Validate syntax and mail routing.
Software licensing & education
Make education access easier to verify.
Use an academic email as a low-friction starting point for education discounts, with a clear fallback when the address alone cannot establish eligibility.
Use your own maintained domain registry.
Verify inbox control and apply your licence policy.
Define who qualifies before checking an address.
An academic domain can connect an address to an institution. It cannot distinguish a current student from a lecturer, staff member, alumnus or shared department inbox. Some students receive no institutional address, and educational domains use many suffixes beyond .edu.
More about Define who qualifies before checking an address.
Write an eligibility policy for your software licence: accepted institutions, eligible roles, countries, licence duration and renewal evidence. Then decide when an institution-controlled email plus inbox confirmation is sufficient and when additional evidence is needed.
A proportionate education-verification flow
- Collect the applicant’s address and explain the eligibility requirement.
- Validate syntax and mail routing through the email API contract.
- Compare the domain against your maintained institution mapping. DNS or a suffix check alone is not an authoritative institution registry.
- Send a confirmation link to establish current control of the institutional inbox.
- Apply your documented policy; ask for alternative evidence only when needed. Provide an accessible review path for unlisted institutions or students without an academic inbox.
- Time-limit the education entitlement and re-check eligibility at renewal. Avoid keeping uploaded documents longer than necessary.
Keep eligibility in your licensing system.
Maail’s current v1 specification defines syntax, routing, provider and address context. It does not define an isStudent or isAcademic response field. Keep institution matching and the resulting eligibility decision in your application, or agree a separately scoped integration during onboarding.
More about Keep eligibility in your licensing system.
This makes the result explainable: the address passed technical validation, the domain matched an institution in your registry, and the applicant confirmed inbox control. Your licence service then grants or reviews the entitlement under your policy.
Offer a fallback that genuine students can complete.
A maintained institution registry still misses new domains, subdomains and partner organisations. Offer a manual review or appropriate third-party eligibility check. If documents are needed, describe the purpose, limit access and set a deletion period.
More about Offer a fallback that genuine students can complete.
Measure time to approval, successful renewals, exception rates and rejected genuine applicants. Removing every document upload is only useful when the remaining evidence supports the entitlement you offer.
Common questions
Does a university email prove student status?
It indicates a possible institutional connection. Staff, alumni and shared accounts may use the same domain. Confirm inbox control and apply a separate eligibility policy for the licence.
Can I rely only on a .edu suffix?
Institutions worldwide use many domain suffixes and structures. Use a maintained institution mapping and provide an exception process instead of treating a suffix as a global eligibility rule.
Does the API return isStudent?
The current v1 contract has no isStudent or isAcademic field. It supplies technical email signals; institution matching and licence eligibility remain application decisions.
Email Verification for Gated Content & Whitepapers
Catch address mistakes at the download form and give interested readers a clear route to your content. Apply your own policy to disposable and shared inboxes.
Explore the guideEmail Validation for One-Field Newsletter Signup
Let readers subscribe with their email address. Catch input mistakes early, then collect preferences when there is a good reason to ask.
Explore the guideReduce Email Bounces with Signup Validation
Give customers a chance to correct an unreachable address at signup. Combine validation with confirmation, retries and delivery feedback throughout the customer lifecycle.
Explore the guideGive every address a clear next step.
Discuss your form, address-quality rules and integration scope. Endpoint availability and enabled checks are confirmed during onboarding.