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Domain Search is Hunter's most-used feature — and the easiest to waste credits on. This walks through the filtered-export workflow that returns 10 useful contacts instead of 50 noisy ones.
Who this is forSDRs and founders running ABM-style outbound. If you target specific companies and need decision-maker contacts, Domain Search is your starting point.
What you'll need
Step 1
Hunter dashboard → Domain Search → enter company domain (e.g., "stripe.com"). Hunter returns all known emails.
In Hunter, click Domain Search.
Type the company domain. Use the bare domain (stripe.com), not the URL (https://stripe.com).
Hunter returns all emails it has indexed for that domain, sorted by department.
Pattern info appears at the top — e.g., "{first}.{last}@stripe.com." Useful for guessing emails for names not yet in Hunter's index.
Step 2
Use the left-hand filter panel: department, seniority, confidence score. Filtering pre-export saves 50% of cleanup time.
Department filters: Sales, Marketing, Engineering, IT, Finance, Executive, etc. Match to your ICP.
Seniority filters: Junior, Senior, Manager, Executive. Default to Manager+ for most B2B outreach.
Confidence filter: only show emails above your minimum threshold (80% recommended).
These filters apply BEFORE you click Export. The exported list is already pre-filtered.
Step 3
For each email you plan to use, click the verify icon (checkmark). Hunter runs SMTP verification + format checks.
Click each email row to expand details. Click "Verify" if not already verified.
Hunter marks each email: Valid (safe to send), Accept-all (deliverable but server accepts all — risky), Invalid (do not send), Unknown (could not verify).
Send only to Valid emails. Skip Accept-all and Unknown for cold outreach to protect deliverability.
Each verification costs 1 verification credit. Plan accordingly.
Step 4
Click Export (CSV or directly to your CRM/outreach tool). Choose only verified emails for cold outreach.
After filtering, click "Export" (top-right).
Choose: CSV download, or push directly to your connected tool (HubSpot, Salesforce, Lemlist, Smartlead, etc.).
In the export dialog, deselect any unverified emails if you have not bulk-verified yet.
Verify export structure: name, email, position, department, confidence, verified status.
Step 5
Hunter caches recent domain searches. Re-searching the same domain within 30 days does not cost a new credit. Use this.
Hunter caches your domain searches in the History section.
Re-opening a search from History does not cost new credits.
Saves credits when you want to re-export with different filters.
Caveat: Hunter's data updates monthly. For high-priority accounts, re-search after 30 days to catch new hires.
Common mistakes
Exporting unfiltered
What goes wrong: You export every email from 200 domains. You now have 5,000 contacts including info@, support@, marketing@interns. Cleanup takes 4-6 hours and your CRM is polluted.
How to avoid: Filter by department + seniority + confidence BEFORE exporting. Cuts list size by 60-80% and cleans 90% of noise.
Sending to "Accept-all" emails as if they were valid
What goes wrong: Accept-all emails are servers that accept all addresses regardless of validity. Your email delivers but the actual person never sees it. Reply rate drops because half your sends are going nowhere.
How to avoid: For cold outreach, send only to Valid emails. Skip Accept-all unless you have a separate verification step.
Not setting the seniority filter
What goes wrong: Your export includes interns, assistants, and entry-level contacts who do not make buying decisions. Time spent prospecting them is wasted.
How to avoid: Seniority: Manager or above for most B2B sales. Adjust for your ICP (some products sell to Senior Individual Contributors).
Re-searching the same domain repeatedly
What goes wrong: You burn credits re-searching domains you already ran. Hunter caches for 30 days but only if you reopen from History — fresh searches re-charge.
How to avoid: Always open recent searches from History → re-export. New search only after 30 days.
Ignoring the email pattern at the top
What goes wrong: Hunter shows the company's email pattern (e.g., {first}@stripe.com). You ignore it, then waste credits looking up names individually that you could have guessed from the pattern.
How to avoid: For names not in Hunter, apply the pattern + use Email Verifier to confirm. Saves search credits.
Recap
Done — what's next
How to set up a Hunter.io account the right way
Read the next tutorial
Hand it off
Running Domain Search across 5-10 companies is a project. Running it across 500+ accounts with proper filtering, verification, and CRM hygiene is a job. A vetted specialist will own the workflow. From $14-16/hr.
See specialist rates
Varies wildly. For a 500-person tech company, Hunter typically has 50-150 emails. For a small private company, 5-20. For a 50,000-person enterprise, 500-2,000.
Use Email Finder with the company's pattern (often visible in Hunter for similar domains) + the contact's name. Or try the Chrome extension on LinkedIn profiles of that company.
75-85% accurate for clear titles, lower for ambiguous ones. Always sanity-check. 'Head of Growth' is the most common ambiguity — verify before bulk-sending to a department filter.
Limited. Hunter sources from public web and works best for corporate domain emails. Personal Gmail addresses are rare in the index.
All searches appear in History automatically. For named lists, use the Leads section — create a list and add contacts from searches directly.
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