Glossary
Catch-all domain
The short answer
A mail domain that accepts every address, making individual mailboxes impossible to verify remotely.
Catch-all configurations are common at smaller companies and at organisations using certain hosted mail setups. A verification check returns accepted for any address, valid or not.
Treating catch-alls as verified inflates list quality on paper and produces bounces in reality. Treating them as invalid throws away real people.
The sensible middle is to flag them, require a second corroborating signal such as a matching professional profile, and keep them as a minority of any batch.
How we handle it
Catch-all results are treated as unproven rather than valid, and those contacts need corroborating evidence before release.
Related terms
Keep reading
Bounce rate
The share of sent emails rejected by the receiving server, the headline measure of email list hygiene.
Lead enrichment
Adding verified contact and company detail to a record so it can actually be worked.
Waterfall enrichment
A general industry term for filling missing fields through more than one quality step.