Catch-all email addresses pose a unique challenge for marketers. They aren’t always invalid, but they can still bounce. This behavior makes it hard to know which ones are truly safe to send to.

Their engagement is unpredictable; some may reach real users, while others may never be opened. Anyone trying to maintain healthy deliverability, minimize email bounce rate, and protect their sender reputation needs to handle catch-all emails with caution.

One of our recent blogs covered the basics of catch-all, role, and disposable email addresses. In this blog, we dive deeper and explain what are catch-all email addresses, how common are catch-all emails, and why it’s important to verify if an email address is catch-all.

More importantly, we discuss in detail if marketers should send emails to catch-all email addresses. We conclude with answering some of the most frequently asked questions.

What is a catch-all email address?

Here is a simple definition of a catch-all email address: A catch-all email address accepts all emails addressed to its domain. Later, it may archive or reject emails if the recipient address was invalid.

Imagine your domain is mysamplewebsite.com, and you’ve configured only one inbox: info@mysamplewebsite.com. If someone sends an email to sales@mysamplewebsite.com or james@mysamplewebsite.com, those emails would normally bounce. But if you configure your email settings to catch-all, your server accepts all these emails too.

The most common reason organizations set up a catch-all domain is because they want to make sure no prospect or customer email is lost due to a typo.

Catch-all emails are also called accept-all emails or, less commonly, wildcard addresses.

Advantages and limitations of catch-all emails

When an organization configures their email server to catch-all, they also embrace its associated benefits and disadvantages. Here are the main ones:

Benefits of catch-all email addresses:

• Ensures no inbound email is lost due to typos or missing inboxes
• Makes it easier to manage communication when employees join or leave
• Can help capture unexpected leads or customer messages

Disadvantages and risks of catch-all email addresses:

• The volume of incoming mail increases significantly
• Attracts more spam and unwanted messages

Marketers can implement real-time email verification API at the point where they collect email addresses (say, a sign-up form). That way, the API would show them the quality of the email address at the point of entry itself. This insight helps marketers segment their lists and even improve conversion rates over time.

How common are catch-all emails?

Catch-all email addresses are risky, yet there doesn’t seem to be a wide research on how common catch-all emails are. All we know is the usage of catch-all emails varies considerably.

Consider the print media, for instance. Some of them may have trainees and interns joining and leaving all the time. And, more importantly, they can’t afford to lose some tip or news just because someone made a typo. Hence, these media organizations may find it useful to configure their domain as catch-all.

And, more importantly, they can’t afford to lose some tip or news just because someone made a typo. So using a catch-all domain might make more sense for them.

The Guardian, The New York Times, and The Financial Times are some of the well-known newspapers that use accept-all email addresses. Notice that for The New York Times (center, above), we have used an obviously meaningless email.

To understand more, we pulled out our internal data to learn the proportion of accept-all emails. 

The monthly figures seem to keep changing considerably. The minimum catch-all email addresses were 13.3% (in March 2025), while the maximum was 28.1% (in July 2025) of the total email addresses. The average monthly percentage for the first nine months of 2025 was 17.5%.

Based on this recent data, we infer that between 15% and 20% of emails are catch-all emails. However, as noted earlier, these numbers do vary from industry to industry.

Why catch-all email verification matters

Marketers constantly try to find new answers to the classic question: how can i improve my email marketing ROI? That’s because some methods that worked well earlier no longer work today.

What always matters is, however, the email list hygiene. Better the quality of your list, higher the email deliverability and ROI you’ll receive.

1. They can bounce. Despite their name, some accept-all email settings bounce invalid email addresses. Which is why some marketers call them false valid emails. The possibility of email bounce makes them risky email addresses. The problem is, you won’t know until you send to them.
2. They distort your engagement rates. Some catch-all email servers are set to not reject invalid emails. These emails aren’t opened, and you assume your subject line failed. That false signal wastes your effort across future campaigns.
3. They require special treatment. Not all accept-all emails are bad, but there’s no way to tell the good from the bad. You need to know which ones are catch-all before you decide on a strategy on how to treat them.

Two use cases of handling catch-all emails

Our recent conversations with clients told us that many marketers do not fully understand catch-all emails and their impact on email deliverability.

Take Felipe, the founder of a beauty startup. He asked us, “You said a catch-all domain will accept all emails coming in. So if I send them an email, they’re going to accept it anyway, right? Why should I bother checking if it’s an catch-all email address?

Sounds like a fair question – until you realize that’s not how all catch-all emails behave. Different configurations make the recipient server behave differently. And based on that, your email deliverability and sender reputation will change too.

Let’s say you send an email to an address that’s invalid but sits under a catch-all domain. The recipient server can handle it in one of the two ways below:

Case 1:

Case 2:

The above use cases show that catch-all emails can be unpredictable and risky.

How to identify if it’s a catch-all email

The only reliable way to identify catch-all email addresses is to use a reliable email verifier platform. 

Upload your email list to QuickEmailVerification and verify the list. At the end of the verification, our catch-all detection tool will provide you with a detailed report. You will see which emails were valid, which ones were catch-all, which were invalid, and so on.

(By the way, QuickEmailVerification offers the most generous free credits offer in the industry – you can sign up for free and verify 100 email addresses for free every day). 

How to optimize campaigns with catch-all emails

As a marketer, you invest a lot of time and money acquiring subscribers. You can’t simply delete email addresses. It could mean losing potential customers.

So, what is the best way of handling catch-all email addresses?

We recommend two strategies, depending on what percentage of your list is made up of catch-all emails.

Strategy 1

Use this approach when catch-all emails make up more than 2% of your list.

Follow these four steps:

1. Verify and segment. Verify your list and isolate catch-all addresses. If you have thousands of emails, divide them into smaller batches.
2. Warm up safely. First, send campaigns to your safe-to-send emails in order to strengthen your sender reputation and warm up your IP.
3. Re-engage separately. Create dedicated re-engagement campaigns for catch-all emails, similar to how you’d try and engage inactive subscribers.
4. Send gradually and analyze. Send campaigns one batch at a time. Remove bounced or unsubscribed addresses.
   • Opened emails: Keep sending to these. If the group is small, merge them into your main list.
   • Unopened emails: Send one final re-engagement email. Then send a goodbye email (with a link that says “Yes, I want to receive such emails”). After that, remove any emails that still don’t respond or opted out.

Why it works:

This strategy balances caution with opportunity. It helps marketers avoid sudden list shrinkage while still protecting sender reputation. By verifying, segmenting, and sending in stages, you get real engagement data before making permanent decisions. Also, removing inactive subscribers actually improves your email list hygiene.

It’s a structured, low-risk way to handle large volumes of catch-all emails without hurting deliverability.

Strategy 2: 

This is an aggressive approach, best when catch-all emails make up less than 2% of your list and your overall bounce rate is below 4%.

Follow these steps:

1. Verify and segment. Verify your email list and isolate accept-all addresses. Then divide them into smaller lists.
   
2. Add to safe-to-send lists. Append a few catch-all emails into each of your safe-to-send lists. If you have only one safe-to-send list, include all catch-alls there.
   
3. Send and monitor. Run your campaigns as usual. Since the catch-all emails are a small portion and your bounce rate is already low, you won’t need any special precautions. Just keep an eye on delivery and engagement metrics.

Why it works:

This strategy works because it takes advantage of your already healthy sender reputation. When catch-all emails form a very small portion of your list, their potential risk is minimal. By blending them into safe-to-send lists, you keep your bounce rate under control while still giving those addresses a fair chance to engage. 

It’s a fast, practical way to test the value of catch-all emails without disrupting your regular campaigns or deliverability.

Concluding remarks

Catch-all emails sit in a tricky middle ground: they aren’t always bad, but they aren’t always good either. They can hide real prospects, or they can quietly harm your deliverability without you realizing it. That’s why understanding and managing them is essential for every serious marketer.

You have built your email list by investing a lot of time and resources. So when you find catch-all emails on your list, you don’t want to simply delete them. The key is not to fear catch-all emails, but to handle them strategically so that you can improve your email deliverability.

Verifying email addresses with a trusted service like QuickEmailVerification helps you identify which addresses need extra attention. Once verified, applying the right strategy – cautious or aggressive – ensures you preserve potential leads without risking your sender reputation.

If you haven’t verified your list yet, start today. It’s the simplest way to remove risky email addresses, protect your sender reputation, and make every email campaign count.

Frequently asked questions

1. Are catch-all emails bad for my sender reputation?

Sending emails strategically to catch-all email addresses will not negatively impact your sender reputation or email deliverability. Segregate catch-all emails, send emails to them in small volumes, and retire all emails that bounce. To those email addresses that don’t bounce, send re-engagement emails. If they don’t wish re-engage with you, move those addresses to a suppressed list.

2. How do I detect if an email domain is a catch-all?

A robust, reliable email verifier will easily detect catch-all (AKA accept-all) email domains.

3. Can I improve engagement with catch-all addresses?

Yes, provided you send out emails in smaller batches. That will give you time to maintain your sender reputation and study the engagement patterns. Keep unsubscribing emails that request to be dropped, or the ones that bounce. That way, the remaining catch-all will have a better chance of engagement.

4. If an email server is configured as accept-all, can the emails I send them still bounce?

Yes, it is quite possible. Some accept-all email servers are configured to bounce invalid emails immediately and some are configured to do so after a while. The rest of them simply archive emails sent to invalid addresses and don’t bounce your emails at all. In the last case, you, as the sender, will never know if the email address was valid or not.

5. My email verification tool said a certain email was an accept-all email. When I sent an email, it was neither bounced nor opened. What should I do?

Some accept-all email servers do not bounce emails even if the recipient address doesn’t exist. Instead, they simply archive those messages. As a result, you, as a sender, will never know if the email existed or not. The best option for you is to send a second email that asks them to confirm if they’d like to continue receiving emails from you. If you don’t get that confirmation, stop sending emails to that address.