.ae is the country domain used in United Arab Emirates. Across 16,114 .ae addresses verified by BounceZero between April and October 2026, 10.8% were invalid, 1.8% catch-all, 14.9% unknown and 47.7% confirmed valid. Catch-all and unknown together mean a large share cannot be confirmed.
Every .ae address BounceZero verified for customers between April and October 2026, beside the corpus benchmarks. The remainder of each row to 100% is risky and role results.
| Segment | Addresses | Invalid | Catch-all | Unknown | Confirmed valid |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| .ae | 16,114 | 10.8% | 1.8% | 14.9% | 47.7% |
| All non-freemail domains (business and ISP) | 6,514,884 | 14.5% | 2.3% | 27.0% | 32.6% |
| Business domains only (consumer ISP and freemail excluded) | 1,269,919 | 22.9% | 9.4% | 22.5% | 40.3% |
| All freemail | 1,415,154 | 17.6% | 1.1% | 2.1% | 74.0% |
Non-freemail includes consumer ISP mailboxes; a business-only cut is on the benchmarks page. Method and every other cut: Lead List Quality Benchmarks 2026. Risky and role on the .ae row: 24.8%.
Business-heavy segment with gateway behaviour similar to .com; volumes are smaller so rates move more between months.
UAE lists are business-heavy and the gateways behave much like .com, with corporate gateways at larger employers producing most unknowns. Volumes in the corpus are smaller, so month-to-month rates move more. The UAE's data protection law requires consent for direct marketing to individuals; business contacts at company domains are the reachable segment, and role addresses are common in Gulf company directories. Company directories in the Emirates list role addresses more often than named ones, and free-zone companies change names and domains frequently, so lists age faster than their European counterparts. Verification clears the named addresses well; the role addresses should be treated as a separate, lower-value segment.
On confirmed-invalid rate, .ae ranks 16 of 23 country domains in the corpus, just behind .fr at 12.1%, ahead of .in at 10.7%.
On unknown rate, .ae ranks 14 of 23 country domains in the corpus, just behind .co at 15.3%, ahead of .com at 14.7%.
On confirmed-valid share, .ae ranks 10 of 23 country domains in the corpus, just behind .at at 53.4%, ahead of .fr at 47.5%.
How to read these rates: they are BounceZero's probe outcomes on customer lists over April to October 2026, not a census of .ae mailboxes. Unknown and catch-all measure what verification could not confirm, which depends on the provider's gateway policy during the window as much as on the addresses. The lists are the ones customers chose to upload, so segments dominated by a few large uploads carry their age and source. Method and limitations: benchmarks page.
14.9% of .ae probes come back unconfirmed. Treat them as a separate segment: no cold volume, a re-check in seven days, and a second channel if they stay unknown.
.ae runs at 10.8% confirmed invalid, ordinary for a list that has not been checked in a while; the failures are closed mailboxes and should be removed.
Catch-all is negligible on .ae (1.8%); when this provider does return valid, the mailbox accepted the probe itself rather than a blanket accept.
Just over 47% confirmed valid: reachable today, re-verified before every send, since only 19.2% of addresses were still valid 90 days after a check in BounceZero's decay study.
Note the risky and role share: 24.8% of .ae results landed there, which the four headline columns do not show. Read risky as 'deliverable but with a flag' and test it at low volume before trusting it.
Verify at import; treat unknowns as corporate gateways and route to a second channel.
Role addresses such as info@ and sales@ make up 36.8% of .ae addresses in the corpus. Role addresses rarely reach a person; prefer named contacts.
10.8% of 16,114 .ae addresses verified by BounceZero between April and October 2026 were confirmed invalid, against 14.5% across non-freemail domains and 17.6% across freemail.
14.9%. Unknown means the mailbox could not be confirmed either way, usually because the gateway deferred the probe. BounceZero refunds unknown results; re-check after a week or use a second channel.
Partly: 1.8% of .ae addresses sat behind a catch-all accept, so the server took any address and the mailbox could not be confirmed.
47.7% confirmed valid at verification time. Keep bounces under 2% and complaints under 0.3% on the send, and re-verify the segment before every send.
Upload the file and see valid, invalid, catch-all and unknown per row, with the .ae segment against this benchmark. 100 free checks a month, unknowns refunded.
Ayoub built BounceZero's 5-stage validation pipeline, its dedicated BGP-announced IP infrastructure, and the Patroni HA PostgreSQL cluster behind every verification. Previously built high-volume email delivery infrastructure. Trained at 1337 Benguerir (École 42 network, 2019). Open-source: bgp_analyzer.
Invalid, catch-all and unknown rates per email provider and country domain, 2026
36,082 Xtra (Spark) addresses verified April to October 2026
21,081 Yahoo Mail addresses verified April to October 2026
1,178,297 Alice (TIM) addresses verified April to October 2026
33,275 AOL addresses verified April to October 2026
15,222 .at addresses verified April to October 2026
421,292 AT&T addresses verified April to October 2026
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