The best email search sites and address directories allow you to easily find the information you are looking to obtain. They can give you access to phone numbers, addresses, emails, social media, and more belonging to an individual.
Searching for people online? Looking for an email address? Find friends old and new, as well as business contacts, with these email address directories and people search engines. This list of best email search sites and address directories are your best bets for finding an email address.
LinkedIn’s worldwide network of professionals can be searched by name, industry, company, region, and more. It also offers a means to get in touch with the people you find.
One of the most popular professional networks, with more than 830 million users worldwide
Robust profile creation tools
Ability to search by a person’s skills
Customer service needs improvement
Profiles can be easily faked
First-time profile setup can be overwhelming
LexisNexis Public Records
For serious research, LexisNexis’s public records and private database covers hundreds of millions of people and businesses.
More than 84 billion public records from over 10,000 sources
Great for conducting litigation discovery
Continuously updated
Geared more toward legal professionals
PeopleSmart
PeopleSmart can reveal a prospect’s company, email address, industry, revenue, and more to help you craft a message to that person. In addition, PeopleSmart can look up the person behind an email address in a reverse email search.
Offers a variety of information
Offers several ways to find people
Easy to use
Reports can be difficult to browse
Accuracy can be hit or miss
You can search for people on Facebook (and just about everybody is on Facebook) by college, company, school, or name.
Find personal info not included in most background checks
Robust filtering options
Massive user base
Many profiles are set to private
Massive user base means too many results to browse
Information can be inaccurate
Yasni
Yasni scours social networks, the web, blogs, and publicly available records for whomever you seek. To get you started, Yasni allows you to do a free cursory search on its homepage for publicly available information.
Aggregates search results from external sources
Receive new search results by email
Free search option on homepage for publicly available information
Privacy issues
FreshAddress
FreshAddress links old and new email addresses, but its always up-to-date database can also be searched for other criteria.
Remove bouncing email addresses, disposable domains, and more
Keeps email lists up-to-date
Offers free email list cleanup tool
Marketing focused
Doesn’t offer the in-depth information other sites provide
EmailSherlock
EmailSherlock smartly searches directories, public records, and web services such as online calendars to return data and details about the person behind an email address.
Reverse email search
It’s free
Searches popular email services and social media
Redirects to third-party site for background info
Third-party site requires payment for in-depth info
Spokeo
Spokeo’s reverse email search shows you the photos, videos, social networking profiles, blogs, and product reviews behind an email address.
Easy to use
Inexpensive subscription options
Good for finding a person’s social media accounts
Background info is lacking
Work history not included in reports
Site aggressively upsells features
MyLife
In terms of the “best” online research services, MyLife makes this list for the depth of information it can unearth. However, its practices have been called into question in several class-action lawsuits, charging the platform makes false claims about people and damages reputations and livelihoods.
Profiles can contain a variety of information
Offers a public reputation score
Public pages can only be removed if users register and pay for the service
The site has been the subject of several lawsuits
MyLife is a reputation platform that pulls public information to create automatic profiles. Enter a name, email, or phone number, and it will often find the person you seek. After registering, you can see more details, too.
Myspace
Myspace was once the social network to meet friends on the web. While it’s fallen out of favor, you can still find ways to get in touch with artists, and possibly old friends.
Good for connecting to musical artists
It’s free
It’s visually appealing
Not as popular as other social media networks
Search filtering options could be better
Info can be out of date or inaccurate
InfoTracer
InfoTracer aggregates publicly available information—criminal records, social media posts, job history, and more—that can be searched by name, location, and email address.
Comprehensive reports
Lots of categories and report types
Can be expensive
No mobile app
Many details in reports are left empty
BeenVerified
BeenVerified is a people and public records search that can help you find social networking profiles and photos, properties and assets, bankruptcy information, and more.
Cross-checks millions of data points and dozens of data sources
Includes work histories
Reverse phone lookup tool lets you search who called or texted you
Property reports are run separately
Certain info, like email addresses and marriages, can be inaccurate
Expensive subscription pricing
Reunion.com
After registering (which puts you in the directory), Reunion.com turns up comprehensive results that get you back in touch with people you knew. You can also search by school, for example, and find out who’s looking for you.
Basic, easy-to-use interface
Redirects to MyLife
Popular in Europe, XING is a professional networking site that helps you find and connect to businesses.
20 million members
Special Ambassador program available for cities with large user base
Mobile app available
Not as good as LinkedIn for connecting with U.S. workers
Primarily focused on the German-speaking market
ICQ New
ICQ is the granddaddy of modern messaging apps. Once you sign up, you can search the directory of ICQ users with numerous criteria to find old and new friends and their email addresses.
Registration is easy
People can initially only see your ICQ number
ICQ can display mutuals or people you know
User base was much larger in 2001
Like many social apps/sites, information accuracy depends on user honesty
PeekYou
You can search PeekYou’s profiles for people (and a way to contact them) by name, company, or school.
Get basic search results for free
Search by username
Pulls data from a variety of sites
Get more useful results from other websites
That’sThem
You can search ThatsThem.com by name and address or, for reverse lookups, by email address.
Several search options
It’s free
Search results can be mixed
Weak customer service
People Finders
People Finders is a people search engine and public records database with over 120 billion records and more than 6,000 data sources.
Turns up results quickly
Has over 120 billion records and more than 6,000 data sources
Access to more detailed information requires payment
Charges extra to download reports
Doesn’t accept PayPal
