Do you allow disposable / burner email addresses? 🔥
Hey IH! Been getting quite a few sign ups from burner email addresses to https://docamatic.com. I just implemented a check to try and prevent signups using burners. Do you permit them? I wonder what, if any negative impact on conversion would be?
What has your experience been?
Cheers
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I always sign up using a burner if its something I am unsure about. If you remove the ability for me to use a burner, or make me validate, I might just skip even giving your product a chance.
I like the product and need to implement this soon, so I look forward to trying it out, (with a real email address).
I believe I'll have this same issue, and have been considering the ways that I can incentivize the user to convert with a real email address some time after I see they're using the product. As @combition mentioned, I don't want to scare the user off up-front. I want them to at least pass a milestone where they've gotten some value, and then won't be so put-off if I make them an offer if they convert.
Hey Blake definitely try allowing burners to start out and see how it goes for you. Give me a shout if you need any help trying out Docamatic, would be great to have you onboard!
I think the better option is to make people want to use their real email address. Give them reasons to.
I don't allow temporary or burner email address on my website https://packetriot.com.
My business is a secure tunneling SaaS and has lots of room for abuse. I need some barriers to build trust in users and a valid, authenticate, email is one way to do that. When a potentially malicious tries to sign up and see that I check for burner emails they know right away I'm not interested in their usage.
Many of my competitors do not take this step. Some don't even have authentication of any kind. They are all abused quite a bit by spammers, phishers and other malicious actors. I don't want to contribute to that so I take a firm stand on this.
In my experience, people who use burner addresses are just checking out your product and they never come back. I don't allow them.
Building a great product / company also means building relations with your users. It's impossible to build relations with users who don't want to do so from the start. For example, you can't even ask them why they check out your product.
Then there's the B2B case.
If you're selling to companies, why would you even allow burner addresses? I even disallow gmail/hotmail/etc addresses for my B2B projects. Because I want to know the company that's signing up.
Put this into the perspective that the percentage of people who know about burner addresses is negligible. Disallowing burner addresses will not harm your business at all.
How do you identify burner email addresses?
Check out https://www.npmjs.com/package/disposable-email-domains. You can get a list of domains that you can check against
Cool resource. Thanks.
I would be curious to know what percentage. We over a service with disposable phone numbers. It's a little related :)
What's the downside (for you) to permit burner email addresses?
The main downside for me is that web services like mine unfortunately attract those trying to exploit the system in various ways. So tightening up and making it more difficult for them to do so is my only motivation.
If that's the case and I was in your shoes, I would not allow it. Paying customers will pay and non-paying will never pay doesn't matter what you give them. I'll just focus on the paying ones.