Freshsales Contact List Validation (Beta): What It Checks, Where It Stops, and When to Verify Outside

Freshsales checks a bulk email's contacts before it sends, on Growth and higher plans, through a contact list validation that's been in beta and on by default. Junk addresses are left out of the send, marked Bounced and listed under Dropped contacts. The article doesn't say how addresses are checked, and it only describes bulk email, not sequences or one-to-one mail. If you send bulk email from a Growth plan, it may be all you need. Check outside Freshsales when you send sequences, import a large list, or want to see catch-all and risky contacts before they reach the CRM.

Sources, read 2 November 2026: Freshsales' How does contact list validation work (beta) (modified 6 September 2023) and its bulk email bounce warning article (modified 2 April 2024).

What the built-in validation does

• Plans: beta, Growth and above. Customers can ask crm-support@freshworks.com to enable it.
• Default: on.
• When: before a bulk email is delivered.
• Result: junk addresses are excluded, show Bounced in the bulk email details, and appear in the Dropped contacts view. Freshsales recommends removing them from the CRM.
• Turning it off: Admin Settings > CRM Settings > Outgoing Emails, then clear "Auto-verify email addresses of contacts before sending emails".
• A quirk: if a one-to-one email to a dropped contact is later delivered, the address is automatically marked valid.

What the article doesn't say

1. How addresses are checked. No mention of SMTP, catch-all handling or role addresses.
2. Sequences and one-to-one email. Only bulk email is described.
3. Price or limits. None are mentioned.
4. Whether it's still beta. The article was last modified in September 2023 and still says beta. Check your plan's settings.

How it fits Freshsales' bounce limits

Freshsales' bounce article checks the bounce rate daily on email sent in the last 7 days: a warning shows once it crosses 5%, and email is disabled for an indefinite period once it crosses 10%. It applies once you send at least 49 emails in a week, and re-enabling means removing invalid contacts and contacting support. Validation that drops junk before the send helps keep you under those lines. A bounce from a sequence, or from an address the validation passed, still counts. Our Freshsales export, verify and re-import post walks through getting back under.

When an outside check is still worth it

• You're not on Growth or above, so the built-in check isn't available.
• You send sequences or a lot of one-to-one email, which the article doesn't cover.
• You're importing a large list. Check it before import so dead contacts never become CRM records, and only import the ones worth keeping.
• You want more than pass or fail. A verifier labels catch-all, role and disposable addresses separately, so you can decide per segment. See email validation vs verification.

Steps for an outside check

1. In Contacts, pick a view and choose Export. Include Emails, Email status and Unsubscribed.
2. Run the file through the Freshsales export tool to get one clean email column.
3. Verify it at /verify. Valid, risky and invalid download separately.
4. Update the CRM with an update-only import, marking invalid contacts so they're left out of sends. The steps are in the Freshsales post.

For a comparison of verifiers that take a Freshsales export, see the best email verifier for Freshsales.

Where SimpleVerifier fits

SimpleVerifier has no Freshsales connector. It checks a Freshsales export, or single addresses through the API on Pro and up. The first 100 checks are free with a Google sign-in on the verify page. Pro is $39 a month with the first 100,000 checks a month at full speed, then slower, never cut off. One-time packs of 10,000 checks for $15 never expire (CSV only). See pricing.