Address Validator FAQ

General

I'm concerned about the privacy of my data.

Address-Validator.net is a service operated by Byteplant, a company located in Germany and operating according to EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) standards and the German Federal Data Protection Act (BDSG) - one of the strictest data protection and privacy legislations in the world(see Bundesdatenschutzgesetz for details).

We do not process or store addresses for any purpose other than validation.

We do not share any client data with any third party at any time.

We retain personal data processed on behalf of our clients for as long as needed to provide services to our clients.

All data from API requests and batch/list processing will be automatically deleted within 14 days after the data has been made available to us.

Which countries does your address validation service cover?

Our Address-Validator service covers 240+ countries world-wide.

Does your address validation service provide corrections/suggestions for incorrect addresses?

Yes, Address-Validator suggests corrections for incorrect or ambiguous addresses.

Address Validator Results

What do the address status codes VALID, SUSPECT and INVALID mean?

VALID: address is correct and deliverable.
SUSPECT: address is incorrect and needs corrections to be deliverable, a suggested correction is provided.
INVALID: address is incorrect and not deliverable - either there is no match at all in the reference data or the address is ambiguous and there are a lot of different matches. In these cases automatic correction suggestions are not available.

Address Validator List Processing

How do I validate addresses from Excel or a CSV file?

You can start the validation process by uploading a CSV file (Unicode UTF-8/UTF-16 format, one address per line, use comma (',') as column separator and provide these column headers: street address, address line 2, postal code, city, state, country).

Excel files must be exported to CSV first:

Open the file in Excel.
Click Menu | Save As (Other Formats).
Enter a name for the file and choose "Unicode Text (*.txt)".
Click Save.

Why does the list upload web form report thousands of addresses, when I only uploaded a few hundred?

Our automatic format detection tries to detect and convert files submitted in many common spreadsheet and archive formats, but this sometimes fails. If this happens, make sure you submit your list in one of the following formats:

If you have a spreadsheet, use your spreadsheet software to export the list to text/csv format.

You can check your list with our Address List Validator tool before uploading.

Why does my validation task not start automatically, even though I paid the correct amount?

We use a third-party service (MyCommerce Share-It / Digital River) to manage payments. Please use the same email address both for your validation task and for the Share-It purchase, so that the task to start can be identified. If you already used a different email address, please send us an email so we can start your task manually.

How do I validate addresses from a database, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system or Excel?

Databases, CRM systems and Excel are capable to export data to CSV (comma-separated values) files - please see the answer to the next question for instructions on how to upload a CSV file for validation.

Address Validator REST Web API

Which availability do you guarantee for the Address Validator service?

Our Address Validation Online API is hosted at three different locations in Europe. We guarantee an availability of 99.9% - please see the API server status page for real-time availability information.

What is the average API response time?

API requests will be typically answered within 500ms.

Account Management

How do I log into my MyCommerce Share-It account to manage my orders, subscriptions and invoices?

You can log into the MyCommerce Share-It Customer Care Center using the following steps:

Go to: https://ccc.element5.com/ccc/my_account.html
Select your preferred language.
Log in with your user ID and password, or your order number and password.
*If you do not remember your password, it can be retrieved at https://ccc.element5.com/ccc/lookup.html.
Click on "User Data"
Click on "Edit" for the information you wish to update.

After you have updated your information, click "Save Data".

Why am I unable to login to my account?

We use a third-party service (MyCommerce Share-It / Digital River) to manage payments. Share-It implement their own customer accounts. Please do not confuse Share-It accounts with Address Validator accounts, both may use different email addresses and/or passwords.

How do I cancel my subscription?

We use a third-party service (MyCommerce Share-It / Digital River) to manage payments. Find instructions to cancel a subscription here.