What This Feature Does
Email lists naturally degrade over time as people change jobs, abandon inboxes, or make typos during signup. The primary goal of the List Cleaning Add-on is to help you convert a stale or risky list of contacts into a healthy, high-quality sending list.
By stripping out bad addresses before you hit send, you directly protect your domain's sender reputation, drastically reduce bounce rates, and ensure your emails actually reach the inbox.
When you clean your contacts, SendX pings each email address and categorizes it into one of three statuses:
VALID: The email address exists, is active, and can safely receive mail.
INVALID: The email address is undeliverable (due to typos, a closed account, or a fake address).
UNKNOWN: The verification system could not determine the status due to strict recipient firewalls or temporary server timeouts.
When and Why You Should Use This
Consistently sending to invalid email addresses signals to Inbox Providers (like Gmail and Yahoo) that you are a spammer, which damages your deliverability. You should use this add-on to:
Audit and fix a decayed list: If you haven't emailed a segment in over 6 months, re-validate them to catch addresses that have gone stale.
Isolate and remove threats: Filter and clean only INVALID contacts to confirm which addresses are truly undeliverable so you can safely delete them.
Resolve unknowns: Re-check batches of UNKNOWN contacts to try and get a definitive Valid/Invalid result.
Step 1: Enable the List Cleaning Add-on
Before you start, make sure you have purchased List Cleaning credits. (Pricing: $10 base plan includes 3,000 validations + $0.003 per additional validation).
Go to Settings in the main navigation.
Click Add-ons.
Select List Cleaning.
Click the Analytics tab to view your cleaning history and access the tool.
Step 2: Start the Cleaning Process
In the Analytics tab, click the Clean Now button.
A setup modal will appear giving you three distinct cleaning options:
All Contacts: Validates every contact in your account, regardless of previous cleanings.
Clean Only Uncleaned Contacts: Validates only the contacts that have never been checked before (great for new imports).
Filter by Status: Lets you choose specific groups to re-validate.
Select Filter by Status.
Step 3: Select Which Status Groups to Clean
Once you select "Filter by Status," you will see three checkboxes: Valid, Invalid, and Unknown. Check the boxes based on your specific goal:
To catch stale emails: Select only the Valid checkbox to re-verify older contacts who may have recently abandoned their inboxes.
To resolve unverified emails: Select only the Unknown checkbox to force a re-check on contacts that the system previously couldn't verify.
To clean everything except known good addresses: Select both the Invalid and Unknown checkboxes.
To run a full database audit: Select all three checkboxes.
Step 4: Run the Job and Review Results
After selecting your filters, click Start Cleaning.
The modal will close, and the cleaning job will begin immediately in the background.
Once the process finishes, check the All-Time Contact Overview section to see your cumulative total of cleaned contacts and your updated Valid/Invalid/Unknown breakdown.
Want to export your data? Go to the Cleaning Activity section, click the Export button, and confirm. SendX will email you a CSV file with your cumulative cleaning statistics.
Alternative Method: Clean a Specific List or Tag
If you don't want to use the global status filters, you can clean specific, targeted groups of contacts.
Go to Contacts > Lists (or Tags).
Find the specific list or tag you want to clean.
Click the three-dot menu (⋮) on the right side of that row.
Select Clean List (or Clean Tag).
This will immediately validate all contacts within that specific group, regardless of their current status.
Important Notes and Best Practices
Credits and Billing
1 Credit = 1 Validation: Each validation uses one credit, even if you are re-validating a contact that was already checked previously.
Unstoppable Jobs: Cleaning cannot be paused or stopped once started. Ensure you have enough credits before clicking start.
Insufficient Credits: If you run out of credits mid-cleaning, the process will stop automatically. The contacts processed up to that point will keep their new status, while the rest remain unchanged.
Managing Invalid Contacts
Manual Deletion Required: Cleaned contacts still count toward your SendX plan limits, even if they are marked INVALID. To reduce your billing count, you must manually delete the invalid contacts after the cleaning job finishes.
Credits are not refunded for deleted contacts.
Custom Fields
When a contact is cleaned, SendX automatically adds three custom fields to their profile so you can easily segment them later:
SendverifyCleanedAt: The date of their last validation.SendverifyStatus: Their current status (VALID, INVALID, or UNKNOWN).SendverifyReason: The technical reason why the email was marked that way.
Common Questions and Troubleshooting
Why would I re-clean contacts that are already marked VALID?
Email addresses expire. Someone might change jobs, delete their account, or have a completely full inbox. Re-validating your older "Valid" contacts helps you catch these natural changes before they cause hard bounces and damage your deliverability. We recommend re-cleaning your active list every 3 to 6 months.
What does "UNKNOWN" actually mean?
It means the verification system couldn't confirm whether the email is valid or invalid at this exact moment. This usually happens due to temporary server issues on the recipient's side, strict corporate spam filters blocking our ping, or "catch-all" email domains. You can try re-cleaning Unknown contacts a few days later to get a clearer result.
What should I do with INVALID contacts after cleaning?
You should immediately suppress or delete them. Sending to Invalid contacts will cause hard bounces. Deleting them protects your sender reputation and frees up space in your SendX contact limits.
How do I find and delete my INVALID contacts?
Go to Contacts > All Contacts.
Click the Filters option.
Set the filter logic to:
SendverifyStatus=INVALID.Select all the filtered contacts and bulk delete them.