Hotmail Australia is a Legacy freemail (Microsoft). Across 110,452 Hotmail Australia addresses verified by BounceZero between April and October 2026, 92.7% were invalid, 0.0% catch-all, 3.1% unknown and 2.3% confirmed valid. The invalid share is far above the business average.
The Hotmail Australia row is all 110,452 addresses verified in the six months to October 2026; the other rows are the benchmarks from the same corpus. Risky and role results fill each row to 100%.
| Segment | Addresses | Invalid | Catch-all | Unknown | Confirmed valid |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hotmail Australia | 110,452 | 92.7% | 0.0% | 3.1% | 2.3% |
| 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% |
| All .au addresses | 560,378 | 36.5% | 6.3% | 17.6% | 37.3% |
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 Hotmail Australia row: 1.9%.
Microsoft retired the regional hotmail.com.au addresses years ago and most now hard-bounce. More than nine in ten verify as invalid. The domain still appears in volume on Australian lists compiled from old records, which makes it the single clearest marker of a stale list.
Microsoft operated regional Hotmail domains for Australia and other markets in the 2000s and consolidated them into outlook.com years ago. The hotmail.com.au addresses were not migrated automatically, so almost all of them bounce. The domain still appears on Australian lists sold by brokers because the underlying records were never refreshed. Its presence in a sample is the fastest way to establish that a vendor's Australian data predates the consolidation.
On confirmed-invalid rate, Hotmail Australia ranks 2 of 29 providers in the corpus, just behind Optimum at 92.9%, ahead of iCloud Mail at 73.0%.
On unknown rate, Hotmail Australia ranks 22 of 29 providers in the corpus, just behind Xtra (Spark) at 3.4%, ahead of Alice (TIM) at 2.6%.
On confirmed-valid share, Hotmail Australia ranks 26 of 29 providers in the corpus, just behind PeoplePC at 2.5%, ahead of EarthLink at 1.0%.
How to read these rates: they are BounceZero's probe outcomes on customer lists over April to October 2026, not a census of Hotmail Australia 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.
Hotmail Australia rarely returns unknown. When it does, re-check once; a second unknown usually means a dormant mailbox.
Most Hotmail Australia addresses hard-fail. Use the domain as a staleness marker for the whole list, not just the segment.
Catch-all is negligible on Hotmail Australia (0.0%); when this provider does return valid, the mailbox accepted the probe itself rather than a blanket accept.
Confirmed valid is 2.3%. Send to that slice from the primary domain and treat the rest of the Hotmail Australia segment as unreachable by cold email.
If a list you are offered contains many hotmail.com.au addresses, assume the rest of the list is of the same age. Verify a sample before paying. Delete the invalid share; there is nothing to re-check.
Role addresses such as info@ and sales@ make up 0.0% of Hotmail Australia addresses in the corpus. Role addresses are rare here, as expected for a mailbox provider.
All provider and country cuts, with method
Every domain in the benchmark set
Sources ranked by data quality
How the provider answers probes
The country segment Hotmail Australia belongs to
92.7% of 110,452 Hotmail Australia addresses verified by BounceZero between April and October 2026 were confirmed invalid, against 14.5% across non-freemail domains and 17.6% across freemail.
3.1%. Unknown means the mailbox could not be confirmed either way, usually because the gateway deferred the probe. BounceZero refunds unknown results; on Hotmail Australia it is rare enough to re-check once and move on.
Not in practice: 0.0% of Hotmail Australia addresses returned catch-all, so a valid verdict means the mailbox exists.
2.3% 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 Hotmail Australia 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
801,225 Gmail addresses verified April to October 2026
5,866 .gov addresses verified April to October 2026
253,445 Hotmail (Outlook.com) addresses verified April to October 2026
34,790 Hotmail Netherlands addresses verified April to October 2026
50,895 iCloud Mail addresses verified April to October 2026
64,161 iiNet addresses verified April to October 2026
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