Before You Pay a B2B Data Vendor: 8 Questions, and What Good Answers Look Like

Before you pay a B2B data vendor, get clear answers to eight questions: what "verified" means, when each record was last checked, what you pay for bad results, who picks the sample, whether they dedupe against your CRM, where the data came from, what legal basis covers your region, and what you can keep after you cancel. Then test a sample yourself. A vendor's answers tell you what you're buying. Your own bounce rate on a test send tells you what you got.

A recurring post in r/Emailmarketing and r/sales comes from people who bought two or three lists that turned out to be "mostly wasted spend": high bounces, old titles, people who left a year ago. Here are the questions those threads arrive at, with what the vendors' own pages say (read 2 November 2026).

The eight questions

#	Ask	A good answer	A red flag
1	What does "verified" mean, and does it cover the job title?	A named status list with definitions, and a separate signal for role changes	"All our data is verified", with no definition
2	When was each record last checked?	A per-record date or a stated refresh window	No date at all
3	What am I charged for invalid or unknown results?	No charge for invalid, or credits back above a stated bounce rate	Every reveal charged, no recourse
4	Can I choose the sample?	Yes, from my own target accounts	Only a pre-picked "sample list"
5	Do you dedupe against my CRM before I pay?	Yes, from a suppression or CRM file	You pay again for contacts you already have
6	Where does the data come from?	Named source types (contributor network, public crawling, vetted providers)	"Proprietary", nothing more
7	What legal basis do you rely on for EU or UK contacts?	A clear answer, plus what you must tell the person at first contact	"That's your problem"
8	What can I keep after I cancel?	Written licence terms	No terms, or a reseller with no licence

What the published answers look like

What verified means. Apollo's email status guide (updated 2 November 2026) is a good model of a clear answer. It separates Verified ("a fully confirmed, valid email address"), Unverified, Update required ("typically because the contact changed jobs"), Unavailable, User-managed and Catch-all, and states the credit impact of each. It also says: "If an Apollo-verified email bounces within 30 days of purchase, Apollo automatically refunds the credit." Even so, catch-all and old records still bounce, and that refund is credits, not your domain.

What you're charged for. Policies differ a lot:

• Lusha: "revealing an email costs 1 credit and a phone number costs 5", and "credits aren't refunded for a reveal you've already made, even if the contact's data turns out to be incomplete." A lookup that finds nothing isn't charged (Lusha, 15 October 2026).
• Snov.io: in the finder, "Credits are not charged for deactivated or outdated emails, which are marked as 'red emails'", but yellow (unknown) results cost 1 credit (Snov.io credits).
• UpLead: "Our customers enjoy a 95% data accuracy guarantee. If their numbers fall below that, they get their credits back" (UpLead).

None of these covers the cost that matters more: a high bounce rate on a new sending domain. Our post on bounce refunds from lead data providers goes through the terms in detail.

Legal basis. For EU and UK contacts, GDPR Article 14 applies when data wasn't collected from the person: if you use it to contact them, you must give the required information "at the latest at the time of the first communication". A vendor's compliance page doesn't do that for you.

Then test it yourself

1. Send the vendor 300 to 500 of your own target accounts and ask for those contacts, not their showcase sample.
2. Dedupe against your CRM with compare email lists so you only judge new contacts.
3. Verify the sample on the verify page. The invalid share is a floor for what the full list will do.
4. Send a small batch of the valid rows and measure bounces and replies. Our post on testing a new lead source has the pass marks and why 100 rows is too few.
5. Buy volume only if the sample passes, and verify every export again the week you send. Data decays from the day it's pulled; see B2B contact data decay.

What SimpleVerifier charges

Duplicates and addresses we can't check are free, and results come back as valid, risky or invalid. The first 100 checks are free with a Google sign-in. Pro is $39 a month with the first 100,000 checks a month at full speed, then slower, never cut off, and one-time packs of 10,000 checks for $15 never expire. See pricing.