Valid Email Domains: 10 Webmail Domains Checked

Q: Is an address on an old webmail domain still valid?

Often, yes. Domains like ymail.com, me.com and yahoo.fr no longer take new sign-ups, but existing mailboxes keep working. Unused ones close: Yahoo and AOL mailboxes that go unused for 12 months stop receiving mail.

What each domain profile tells you

Every profile answers the same five questions, from the operator’s own help pages and from DNS:

Fact	Where it comes from
Who runs the mailboxes	The operator’s help, sign-up and legal pages
Still taking new addresses?	The operator’s own sign-up form or help article
MX hosts	A DNS-over-HTTPS query, with the date we ran it
Free / disposable flag	Our published free email domains list and disposable email domains list
Server settings	The matching page in our SMTP settings directory

The domain’s registration date from the registry’s RDAP record is there too. It says how long the name has existed, which isn’t always the year the email service started: me.com was first registered in 1994, while Apple’s help pages tie its addresses to MobileMe and early iCloud accounts.

Valid email domains that no longer take sign-ups

A domain can be real and still closed to new users. Mail to existing addresses keeps working; nobody can create a new one:

ymail.com and yahoo.fr: Yahoo’s sign-up form offers @yahoo.com and @myyahoo.com only.
me.com: Apple has given new iCloud accounts @icloud.com addresses since September 19, 2012.
verizon.net: Verizon retired its email service; the addresses customers moved live on at AOL Mail.

Seeing one of these on a new sign-up isn’t suspicious in itself. It means the person has had the address for a while.

A real domain is not a real mailbox

Every domain here passes a domain check. The mailbox behind a given address is a separate question: it may never have existed, it may have closed after a long time without a sign-in, or the user may have made a typo. To check the whole address, use is this a real email address; for a file, the bulk email verifier. The guide on how to check if an email exists explains what the mailbox check does.

Frequently asked questions

How do I know if an email domain is valid?

Look up its MX records. A domain that publishes MX records (or at least an A record) can receive mail; one with no records, or with a “null MX”, can’t. The MX lookup shows them. That proves the domain works, not that a given mailbox exists.

Is an address on an old webmail domain still valid?

Often, yes. Domains like ymail.com, me.com and yahoo.fr no longer take new sign-ups, but existing mailboxes keep working. Unused ones close: Yahoo and AOL mailboxes that go unused for 12 months stop receiving mail.

Are free email domains bad for my email list?

No. Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook.com and AOL addresses belong to real people. Free domains matter when you only want work addresses, for example in a B2B demo form. Disposable domains are a different list: those inboxes are made to be thrown away.

Why is a domain I know not in your free email list?

The list comes from the open-source freemail project, plus a few domains we add ourselves, such as proton.me. No list covers every provider, so a domain that isn’t on it can still be personal webmail. The email domain lookup shows which provider hosts a domain’s mail.

Flag free and disposable domains at sign-up

One API request returns MX and mailbox checks for an address, plus free, disposable and role flags, so your form can tell a webmail sign-up from a throwaway one.

100 free validations every month. No credit card required.

{ "email": "support@emailvalidation.io", "user": "support", "tag": "", "domain": "emailvalidation.io", "format_valid": true, "mx_found": true, "smtp_check": true, "catch_all": null, "role": true, "disposable": false, "free": false, "score": 0.64, "state": "deliverable", "reason": "valid_mailbox", "did_you_mean": "" }

Valid email domains, checked one by one

Domain profiles