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What's the best waterfall for finding work emails?

April 2026

Quick Answer

**Best practice: Find first, validate once at the end** The typical mistake is validating during the waterfall, which wastes credits when emails are already valid. **Optimal approach:** 1. Run email finding waterfall with stop-on-found (no validation in waterfall) 2. Validate ALL found emails in a single pass at the end **Recommended waterfalls by use case:** | Use Case | Waterfall | Why | |----------|-----------|-----| | **B2B SaaS (US)** | Apollo → Findymail → Hunter | Best coverage for tech companies | | **Enterprise/Fortune 500** | Findymail → Apollo → Clearbit | Better corporate domai

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1 months ago

1 Answer

Best practice: Find first, validate once at the end

The typical mistake is validating during the waterfall, which wastes credits when emails are already valid.

Optimal approach:

  1. Run email finding waterfall with stop-on-found (no validation in waterfall)
  2. Validate ALL found emails in a single pass at the end

Recommended waterfalls by use case:

Use CaseWaterfallWhy
B2B SaaS (US)Apollo → Findymail → HunterBest coverage for tech companies
Enterprise/Fortune 500Findymail → Apollo → ClearbitBetter corporate domain coverage
EU/GDPR MarketsDropcontact → FindymailGDPR-compliant providers first
SMB/Local BusinessHunter → Apollo → FindymailHunter has good SMB coverage

Key configuration:

  • stop_on_first_result: true - Stop the waterfall as soon as any provider returns an email
  • validate_after_waterfall: true - Not during
  • dedup_before_run: true - Avoid duplicate lookups
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