unsubscribed or marked Do not email are never checked, so you never pay for one.

A check is billed, so it starts with your subscription. During your free trial the button is replaced by Start your subscription — or Choose a plan before your store has a plan — which opens Shopify's plan page.

A large check runs in batches, and each batch is billed when its results come back. If your store's plan ends partway through, the check waits and the import screen says The check is paused: "Paused until your store has a plan. It picks up where it left off." The addresses already checked stay checked, and nothing more is bought until your store has a plan again.

An address the service could not settle can be checked once more on a later check. After a second unsettled answer it is not offered again, so the most one address can ever cost you is two checks.

The email you get

When the check is over, whoever pressed the button gets an email saying how many addresses were checked, what that cost, and how many of each kind of answer came back. The same lines stay on the import screen under The last check.

The email is headed Your address check for your store is done. It has one line for each kind of answer that came back — only the kinds that did — and a button that opens the import the check was started from.

If some of the addresses you paid for were settled another way before the answers arrived — the person placed an order, say — the email says how many, so the lines always add up to the number checked.

Each answer, and what happens

A working mailbox comes off hold. A dead address is blocked for good and marked Do not email, a full mailbox is blocked until the person shops with you again, and an answer that cannot be sure leaves the person on hold.

The mailbox works

The address comes off hold. A person who agreed to hear from you is then confirmed and subscribed, and your emails reach them. Nothing is written to your Shopify store.

The mailbox is disabled, does not exist, or the address or its domain is not valid

The person is blocked for good:

The reason is your store's reputation. Mail providers judge a sender partly by how often it mails addresses that do not exist, and a disabled mailbox is one nobody will ever read.

An address blocked this way cannot be released — not even one that had bounced before the check, which the owner's Release this address… could otherwise have offered. A complaint already on record stays a complaint.

The mailbox is full

The person is blocked, but not for good:

If their mailbox is still full when you next email them, the bounce stops them again the way any bounce does.

The domain accepts every address

Some mail servers say yes to any name at all, so the service cannot tell whether this one mailbox exists. The person stays on hold.

The service could not tell, or the mail server did not answer

These stay on hold, and nothing is written about them anywhere. A mail server that did not answer is usually busy rather than gone, so this is never treated as a dead address.

The domain has no mail server, or the answer was a word we could not read

These stay on hold, and nothing is written about them anywhere — an answer we cannot be sure of never blocks anybody for good. But the service did answer, so:

Nobody you are already reaching is blocked

A check never blocks a person whose identity is verified, or who has received, opened or clicked one of your emails since the check — even when the answer says the mailbox is disabled or full. Those people keep the standing they had, and the check's answer is simply not acted on.

Results you import from another service

If your file carries the result of a check you had done somewhere else, the same rules apply to the same answers — a full mailbox, an address that does not exist, or a malformed one — as long as the result is dated and less than a year old. An undated result, or one more than a year old, blocks nobody.

When you connect another tool instead of uploading a file, the results it kept are acted on once the import has finished importing your email history — the last thing it imports — so that anybody that history shows you emailed successfully since is left alone. Until then those people stay on hold. You do not need to do anything.

Without a check: people your email is still reaching

Some people on hold never need a check. Somebody who agreed to your email, and whom your store's email reached in the last 180 days with no hard bounce, complaint or unsubscribe since — or who clicked one of your emails in the last year — is confirmed for you once the import has finished, free.

An open does not count, because mail apps open messages by themselves, and neither does a click a machine made. A message that bounced because the mailbox was full, followed by one that arrived, does not count against them. A person a check blocked is never confirmed this way.

Addresses that look like a typo

An address that looks like a slip — one small slip from a big provider, or nearly the address of one of your store customers with the same name — is not confirmed like the rest. Your history decides it when it can; otherwise it waits for you under Possible typos, where you choose once, for good.

A slip means one small slip away from a big provider (name@gmail.con, name@ail.com, name@hotmial.com), or nearly the address of one of your own store customers with the same first and last name. Its row and its profile say Looks like a typo of the other address — or Your store has that customer at it — and when your store has that address, what its record says — which unsubscribed — with a link to it. The likely case is one person typed two ways. When your history shows which address is real — your email reached one and never the other, or one domain does not exist at all — that decides it (a delivery to a misspelled big-provider address like name@ail.com does not prove the person received it, so it never counts). Possible typos is on the profiles screen and on your import. An address a check blocked is not listed there: the check has already decided it.

What a block never does

A block never touches text consent or the order and shipping emails your Shopify store sends. The only change it makes to consent is marking a dead address Do not email.