On a schedule

Verify every email address in your outreach sheet

Each night, unchecked emails in your sheet are verified with Hunter and marked deliverable, risky or invalid.

Runs: On a schedule
Apps: Google Sheets, Hunter.io
AI: Not needed
Access: Hunter key; Sheets read+write

Send this to your assistant

Create a ClickRuntime automation: every night at 2am, verify the emails in my Outreach sheet that have no status yet with Hunter, and write deliverable, risky or invalid in the Status column.

Paste it into your assistant. It tells you what it will send or change before it runs live.

Add to ChatGPT Add to Claude

First time? Adding ClickRuntime to your assistant takes about two minutes.

Why use it

Why teams use this automation

Sending to a list full of dead addresses hurts more than wasted effort: bounces damage your sender reputation, and future emails, even to good contacts, start landing in spam.

Sales teams, marketers and anyone who builds outreach lists by hand use it to keep the list clean as it grows, without uploading it to a separate cleaning service.

What you get out of it

Fewer bounces
Invalid addresses are marked before you send, which protects your domain's reputation.
Risky addresses called out
Addresses that cannot be fully checked are marked risky, so you can decide whether to include them.
Runs while you sleep
Checking happens overnight, so the list is ready in the morning.
Only new rows checked
Rows that already have a status are skipped, so credits go only to new addresses.

How it works

What happens, step by step

Every night, ClickRuntime reads your outreach sheet and finds emails with no status yet.
Each address is checked with Hunter's email verifier.
The result is written into the Status column as deliverable, risky or invalid.

Before it runs live

Connect your Google Sheets account and pick the spreadsheets it may use
Connect Hunter.io

What you get

RunsOn a schedule

Verify every email address in your outreach sheettoday, 9:00Succeeded

Google Sheets · Outreachsam@northwind.example · deliverable info@acme.example · risky j.doe@oldco.example · invalid

Build your own

Need it to work differently?

This template is a starting point. Copy the prompt and change it, or describe a different automation from scratch, with your own conditions, more apps or an AI step. Your assistant writes it, tests it and runs it on ClickRuntime.

Your own rules
Conditions, thresholds, filters and exceptions, written the way you'd explain them to a colleague.
Any number of apps
One automation can read from one app and update several others. Over 248 apps are ready, and anything with an API works too.
AI where it helps
Summaries, classification, extraction and drafts use ClickRuntime's built-in AI, with no extra key.
On a schedule or on each event
Runs as often as every 5 minutes, or the moment an app sends an event, and keeps track of what it already handled.

Changes you can ask for

Run it at a different time, more or less often, or only on weekdays
Add an AI step, for example to summarize, sort or draft a reply
Add another app, for example also send it to Slack
Combine it with other Google Sheets and Hunter.io steps into one automation

Under the hood

The code that runs this automation

This is the Python script that runs each time the automation starts. Your AI assistant writes it for you when you send the prompt, and you allow each step in your assistant. To change how the automation works, describe the change to your assistant and it updates the script for you. For every function it can use, see the script reference.

clean_an_email_list_in_a_sheet_with_hunter.pyexample

from google.oauth2.credentials import Credentials
from googleapiclient.discovery import build
from clickruntime import on_trigger, credentials, http, log

SHEET_ID = "your-spreadsheet-id"
LIMIT = 200
LABEL = {"deliverable": "deliverable", "risky": "risky", "undeliverable": "invalid"}

@on_trigger
def run(event):
    sheets = build("sheets", "v4", credentials=Credentials(credentials.connection("google", "work")),
                   cache_discovery=False).spreadsheets().values()
    rows = sheets.get(spreadsheetId=SHEET_ID, range="Outreach!B2:C").execute().get("values", [])
    todo = [(i + 2, r[0]) for i, r in enumerate(rows) if r and r[0] and len(r) < 2][:LIMIT]
    key, updates = credentials.secret("HUNTER_API_KEY"), []
    for n, email in todo:
        data = http.get("https://api.hunter.io/v2/email-verifier", params={"email": email, "api_key": key}).json().get("data") or {}
        updates.append({"range": f"Outreach!C{n}", "values": [[LABEL.get(data.get("result"), "risky")]]})
    if updates:
        sheets.batchUpdate(spreadsheetId=SHEET_ID, body={"valueInputOption": "RAW", "data": updates}).execute()
    log.info("Verified emails", {"count": len(updates)})
    return {"checked": len(updates)}

FAQ

Common questions

What is the difference between risky and invalid?

Invalid means the mailbox does not exist. Risky usually means the company's server accepts any address or the address is a role inbox, so delivery is possible but uncertain.

How many emails can it check a night?

As many as your Hunter plan allows. Very large lists can be spread over several nights by setting a limit per run.

Does it remove bad rows?

No. It only writes a status, so you decide what to delete or skip.

What permissions does it need?

Hunter key; Sheets read+write. Nothing else in your accounts is used.

Does it need AI?

No. It runs without AI, so it doesn't use your plan's AI allowance.

How many runs does it use?

One run each time it runs (on a schedule). Checks that find nothing to do and stop right away aren't counted.

Can I change how it works?

Yes. Describe the change to your AI assistant, for example a different schedule, channel or filter. It updates the automation, tests it and tells you what changed.

The moment it happens

Check new form leads with Hunter and log them in a sheet

Every form lead is checked with Hunter, logged in your sheet with its verification result and company details, and you get an email for the valid ones.

See how it works

Every 60 minutes