Role-based addresses

A role-based email address is tied to a function or department rather than a specific person. Common examples:

• info@, contact@, hello@ — general inquiries
• support@, help@ — customer service
• sales@, billing@ — commercial functions
• admin@, postmaster@, webmaster@ — technical/administrative
• noreply@, no-reply@ — explicitly not monitored

Role-based addresses have higher bounce risk and lower engagement for a few reasons:

• Multiple recipients. Your message goes to a group, not a person. Open rates and click rates are typically much lower.
• Higher complaint rates. Someone in the group is more likely to mark your email as spam — they didn't personally sign up for it.
• Staff turnover. When responsibilities change, these addresses sometimes stop being monitored. Messages pile up unread or start bouncing.
• noreply@ is a dead end. These addresses are explicitly not monitored. Sending there is guaranteed waste.

Not all role-based addresses are equal. MailSentry applies two tiers:

• Score = 0 (invalid) for system addresses: noreply@, postmaster@, abuse@, mailer-daemon@ — no human reads these, so sending is definitively wasted.
• -45 points for generic role addresses: info@, sales@, hello@, support@ — shared inboxes with low engagement and high bounce risk for marketing email.

It depends on context. For a B2B contact form where someone enters sales@theircompany.com, that's expected and fine. For a newsletter signup, it's a sign the person doesn't want your emails in their personal inbox — which may still be fine, but set your expectations accordingly.

The -45 penalty means a role-based address with no other issues scores 55 — "risky." This reflects the reality that role addresses have significantly lower engagement for marketing campaigns. If your use case is transactional (e.g., B2B form submissions), you may want to accept role-based addresses regardless of the verdict.