Finding a company's email format, explained
Almost every organisation gives its staff addresses in one fixed email format: firstname.lastname@company.com, flastname@company.com, firstname@company.com and so on. Once you know the format and the person's name, you know the address. This email format finder writes out every likely address for a name and a domain, ranks them, and learns a company's real format from addresses you already know. It does not search LinkedIn or any database: it works from the name you type and the company's public DNS.
The most common email patterns
| Pattern | Example for John Doe | Where you see it |
|---|
| first.last | john.doe@ | The most widespread format overall |
| flast | jdoe@ | Common in the US and in older setups |
| first | john@ | Start-ups and small companies |
| firstlast | johndoe@ | Small businesses |
| f.last | j.doe@ | Often seen in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and France |
| first_last, first-last | john_doe@, john-doe@ | Less common alternatives to first.last |
| firstl, lastf, last | johnd@, doej@, doe@ | Smaller or older organisations |
Without a learned pattern the ranking reflects how widespread each format is in general. That is a sensible starting order, not a measurement for a specific company. The likelihood bar is relative to the top result.
Learn the pattern from one known address
The quickest way to the right answer is one real address from the same company: an email signature, a press release, a team page or an invoice. Enter it with the person's name and the tool works out which pattern produced it, including how the last name was written. In Learn a pattern you can paste many at once; it counts the patterns per domain and shows when a company uses more than one, which happens after mergers, between old and new staff, or when two people share a name (john.doe2@). Saved patterns stay in this browser and rank first everywhere.
Names with particles, hyphens and accents
Dutch and Flemish names such as van den Berg, De Smet or van der Linden are written in different ways by different companies: jan.vandenberg@, jan.berg@ or jvdberg@. Double surnames (Smith-Jones) may keep the hyphen, lose it, or keep only one part. Mail systems rarely accept accents, so é becomes e, ß becomes ss and German umlauts become either u or ue. Apostrophes (O'Brien) are dropped. The finder tries each of these spellings and weighs the most usual one highest.
What the domain check tells you
The domain check asks public DNS (Cloudflare, with Google as fallback) for three records. The MX record says which servers receive mail for the domain, and so which provider the company uses: Microsoft 365, Google Workspace or a security gateway such as Proofpoint or Mimecast. A domain without MX records, or with a "null MX", does not receive email at all. The SPF record lists the services allowed to send mail for the domain, such as a CRM or newsletter tool. DMARC tells receivers what to do with mail that fails those checks; you can build your own record with the DMARC builder.
Why a browser can't verify an email address
Email verification services connect to the company's mail server and start delivering a message (the SMTP RCPT TO step) to see whether the address is refused. A web page cannot open those connections, so this tool never claims an address is "verified". Server checks are unreliable anyway: many domains are catch-all and accept every address, security gateways often accept every address first and bounce later, and repeated probing can get your own server blocked. The honest way is to send one normal message to the best guess and look for a bounce, or to ask the person or their company.
Contacting people at work: privacy rules
A named work address such as jan.peeters@company.be is personal data under the GDPR. If you collect or guess it to contact someone, you need a lawful basis (usually legitimate interest, weighed against the person's interests), you must tell them where you got their details at the latest in your first message (Art. 14), and you must stop when they object (Art. 21). Marketing emails are also covered by national ePrivacy rules, which differ: the UK allows them to corporate subscribers with an easy opt-out, while Belgium only exempts impersonal addresses of companies such as info@. Check the rules for your country and keep messages relevant and personal. This is general information, not legal advice.
Private by design
Names, known addresses and CSV files are processed in your browser and are never uploaded. The only network requests are the DNS lookups for the domain you enter, sent to a public DNS-over-HTTPS resolver. Saved patterns and your last search are kept in local storage on this device.