In B2B, you can almost always find an email address if you have a name and company: check the company’s public sources (legal notice, team page and contact page), work out its email pattern from a known address, check the contact info on the person’s LinkedIn profile, or use an email finder to automate these steps. Finding the address is rarely the technical challenge. The harder part comes next: a cold email sent to an address you’ve researched is rarely read.
This article shows you seven ways to find an address, all without a paid tool. It also covers common email patterns in a table, how to check an address you’ve found, and why LinkedIn is a better choice for first contact. As of: 27 October 2026.
Method 1: Start with publicly available sources
Before you guess, look it up. In Germany, the yield is high here because commercial websites are required to provide legal notice information – and the legal notice will usually include an email address.
- Legal notice: gives you at least one central address and often the structure (info@, contact@).
- Team, press and contact pages: these list personal addresses, often following the company pattern.
- Trade articles, conference programmes, job postings: contact persons are often listed there with their full address.
- Press releases and white papers: They almost always include a press contact address at the end, using the company’s email pattern.
What you find here is reliable—and you know where it came from.
Method 2: Work out the company’s email pattern
Companies rarely assign email addresses at random. If you know one real address, you know the pattern for the others. There are only a handful of common patterns. The table shows which one to try first in each case. These are practical rules of thumb, not statistics.
Pattern | Example | Typical for |
|---|---|---|
firstname.lastname@ | anna.mueller@firma.de | medium-sized businesses and large companies; the most common pattern |
firstname@ | anna@firma.de | small teams, agencies and start-ups |
firstinitial.lastname@ | a.mueller@firma.de | larger organisations with many employees who share a first name, and public authorities |
firstinitiallastname@ | amueller@firma.de | IT companies and older systems where the address matches the login |
lastname@ | mueller@firma.de | small companies with few employees |
lastname.firstname@ | mueller.anna@firma.de | administrative organisations, hospitals and some large companies |
firstname.lastinitial@ | anna.m@firma.de | rare; more likely in international teams |
firstname-lastname@ or firstname_lastname@ | anna-mueller@firma.de | rare; hyphens are more common at agencies, underscores in older IT systems |
Two common pitfalls in German-speaking markets: umlauts are almost always transliterated (Müller becomes mueller or muller, ß becomes ss), and double surnames may appear with a hyphen or written as one word. If your first derivation fails, this is usually why – not the pattern.
Another clue: large companies often use multiple domains. The sales team writes from firma.com, while the German subsidiary uses firma.de. So take the domain from an address in the same department, not from the holding company’s legal notice.
Method 3: Find an email address through a LinkedIn profile
The profile is the best place to start: it gives you the person’s first name, last name, employer and often their location at a glance. Here are three steps, all free.
Step 1: Check the profile’s contact info. Below the introduction section, you’ll find a “Contact info” link. Some members make their email address visible there, along with their website and phone number. You can only see what the person has chosen to share; your chances are best with first-degree connections. If you find the address here, you’re done and can be sure it’s correct.
Step 2: Generate all the patterns at once. If the profile doesn’t show an address, take the first and last name from the profile and the domain from the company website, then use the Email Permutator. It generates common combinations from the name and domain, from firstname.lastname to first initial plus last name. It can also convert German characters if needed (ä to ae, ß to ss). The tool runs entirely in your browser, stores no input and requires no sign-up. You can copy one address or all of them.
Step 3: Check the most likely address. Use the Email Checker to check the syntax, the mail server’s MX record, and whether the domain is disposable or belongs to a free email provider. The tool doesn’t connect to the mail server, so it cannot verify the mailbox itself. What it can reliably rule out: typos, domains without a mail server and personal addresses you don’t want to contact in B2B.
If you know the company’s pattern from method 2, you only need to check one address. If you don’t, check the two or three most likely options and choose one with a valid domain and mail server. If you’re still unsure, method 7 is the faster way to get the right address.
Method 4: Use Google search operators
Search engines can find addresses published anywhere, even outside the company website: in conference listings, association registers, trade publications or old press releases. Three searches are usually enough:
"@firma.de"in quotation marks shows you all indexed addresses on the domain, revealing the pattern."Anna Müller" "@firma.de"combines the name and domain."Anna Müller" emailwithout a domain finds addresses associated with talks, publications or other professional activities.
Results are often older. An address from a press release three years ago may still be valid, or it may not. Check it as described in method 3.
Method 5: Email finders—what this type of tool does and doesn’t do
An Email finders combine the steps above: they maintain a database of collected addresses and company patterns, derive a likely address from a name and domain, and check it technically. Providers in this category include Hunter, Apollo, Dropcontact and Lusha. These are examples, not recommendations; check their websites for features and data coverage.
There are three things you should know beforehand:
- An Email Finder does not find anything, it calculates. The result is a likely address with a confidence score – which will be low for small companies with no public trace.
- The database contains personal data. Check the data processing agreement, server location and transfers to other countries first.
- Finding an address doesn’t mean you’ve started a conversation. Whether someone reads your email depends on whether they know you.
Collecting addresses in bulk from third-party websites is not one of these methods. You don’t need an email finder for individual contacts: methods 1 to 4 get you the same result without a subscription.
Method 6: Ask the company’s main office
The most underrated method: call or write to the main contact listed in the legal notice and ask for the direct number or address of the right person. With a specific reason (“I have a question about tender X. Who handles it?”), you’ll often get a reply within a day at a small or medium-sized company, with an address you know is correct. This works less often at large companies; their press office or department page may help instead.
Method 7: Start a conversation on LinkedIn and ask for the address
The best way to make first contact is through LinkedIn: connect, start a conversation, and get the email address directly from your contact, along with their permission. If you prefer to attract people through content, you can collect consent through a newsletter with double opt-in, a webinar registration or a Lead Magnet.
On LinkedIn, the initial contact is part of the product: A connection request is an invitation that the other person can accept or ignore – the decision lies with them, not with you. You do not need to research an address or guess email patterns.
The request itself then determines everything that follows. Whether you should include a note is covered in Connecting on LinkedIn: with or without a message; the article on outreach channels in. How to move from chat to email is explained in Combine LinkedIn and email.
With CompLeadly, you can run this process repeatedly: You create a target audience from a LinkedIn people search or Sales Navigator. The tool sends connection requests and an initial message after each request is accepted. Follow-ups go out after the number of days you set. You ask for an email address during the conversation when your contact wants you to send them something by email.
Verify an email address
A derived address is a hypothesis. Contacting it without checking affects deliverability: bounces from non-existent inboxes damage your sender domain’s reputation. Verification has three stages:
- Syntax: Is the address formally valid at all? This filters out typos, nothing more.
- Domain and MX record: Does the domain exist, and does it have a mail server (MX record) listed in DNS? Without one, the domain cannot receive email—the address is invalid, however plausible it looks. Our Email Checker.
- Mailbox check at SMTP level: Query the responsible mail server to see whether it would accept mail for this inbox, without sending an email. The result is less precise than it sounds: many servers respond positively to every address (catch-all) or refuse to provide this information. A “valid” result is an indication, not proof.
The key question: Will your email be read at all?
Having an address is one thing. Getting the person to open your email is another. Cold emails sent to addresses you’ve researched often end up in spam folders, and every unwanted email damages your sending domain’s reputation. Keep your list lean, too: record only what you need and where you found it.
That is why the methods in this article appear in this order: First, those that give you a confirmed address (contact information, legal notice, company switchboard, conversation), then those that give you a likely one (email pattern, permutator, Email Finder). Using a likely address without speaking to the person first leads to the lowest reply rate.
Recruiting and job applications: same question, different sender
Recruiters also use the methods above to reach candidates outside LinkedIn. The same applies here: A connection request is usually the simpler way to contact someone directly. In CompLeadly, you select a search or pipeline from LinkedIn Recruiter as your target audience. The tool sends the requests and an initial message after each one is accepted. Applicants who want to reach a hiring manager do not need to guess an email pattern either: Send a request to the team lead, followed by a short message. If you still want to apply by email, you can almost always find the HR department’s address in the job posting or on the careers page—method 1. You can read how to do this in Finding a job on LinkedIn without the common mistakes; the recruiting setup is on our page for recruiting teams.
Frequently asked questions about finding email addresses
How do I find an email address using a name?
First, look for any real email address from the company – in the legal notice, on the contact page or team page. This lets you identify the pattern, usually firstname.lastname@company.com, and enter the name you are looking for. Watch out for umlauts (ue instead of ü) and double surnames, then check the address technically. The Email-Permutator generates all the variations at once.
How can I find an email address if I only know the person’s name?
If you do not know the company, first find the person’s employer using LinkedIn people search. Once you have their name and company, you have the domain and can use methods 1 to 3: Check the profile’s contact information, identify the company’s email pattern, use the permutator and verify the address. Searching Google for the name in quotation marks plus “email” can also turn up addresses from talks and publications.
What is an email finder?
A service that uses a name and company domain to calculate a likely email address and check it technically, drawing on a database of collected addresses and company email patterns. The result is a probability, not a guarantee.
How do I get an email address for someone who will actually read my message?
Through a conversation. Connect on LinkedIn, start chatting and ask if you can send something by email. The address your contact then gives you is current, and they’ll be expecting your email. You can find the step-by-step process in Combine LinkedIn and email.
How do I check whether an email address exists?
In three stages: syntax, then the domain’s MX record in DNS, then a mailbox check with the relevant mail server. Our free Email-Checker handles the first two stages. The final stage is inconclusive because many servers respond positively for every address (catch-all). Verification reduces the bounce rate but does not prove the address is actively used.
Are the Email-Permutator and Email-Checker free?
Yes, both are free. The permutator runs entirely in your browser and does not store names. The checker checks one address per request, does not store it and has a limit to prevent misuse. You do not need to sign up for either tool.
