Verify Apollo leads before outreach

Why Apollo exports still need a verification pass

Apollo.io is a database-first prospecting tool. Its contact records are stitched together from public sources, community contributions, and pattern-guessed email formats, which means an Apollo email can be technically enriched but still point at a mailbox that was deprovisioned, changed roles, or never existed. The green "verified" badge inside Apollo reflects Apollo's own signal at the time the record was ingested — not a live check at the moment you export.

When you pull a list from an Apollo saved search or People search and drop it into a sequencer, every stale or guessed address becomes a hard bounce. A run of hard bounces above roughly 2-3% starts to drag your domain reputation down with mailbox providers, which quietly suppresses inbox placement for the good addresses on the same list. The cheapest place to catch this is between the Apollo export and the sequencer import.

Verifly runs a live SMTP mailbox check on each row and returns a plain deliverable / undeliverable / risky verdict plus flags for disposable, role, and catch-all addresses. You bring the CSV, Verifly hands back a clean one, and you never sign a monthly contract to do it.

How to verify an Apollo export step by step

1. In Apollo, open your People search or a saved list, select the leads, and use Export to download a CSV. Keep the email column (usually named "Email").
2. Grab a free Verifly key at verifly.email/api/v1/autonomous/register — 100 credits, no card, no captcha.
3. Send the addresses to the batch endpoint. For a small list you can paste the emails inline; for a big saved search, loop the CSV column into POST /verify/batch.
4. Read back the result field for each row and drop everything that is undeliverable. Decide per campaign whether to keep risky / catch-all rows.
5. Re-import only the deliverable rows into your Apollo sequence or your external sender.

import fs from 'node:fs'

// emails pulled from the "Email" column of your Apollo export
const emails = fs.readFileSync('apollo_export_emails.txt', 'utf8')
  .split('\n').map(s => s.trim()).filter(Boolean)

const res = await fetch('https://verifly.email/api/v1/verify/batch', {
  method: 'POST',
  headers: {
    'Authorization': 'Bearer vf_your_api_key',
    'Content-Type': 'application/json',
  },
  body: JSON.stringify({ emails }),
})

const { results } = await res.json()
const clean = results.filter(r => r.result === 'deliverable')
console.log(`Keeping ${clean.length} of ${results.length} Apollo leads`)