Email verification is a great way to verify or authenticate your users when they submit a form. This verification system can help you reinforce your business security, get qualified leads and avoid spam. Arengu supports two different types of email verification — email address verification and user verification via email.
1. Email verification
Arengu allows you to verify email addresses by applying different criteria, by using the action Verify email address. Plus, add complementary actions, to map the results and trigger other actions according to the results of the filtering.
Verify email address
To start using it, go to the Flows editor and create a new flow, then select the Verify email address action.
This flow action is designed to scan the email address entered by the using and filter addresses based on the following criteria: check mail exchange records, filter free email domains, filter disposable emails, and filter email aliases.
To configure this action, check or uncheck the boxes to personalize the action’s rules.
This action allows you to prevent certain addresses from entering your user’s database, so you can keep it clean and get real and qualified users.
Input value mapping
If you’d like to show a message after the rules of the previous actions have been verified, you can use the Input value mapping action. Fill the fields on the left in the mapping table according to the boxes you have checked:
- MISSING_MX_RECORD: If you checked the box Require MX record.
- FREE_EMAIL: If you checked the box Block free email providers.
- DISPOSABLE_EMAIL: If you checked the box Block disposable email providers.
- EMAIL_ALIAS: If you checked the box Block email account aliases.
On the right side, write the message you want to display related to each error. For instance:
DISPOSABLE_EMAIL Sorry! You have used a disposable email. Please use a valid email address so we can contact you.
If/then condition
You can use this action to create two different paths after the email verification. If the email is valid, the flow will continue and execute the following actions. In this case, the condition you have to set is is true.
To reference the previous action add {{verifyEmailAddress.body.valid}}. This action will then recognize if the email is valid or not, according to the rules you checked.
2. User verification with one-time passwords via email
So far, we have seen you can implement email filtering to improve your verification system. But you can also go one step further and send an email to the user to verify the user and not just the email address.
To do so, you can select Arengu’s email verification template, or build two flows manually — one to generate and send a one-time password, and a second one to verify it and submit the form. This system sends a one-time password to the user’s email account. Then, the user has to enter it in a second step of the form. When the codes coincide, the identity of the user is verified and the form can be submitted.
Generate one-time password
The first action you need to add is the Generate one-time password action. This action will automatically generate an OTP. You can personalize this action by setting a determined duration and length for the code.
Email sending actions
To send a one-time password, you can choose among several email providers (you can send it via SMS too). Currently, Arengu supports native integrations with SendGrid and MailJet, plus you can send email with Arengu's own email sending action.
If you want to use your own email or SMS provider, you can build this yourself with the action HTTP request and call your own API.
To configure this action, add the proper references and your secret API keys.
Verify one-time password
In a second step of the form, an additional flow has to be added, containing this action.
The Verify one-time password action checks if all the values match (generated code, entered code and reference).
Add this action and fill the references with {{input.body.email}} and {{input.body.code}} by using the autocomplete variable feature. Click on the + button and select the source Forms in order to add the email and the code references.
To know more about our referencing system, check out our documentation.
👉 If you want to implement this email verification system, check out the step-by-step guide on OTP flows ↗️.
Form templates with email verification
If you’d like to create an email verification form with any of these email verification systems, you can do it in minutes by using a template.
When creating a form, select the Email verification template. All the actions in the flow will be automatically created and configured. All there is to do is entering your API keys.
