Clean your Drip list before it inflates your people count
Drip drops hard-bounced addresses from sending and honors unsubscribes automatically, but it can't judge an address it has never sent to — and on Drip those never-mailed contacts sit in your account as billable people until the first campaign proves them dead. Qualisend closes that gap: export your people, verify every address, and unsubscribe or delete the dead weight before your next broadcast so junk never reaches a send — or your invoice. Here's the workflow that works today, plus the API and no-code options.
One-click Drip sync is paused while we rebuild the platform
We've deliberately paused our one-click native connectors while we re-engineer the sync layer they run on — hardening how we authenticate, respect each platform's rate limits, and write results back — so that when the native Drip integration returns, it stays dependable at any list size rather than fragile at scale. None of this touches how Qualisend verifies an address.
Everything you need works today: the CSV export → verify → reimport loop below, and the API for verifying at signup, are both fully supported and running in production — that's how teams keep Drip clean right now.
What Drip cleans for you
Drip's native hygiene runs on automatic status changes: a hard-bounced address is dropped from sending, unsubscribes are honored and excluded from every future email, and an address that keeps soft-bouncing is eventually treated as undeliverable and dropped too. The catch is that a status change is not a deletion — a bounced or unsubscribed person stays in your account and, depending on your plan, can still count toward the number of people you're billed for. For addresses Drip has actually mailed, that's reliable automatic hygiene; the problem is everything it hasn't mailed yet.
What it can't catch
Every one of those mechanisms is reactive — it needs a send and a failure to fire. Never-mailed invalids from imports and old signups, pop-up typos (jane@gmial.com), disposable addresses grabbed to claim a first-order discount code, role addresses like info@ and support@, and decayed mailboxes that will bounce next month all look healthy until your first campaign hits them — which is exactly when a mailbox provider forms its first impression of your domain. An imported list is the sharpest case: it arrives from another ESP with its bounce history amputated, so addresses that were already failing over there come into Drip looking brand new, and Drip will happily mail every one of them once.
Why a clean Drip list matters
On Drip the stakes are double. Drip prices by the number of people in your account, so the size of your list is the size of your bill — and because its automatic hygiene stops the sends without necessarily removing the person, a hard-bounced or unsubscribed contact can still sit on your people count and inflate the tier you pay for. Drip is also built for ecommerce, so your broadcasts share a sending reputation with the automations your revenue depends on — welcome series, abandoned-cart nudges, shipping and post-purchase flows. When a campaign goes out to dead and never-mailed addresses, the bounces and spam-trap hits drag that reputation down across the board, and the order confirmation a customer is waiting on can land in spam because of a bloated marketing send. Cleaning does two jobs at once: it takes dead weight off your people count, and it protects the inbox placement of the receipts and revenue flows you can't afford to lose — the same bounce discipline Gmail and Yahoo now require of every sender.
The workflow that works today
Direct connectors are paused while we rebuild the platform, so the dependable path is the CSV loop: export from Drip, verify in Qualisend, reimport the clean file.
Export your people from Drip
In your People area, filter to the segment or group you want to clean, then export it to CSV with the email column included. For a first clean, export everyone; for maintenance cleans, a "never opened" or "created before" segment works well.
Verify the file in Qualisend
Upload the CSV to Qualisend bulk cleaning — up to 1,000,000 addresses per job, duplicates charged once — or paste addresses directly. The free plan's 100 one-time credits (they never expire) cover a first sample.
Read the results
Every address returns deliverable, risky, undeliverable, or unknown with a reason code, a 0–100 score, and sub-flags (catch-all, disposable, role, full mailbox), plus the domain's MX provider and probe detail as evidence. Download the cleaned CSV.
Retire the undeliverables in Drip
Filter the results to undeliverable, then in Drip either unsubscribe those people — which stops all email while keeping the record — or delete them, which removes them from your people count entirely. For confirmed dead weight you never want back, delete; when in doubt, unsubscribe.
Or automate it at signup
Prefer to keep junk off your people count from the start? Verify at the point of capture with the Qualisend REST API (scoped keys, rate limits, webhooks), or wire a no-code flow through Zapier, Make, or n8n so new Drip signups are checked before they're ever added — so typos and disposable addresses never become billable people or a deliverability risk.
What Qualisend flags on every address
- Never-mailed invalid addresses that would hard-bounce on your next campaign
- Disposable / throwaway domains grabbed for a first-order discount code, then abandoned
- Role addresses (info@, support@) that skew the engagement metrics your automations lean on
- Catch-all domains, flagged so you can segment and throttle them
- A 0–100 confidence score and machine-readable reason code for every address
A native, one-click Drip connector is part of the platform we're rebuilding — it's returning, not deprecated. Until it ships, the CSV loop above and the API are the fully supported path, and they work with any Drip plan.
What to do with each result
Every address comes back with a verdict and sub-flags. Here's the action that keeps your Drip list clean without throwing away contacts you can still reach.
deliverableKeep sending as normal.deliverable + role flagKeep for receipts and transactional flows; exclude from engagement-judged automations.risky + catch-all flagMove to a dedicated segment and throttle your sends — the domain accepts everything.risky + disposable flagUnsubscribe or delete — the inbox was built to expire.unknownKeep active and re-verify next clean — usually greylisting or rate-limiting, not a verdict on the mailbox.undeliverableUnsubscribe or delete; don't wait for the bounce to prove it.Related reading
The full step-by-step: export from People, verify, and unsubscribe or delete the dead addresses.
Cleaning is half of deliverability — authenticate your Drip sending domain too.
Verify at signup so junk never becomes a billable person in Drip.
Why your first campaign to an imported list makes or breaks your reputation.
How fast a dirty list compounds into a deliverability problem.
The full picture beyond list hygiene.
Drip verification FAQ
Clean your Drip list in minutes
Start free with 100 credits that never expire — no card required. Export, verify, reimport, and protect your next campaign.