Melissa Clean Suite Vs Record Validation for Salesforce – Email Validation Showdown

The more things change - the more they stay the same. At least, that’s true of email. While some digital creations have evolved and kept their utility, others have vanished into the digital abyss. Today, most folks still rely on it as a cornerstone of their daily communication, making it a staple communication protocol whether for personal use or commercial.

Email isn't without its complications, however. It's easy to forge fake email addresses with just a few clicks, and a growing number of individuals are hesitant to entrust their primary email addresses to unknown sources. This presents a conundrum for businesses striving to maintain an accurate email database. For companies, ensuring the authenticity and reachability of their email contacts is an ongoing challenge that can have direct impact on their bottom line. Sending emails that rebound or remain unread constitutes a waste of both time and energy. This is precisely why companies rely on email validation services.

If you're in the market for email validation for your enterprise, the choice among different email validation services often comes down to your specific requirements. Each service offers a unique array of capabilities, pricing structures, and operational efficiency. In this article, we'll navigate through two prominent email validation services—Record Validation and Melissa Clean Suite. We'll unveil the distinctions between these offerings and examine how they can prove to be invaluable aides in the intricate choreography of email validation.

Record Validation Overview

Plauti Record Validation offers not just email validation but an enriched suite of contact data validation including phone numbers and addresses. If it's only email you want to validate, that's no problem at all – RV excels in all aspects. Record Validation checks your emails with a variety of techniques, including Syntax Check, DNS Check and FreeMail Check. Here are some other features that stand out.

Features

• Quick Entry: Validates and formats email addresses, phone numbers, and addresses upon insertion or update, enhancing data accuracy and operational efficiency​2​.
• Direct Validate: Automatically validates records via API insert or bulk upload, ensuring real-time data integrity.
• Batch Validation: Email validation in batch lets you take care of those huge lists of emails that need validation in a single job.
• Spam-trap detection – RV can discover and notify you of any spam-traps in your data.

Pros

• Modern and intuitive interface: A great interface facilitates the validation process. It makes data cleansing routines easily accessible, requiring little technical knowledge​​.
• Ease of Integration: Seamlessly integrates with Salesforce, streamlining the validation process within existing workflows.
• Unlimited user seats: Record Validation has no limits on the number of users who can access and use its powerful features, so you can equip as many users as you wish in your organization with powerful data validation tools.
• Pardot (Account Engagement): For Salesforce-centric businesses, the harmonious fusion of Pardot and Salesforce empowers Record Validation to seamlessly execute meticulous data scrutiny and validation.

Cons

Salesforce centric – As Record Validation is designed for Salesforce, it might not be ideal for organizations looking for integration with other CRM's.

Record Validation Pricing

Premium Plan: Starts at $39 per month (billed annually) with 50,000 credits, where 1 credit equals 1 email validation​. That means each email validation costs you less than a penny, $0,009 to be precise!

Melissa Clean Suite Overview

Melissa Clean Suite is a comprehensive solution designed to cleanse, verify, and standardize phone, address and email data. They claim to identify up to 95% of bad email addresses and boost your deliverability score.

Melissa Clean Suite offers two service levels:

Global Email Premium: This service offers real-time email mailbox verification using domain-specific logic, SMTP commands, and proprietary mechanisms to validate inboxes instantly. The validation process may take up to 12 seconds per email address.

Global Email Express: This service prioritizes speed over accuracy compared to the Premium option. It utilizes a cached inbox validation database containing known good and bad emails.

Features

• Autocomplete: You can verify emails as you enter them in the system and get suggestions for possible matches.
• Deliverability Confidence Score: Provides a percentage probability of successful email delivery, aiding in assessing the quality of email addresses​.
• Real-time email check: Ping an email in real time to check if it is active and can receive mail.

Pros

• CAN-SPAM Compliance: Maintains compliance with mobile domain detection, a step towards reducing spam and adhering to legal frameworks​​.

Cons

• Few reviews – with only four reviews on Salesforce AppExchange, it’s hard to judge the overall effectiveness. Reviews have mentioned issues with not being able to implement address autofill/verification to work on some objects, so the ease of use is questionable.
• Expensive and lack of clear pricing: The pricing structure is a bit complex and requires a direct inquiry for precise figures​​ above 10,000 credits. At $0,035 per email on the 10,000 credits tier, Melissa Clean Suite is rather expensive. It’s also worth noting that Any Credit Balance will be reset to 0 if there is no activity within one year.
• Speed vs Accuracy Trade-off: The two levels of service have a trade-off between speed and accuracy, which could be a concern depending on organizational needs​​.
• No mention of spam-trap detection: Melissa Clean Suite does not appear to offer spam-trap detection. Without spam-trap knowledge, you could damage your sender reputation.

Melissa Clean Suite Pricing

Pay-as-you-go: Melissa Clean Suite offers a pay-as-you pricing model divided into tiers. On the highest tier, 10,000 email checks each email comes at a cost of $0,035. You have to make an enquiry to Melissa Clean Suite for pricing beyond this.

Feature Comparisons

Record Validation vs Melissa Clean Suite: Affordability

Record Validation gives you more bang for your buck, allowing you to validate an email at less than a penny!

Record Validation vs Melissa - User adoption

Both tools offer real-time email verification, but Plauti’s seamless integration with Salesforce gives it a leg up for Salesforce-centric organizations, making the validation process more intuitive. This is further boosted by the fact that Record Validation allows an unlimited number of users to access it and take advantage of its features, amplifying the power even more.

Record Validation vs Melissa: Validation methods

Record Validation and Mellissa Clean Suite use different methods to validate an email. RV uses a DNS check while Melissa Clean suite employs an SMTP check. Without bogging you down in a load of technical jargon, we can say that DNS checks focus on the domain part of an email address, confirming that the domain is ready to receive email, while SMTP checks assess the validity and deliverability of the entire email address. DNS checks are faster and less intrusive, making them suitable for domain validation, while SMTP checks provide a more comprehensive assessment of the email address's viability and deliverability.

Here are the pros and cons of each method:

DNS Validation (RV) Pros:

• Faster: DNS validation is generally quicker to execute because it doesn't require a direct connection to the SMTP server.
• Non-Intrusive: It doesn't send test emails or interact with the recipient's SMTP server, making it less invasive and more privacy friendly.
• Useful for Domain Validation: If your primary concern is confirming that the email's domain is correctly configured to receive email, DNS validation is a good choice.

DNS Validation (RV) Cons:

• Limited to Domain Verification: It doesn't verify the existence of a specific mailbox or the email address's deliverability.
• May Result in False Positives: Like the SMTP methods, it can occasionally produce false positives, indicating that an email address is valid when it's not.

SMTP Validation (Melissa) Pros:

• Comprehensive Validation: SMTP validation offers a more thorough check of the email address, including syntax, deliverability, and mailbox existence.
• Better for Real-Time Verification: If you need immediate validation and want to ensure that the email address can accept messages, SMTP validation is effective.

SMTP Validation (Melissa) Cons:

• More Resource-Intensive: It can be resource-intensive and may not be suitable for high-volume verification.
• Privacy Concerns: Some SMTP servers may not disclose information for privacy and security reasons, potentially leading to false negatives.
• Complexity: Implementing SMTP validation can be more technically challenging.

Conclusion

While Melissa Clean Suite offers a viable solution for email validation, including powerful features like real-time email checks, Record Validation comes packed with powerful features at an unbeatable price. The ability to extend all the features of Record Validation to all the Salesforce users in your organization is another reason why Record Validation takes the cake in this comparison.

Are you interested in how Record Validation can enhance your organization's email success? Then start your free trial today. No credit card required. You get 100 credits to verify and format email addresses right away.