How it began
Email Hippo began back in 2000 as a ‘sticky’ tool that proved popular on an IT advice and affiliate marketing website.
Traffic to the email checking tool became more valuable than the original site, so in 2009 the funny little sticky widget that people liked to use to check emails was turned into a business start-up. Rolosoft.
Rolosoft.com – the pioneer in online email validation
Taking email validation online was a great leap forward. Other services existed but they were desktop based, and couldn’t be scaled up as mail servers wouldn’t trust repeated enquiries from dynamic IP addresses or small business networks.
Rolosoft took email validation to the next level. It delivered a scalable, server based infrastructure that provided better results - faster. After all, the trick to validating email addresses isn’t a single mailbox 'ping', it’s doing it millions of times without losing coverage.
E-verify Ltd. - growing email validation from 2011
After two years, demand was outstripping supply and eVerify Ltd. was created to take the company to the next stage. Staff were employed, offices filled, servers deployed... and the customer list kept on growing. E-verify kept growing too, until it reached a point where the directors wanted to divest interests and focus in different directions. Rowland O’Connor, who had created that first sticky widget back in 2000 decided to lift email validation to new level. Enter Email Hippo.
Email Hippo - the next big step in email validation
In 2015, Email Hippo started trading. The growth was extraordinary and within months the company was seeing results that were almost two years ahead of forecast. The growth continued, along with more faces in the team, advances in the technology and the infrastructure that delivered the services.
Sadly, with the growth came a rise in fraud. As a software provider delivering cloud-based services, Email Hippo was frequently targeted by ‘friendly fraud’. Hippo couldn’t afford to be a victim of fraud. Solving the problem was an attractive challenge for the developers. Their tools were experience, knowledge and email validation software. The weak point was the web sign-up form for new accounts, so they set about engineering a fraud-proof sign-up process.
Fraud prevention - a new direction
That fraud-proofing product became the next API, and MORE was launched as a product that combined email verification with extra checks that identified suspicious sign-ups. Right product, right time, right place. The growth curve kept heading in the right direction. Processes and data laws kept changing. In order to stamp authority and reflect service quality, in 2017 Email Hippo became the first company in the industry to receive international security accreditation ISO 27001.
Award winning solutions 2020
The company continued to grow and the joint focus on innovation and quality paid off. In 2020 it received the most prestigious award for a UK company when it won a Queen's Award for Enterprise. The award was for Innovation, specifically for the MORE fraud prevention API and the Email Hippo Trust Score.
Pre-fraud solution 2020
In September 2020 we launched a new product to focus on helping our customers fight fraud at the first point of contact. ASSESS builds on the principle of protecting any form from fraudulent or risky activity. The phrase we've coined here at Email Hippo is that ASSESS is a 'pre-fraud' solution. It provides the next generation of our award-winning Email Hippo Trust Score.
And onwards
Business moves on quickly in the cloud and the email checking product offered by Email Hippo is faster, results more detailed and the scale of delivery greater than anything imaginable back in 2000. After all, twenty years is a long time in IT! The Email Hippo team has decades of specialist experience and a shared vision for delivering excellence and taking email validation into exciting new applications.
The next chapter in our story
These are the values that will shape the future for Email Hippo;
- Transparency, straight-talking and respect
- Expertise, thought leadership and vision
- Technological leadership, investment and scalable infrastructure
- Security, compliance and fighting fraud - keeping the internet clean
Our values
Transparency, straight-talking and respect
It can be hard to connect with people you don’t meet, so we'll always make sure you’re comfortable with us and take steps to build trust.
Our processes and services are suitable for users of all technical abilities. Whether you need to validate dozens of email addresses or millions, you will access the same quality of service and information. Always.
Expertise, thought leadership and vision
Email validation helps businesses transact safely online and comply with increasingly complex data protection laws.
The excitement of continually improving what we do and creating new stuff that helps solve problems is part of our future.
Technological leadership, investment and scalable infrastructure
We invest in systems to ensure our services are scalable and reliable. Our Service Level Agreement promises an uptime of over 99.9% and we continually deliver this. By reinvesting profit into infrastructure and technology we'll continue to provide a perpetually better service.
Security, compliance and fighting fraud
We treat every bit of data as if it was the most sensitive data we could ever handle. That's why we invest in our people and work processes, as well as in third-party services to ensure we all sleep easy.
Within reason, we help customers understand our security systems so they can confidently do business with us.
These days we are at the forefront of the fight against online fraud and we feel very strongly that we will continue to help make the internet a safer, cleaner place.