By: Targe Media
Every outbound team knows the pain of email bounces. Send a campaign to a dirty list and the consequences cascade: damaged sender reputation, aggressive spam filtering, reduced deliverability on future campaigns, and wasted budget. Healthy bounce rates should stay under 2%, yet average B2B bounce rates sit between 2-5%.
The email verification tools market, valued at $1.5 billion in 2026, exists to solve this. But there is a gap most tools ignore: catch-all emails. Scrubby.io, developed by Vendisys founder Erik Paulson, was built to fill that gap, then expanded to replace the entire stack.
What Are Catch-All Emails and Why Are They a Problem?
Catch-all emails account for 15-25% of typical B2B email lists, sometimes reaching 30%. These addresses sit on domains configured to accept all incoming mail, regardless of whether the specific mailbox exists. Standard verification tools cannot determine whether a catch-all address belongs to a real person or a black hole. Most return these as “unknown” or “risky” and leave the decision to the sender.
This creates an impossible choice: exclude catch-all emails and lose 15-30% of your audience, or include them and risk bounces that damage your sender reputation.
How Does Scrubby Solve the Catch-All Email Problem?
Scrubby developed verification technology specifically designed to determine whether catch-all email addresses belong to real, active recipients. It takes a list, identifies valid and risky addresses, then validates the risky portion to recover leads that every other tool throws away. This approach can 2x your usable list size from the same raw data.
Why Does Email Validation Matter More in 2026?
Since Google and Yahoo’s policy enforcement in late 2024, SPF, DKIM, and DMARC authentication is mandatory. Spam complaint thresholds are at 0.3%. Non-compliance means permanent rejection, not just spam filtering. Microsoft followed with similar requirements in May 2025. A single campaign to a poorly validated list can trigger rejection rules that affect all future sends from that domain.
Financially, a 10,000-contact list with a 10% bounce rate represents $15,000 in lost revenue per campaign. B2B data degrades at 22% annually, with 28% of a typical email list going stale every year.
How Does Scrubby Compare to ZeroBounce, NeverBounce, and Hunter?
ZeroBounce offers 99% accuracy across standard validation. NeverBounce performs up to 75 checks across global locations. BriteVerify focuses on the enterprise with Salesforce integration. MillionVerifier targets budget-conscious bulk senders. Hunter combines verification with an email database. What none started with or fully solved is the catch-all problem. Scrubby’s complete validation platform inverts the model: solve the hardest problem first, then build a full-stack solution around it.
How Big Is the Email Deliverability Tools Market?
The email deliverability tools market is valued at $1.2 billion, projected to reach $1.9 billion by 2030 at 8.3% growth. This is driven by tighter authentication requirements, increasing dependence on email marketing, and rising awareness that data quality directly impacts revenue.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Scrubby.io?
Scrubby.io is a complete email validation platform that specializes in verifying catch-all emails, which account for 15-25% of typical B2B lists. It determines which catch-all addresses belong to real recipients, recovering leads that other tools like ZeroBounce and NeverBounce throw away.
What is a catch-all email?
A catch-all email is an address on a domain configured to accept all incoming mail, regardless of whether the specific mailbox exists. Standard verification tools cannot determine if these are real, active addresses. They represent 15-25% of most B2B email lists.
How does email validation improve deliverability?
Email validation removes invalid, disposable, and undeliverable addresses before campaigns are sent. This keeps bounce rates under 2%, protects sender reputation with ISPs like Gmail and Outlook, and prevents domain-level rejection under the enforcement rules introduced by Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft.
Does Scrubby offer a free trial?
Yes. Scrubby offers a free trial with 100 email verifications, plus API integration with major data tools for automated list cleaning.
Start a free trial with 100 email verifications at scrubby.io.
Disclaimer: This article discusses Scrubby.io, an email validation platform developed to address challenges related to catch-all emails. The claims regarding Scrubby’s ability to improve list accuracy and deliverability are based on the platform’s internal data. Results may vary depending on the quality of the email list and individual circumstances. No guarantees are made regarding the effectiveness of the platform. Users are encouraged to verify the accuracy of claims and consult with a professional before making any business decisions.
