Email Validation Beyond Regex — 8 Layers That Actually Catch Bounces

Why regex fails\n\n^[^@\\s]+@[^@\\s]+\\.[^@\\s]+$ matches alice@gmail.com — also asdf@asdf.asdf and admin@mailinator.com. Your bounce rate is going up.\n\n## The 8 layers that actually work\n\n1. Syntax (RFC 5321/5322) — real parser, not regex\n2. Disposable domain list — ~550 active providers (Mailinator, GuerrillaMail, …)\n3. Role accounts — info@, admin@, noreply@\n4. Typo detection — gmial.com → gmail.com via Levenshtein\n5. MX record — does the domain actually have mail servers?\n6. SPF record — published SPF means real sending domain\n7. SMTP RCPT TO handshake — only true mailbox verification\n8. Historical bounce list — refuse previously-bounced addresses\n\n## The lazymac Email Validator API\n\nRuns all 8 layers in <100ms from the Cloudflare edge:\n\n``bash\ncurl 'https://api.lazy-mac.com/email/api/v1/validate?email=test@gmial.com'\n# { valid: true, typo_suggestion: 'test@gmail.com', disposable: false, mx_ok: true }\n``\n\nFree 100/day. Pro $14.99/mo unlimited.\n\n## Expected bounce reduction\n\nTeams report 70–90% bounce reduction vs regex-only. For 10k emails/month at $0.002/send, that saves ~$24/month plus deliverability reputation.

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