There are various ways to obtain or grow an email list for your next marketing campaign and some are more effective than others.

Lead generation is a vital part of sales, and it’s important to continuously find new contacts. While purchasing email addresses can be an effective first step to generate leads through sales prospecting, it doesn’t come without risk. For this reason, it’s vital to understand the legality, cost, and purchasing options involved, plus alternative methods.

Before we dive into everything, we want to note how we feel about buying cold email lists. While the practice is usually legal, it isn’t the ideal way to generate leads for your business. Typically, the best practice is to find emails for targeted leads. However, if you’re interested in learning more about buying lists, read on for additional information.

Is It Legal to Buy Email Lists?

This one is tricky, and it depends where you are. In the United States, for example, it’s generally legal to purchase or rent an email list as long as you follow specific guidelines. In Europe, it’s legal only to rent lists, and in Canada, it’s essentially illegal to do both. The best way to confirm whether you can secure and use email lists is to consult a lawyer. Let’s now take a closer look at the regulations in each region:

 

US regulations

In short, the US does allow you to buy email lists. However, the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 established rules that you must follow when contacting them:

• • • Keep Your Communication Honest: Don’t use false or misleading headers, subject lines, or messaging in the body of your emails.
    • Allow Recipients to Opt Out: Include an opt-out option and handle requests to opt out within a reasonable amount of time.
    • Clearly Identify the Email as an Ad: Help recipients understand that your message is intended to sell them something.
    • Include Your Location: List your physical mailing address or PO Box in the email.
    • Ensure Opt-Out Requests Are Honored: Don’t email anyone who has requested that you not contact them, and make sure others don’t do so on your behalf.
    • Monitor Third Party Outreach: Even if you’ve hired a third party company to run your marketing campaigns, you still have legal responsibility to comply with regulations.

United States (CAN-SPAM Act)

🔗 FTC’s CAN-SPAM Act Compliance Guide
🔗 Full Text of the CAN-SPAM Act (FTC)

---

EU regulations

Buying and utilizing email lists is essentially illegal throughout Europe. Where it isn’t outright illegal, it is so difficult to navigate that we do not recommend attempting to jump through the hoops required.

Now, you are able to rent email lists legally in Europe, and the owner of the email list must simply ensure that they have the leads’ consent to promote a third party. While this may make it a less desirable option, it still makes it possible. This usually comes in the form of a subscription plan that allows you time-restricted use of an email list as long as you pay. We’ll talk more about renting email lists later in this article.

European Union (GDPR & ePrivacy Directive)

🔗 GDPR Text (Official EU) *(Art. 6, 7, 21 cover consent & opt-out)*
🔗 ePrivacy Directive (EU) (Rules on email marketing & cookies)

---

Canadian regulation

Canada has the strictest rules regarding sending emails to a third party list. You can’t buy them in Canada, and renting them is much more difficult there, as well. They’re available to rent in the same way they are in Europe, but hosts have to use even more caution in obtaining and maintaining customer consent, and therefore the supply is smaller.

Canada (CASL – Anti-Spam Law)

🔗 Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) Guide
🔗 Full CASL Text (Government of Canada)

 

Australia (Spam Act 2003)
🔗 Australian Communications Authority (ACM) Guide
🔗 Spam Act 2003
Key Rules: Consent required, sender ID, unsubscribe mechanism.

 

United Kingdom (PECR + GDPR)
🔗 UK PECR Regulations
Key Rules: Similar to EU GDPR but post-Brexit; opt-in consent.

 

Other Countries (General Guidelines)

• Japan: Act on Regulation of Transmission of Specified Electronic Mail (Japanese)

• Brazil: LGPD (Similar to GDPR)

• India: Draft Data Protection Bill (2023) (Pending, but follow opt-in best practices)

• Singapore: PDPA & Spam Control Act

---

 

Understanding your rights as a salesperson and the rights of your leads should be your first step when considering purchasing email lists. Once you’ve confirmed the legality of buying lists in your country, you can then begin exploring options and prioritizing factors like cost and features. 

How Much Do Email Lists Cost?

Email lists can vary widely in cost, and it’s important to understand how they’re priced. Email lists are usually priced in CPM (cost per a thousand emails). Typically, business lists cost more than consumer ones. Below is the typical price range for these lists:

• • Lowest Price: The lowest amount you’ll spend is likely $100 CPM for B2C lists and $300 CPM for B2B lists.
  • Mid-Range Price: B2C lists are typically priced at $300 CPM, whereas B2B lists often cost around $500 CPM.
  • High Price: The high end tends to be $600 CPM for B2C and $1,000 CPM for B2B.

There are also services that use subscription models, but they don’t tend to move the needle as much. Be careful when jumping into a subscription contract, as the fine print may leave you locked into a long-term agreement unknowingly.

Benefits & Drawbacks of Purchasing Email Lists

Given the legal complications and cost involved, is it even worth buying an email list? To help you decide, we’ve put together a list of pros and cons to keep in mind. Top benefits include the speed and ease of finding contacts to email, while common drawbacks include vague legal requirements and paying for lists that are not targeted or verified.

Let’s now take a closer look at each benefit and drawback in detail.

Benefits of Buying an Email List

Since so many companies sell and rent out email lists, there is obviously a market for them. There are some good reasons for this, despite the many valid warnings you will find across the internet. For those who do use them and are not deterred by the risks, here’s why they can work:

• • Quick Turnaround: Buying a list is much faster than gathering your own new contacts.
  • Simple Process: Paying for emails is easier than finding your own leads’ contact information.
  • Targeted Lists: You can buy relevant lists that primarily include people in your market.
  • Cost-Effective: Not only can buying lists save you time, it can also save you money that would otherwise be needed for lead generation.

Oftentimes, the companies that experience the most benefits from buying email lists have found legitimate, trustworthy sources. They’ve also diversified their lead generation process to include other methods to find email addresses, as well as other ways to identify leads altogether.

Drawbacks of Buying an Email List

Since so many warnings are out on the internet, there are clearly some cons to consider. For many businesses, especially those in Europe and Canada, these drawbacks make the practice of buying or renting an email list undesirable. Here are the reasons that usually lead businesses away from purchasing email lists:

• • Complicated Laws: The legal requirements involved in contacting leads can seem confusing and frustrating.
  • High Total Cost: If you develop a business model that relies on buying email lists, the cost can add up.
  • Ineffective General Lists: Lists that are not properly targeted can often result in emails that are sent to uninterested users.
  • Occasional Bad Lists: Some lists include unverified addresses that will bounce back, which can put your email domain at risk and get you marked as spam.
  • Aggressive Spam Filters: Email hosting services now often filter out unsolicited sales emails, even if yours is legitimate and could help the lead.
  • Nonexclusive Leads: The leads on the lists you buy are likely on lists sold to other companies, and even to your competitors. By the time you reach out, they may be irritated by the emails they’ve received, especially since they didn’t opt in to be contacted by you.

Ultimately, these drawbacks all share a common theme: risk. When you buy email lists, you risk wasting money and running into legal issues, so it’s important to decide how comfortable you are with these risks and figure out ways to avoid them before diving in and purchasing lists.

Overall, we would say the cons outweigh the pros. We recommend that you avoid buying email lists, and instead dedicate time to other lead generation efforts, such as renting lists or using a database like ZoomInfo. For more on the alternatives to buying email lists, jump down below. If you’re still considering purchasing, keep reading for a list of reputable places to look first.

---

Top Places to Buy Email Lists

If buying an email list seems like an attractive option for your outreach goals, it’s crucial to choose a reputable provider. Many vendors impose restrictive subscription models—charging hundreds per month for limited access (e.g., just 1,000 leads per month). Others inflate prices for bulk lists, making large-scale campaigns unnecessarily expensive.

At MediumAxis, we take a different approach:

• Fixed-price, full-access lists – Pay once and own the entire dataset (e.g., 100K investor contacts for just $250 or 200K physicians for $300).

• No monthly subscriptions – Avoid recurring fees for tiny lead quotas; scale campaigns affordably.

• Cost efficiency – Our pricing is often 100x cheaper than competitors charging per-contact or throttling access.

• Premium data services – Beyond lists, we offer data enrichment, segmentation, and database management to refine your targeting.

While buying lists can jumpstart outreach, always verify a provider’s reliability—check data freshness, compliance (e.g., GDPR/CAN-SPAM), and opt-in policies. For businesses prioritizing high-volume, budget-friendly leads without restrictive subscriptions, MediumAxis offers a transparent alternative.

Tip: When deciding where to buy email lists, consider price, ratings, email address accuracy, and how long they’ve been around. In particular, check whether they have a list that’s highly relevant to your business to make sure you find the best value possible. Buying email addresses can be a risk, so it’s important to do your research.

Alternatives to Purchasing Email Lists

Besides purchasing email lists, there are many ways to generate leads. Most businesses operate without buying these lists at all, and we’ve created a write-up of the best alternatives.

Use Sales Prospecting Tools

Sales prospecting tools are a great way to find leads’ email addresses and other information about them. The top prospecting tools either offer a database where you can search a lead’s name and company name or have browser extensions and website tracking tools to help your search. Below are some of the best sales prospecting tools available:

• • B2B Lead Databases: This is a prospect database tool that finds good-fit leads to engage with so you can reach out to the right people using the right info. 
  • Website Visitor Tracking Tools: These tools track and show who is visiting and interacting with your website pages.
  • Email Finder and Verification Software: Ensure you have the most accurate email addresses to reach your leads with these tools. 
  • Lead Scoring Software: This is an advanced tool that helps score and prioritize your leads through preset qualifications. 
  • Lead Management Software: This software is used to store and manage your generated leads. You can find these tracking tools in high quality CRMs.

These five types of sales prospecting software can be game changers for your outreach campaigns. Specific tools like ZoomInfo can show buyer intent and an ideal customer profile so you can confirm whether they’re a good fit, and UpLead will tell you what technology the lead uses and even verify their email address in real time.

Rent Email Addresses Through a Dedicated Send

Renting email addresses, or sending a “dedicated email,” is when you write a message and then pay a company to send it to their subscriber list on your behalf. While you don’t ever see the list of email addresses, this type of promotion can still be a good way to get new leads interested in your business and opt in to more contact from you. Here are the steps to send a dedicated email:

1. 1. Find a Reputable Company: As you choose a company to rent leads from, compare pricing and ask them to confirm that they have targeted lists that would be a good fit for you and to provide you with success metrics so you can know what results to expect.
   2. Create a Plan to Track New Leads: Figure out how you want to determine which leads originated from your dedicated email. One good way to do this is to create a landing page for the email recipients, then insert that link into your email copy.
   3. Craft and Schedule Your Email: Write and design your email, making sure to include a clear CTA and links to landing pages or your own contact information so leads can reach out to you directly. Work with the company sending it out for you to choose when they’ll do so.
   4. Track the Email’s Metrics: Ask the company to provide you with a report that tells you metrics like click-through rate and the amount of leads who successfully received the email. Use the system you created in step two to see how many recipients converted to leads.

You can reach out to a company with an audience similar to yours and ask if they’d be willing to sell you a dedicated email send, or you can choose a company that specializes in dedicated sends. The main benefit of working with the former is that you’ll increase your chances of leads responding with interest, but these companies could also be pickier about your email copy to protect their own brand. Be prepared to modify your verbiage or design if needed.

Manually Find Email Addresses

This is the most labor-intensive way of gathering email addresses, but it’s also the most targeted. Through tools such as social media, email verification software, or a search engine, you can find most relevant leads’ emails. Here are the best ways to find email addresses:

• • Check Social Media: Check their business and personal pages on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook to see if they list their email address.
  • Subscribe to the Lead’s Mailing List: Receive emails from the company, then try responding to the sender.
  • Look at the Company Website: Check to see whether the company lists email addresses on their “contact” or “about” pages.
  • Conduct a Google Search: Input the lead’s name and company name into the Google Search bar, then see whether their email comes up.
  • Search the Company’s Email Domain: Use an alternative search engine like DuckDuckGo to type in “@domain-name.com” and see which emails it finds.
  • Guess and Verify the Email: Make your best guess at a lead’s email address, then check to see if you’re correct using an email verification tool.
  • Search on WHOIS: Enter the domain name into the WHOIS search bar, then see whether any of the email addresses it provides matches your lead.

These ways can work well individually, or you can combine them to ensure you find the correct email addresses. For example, you can find a lead’s email through social media and then verify it with an email verification tool. This will help you avoid sending too many emails to invalid addresses and damaging your email domain’s reputation.

Use a Lead Generation Company

Lead generation companies take away the headache of strategizing altogether. These companies will take into account your business model, and develop and deploy a campaign themselves to get you quality, targeted leads. If your business is too large for you to do it all yourself, this is the choice we would recommend over buying a list of emails. Here are a few well-regarded lead gen companies:

• CIENCE: Best for businesses with international clients ($5,400 starting price)
• Belkins: Best lead generation company for transparent results (call for a quote)
• Callbox: Best for comprehensive sales and marketing tools (contact for quote)

With any of these options, you are off to a great start in your new lead generation process. While all are reputable, trustworthy companies, the right one for you will depend largely on your business.

Generate Inbound Leads

Ultimately, while email lists can be an easy way to gather email addresses, attracting inbound leads is often the best way to generate new leads for your business. You’ll have more control over the type of leads you gather when you do it yourself, and they’ll have voluntarily provided their email address to you. By taking the following steps, you can ensure that you gather online leads from people interested in your product:

1. 1. Optimize Your Website for Lead Generation: To attract online leads and entice them to give you their contact info, your site must be appealing and easy to navigate.
   2. Create a Lead Magnet: Lead magnets attract inbound leads to your website and offer relevant value (e.g., free ebook, template) in exchange for their contact information; create a valuable one to make it a fair trade.
   3. Drive Traffic to Your Lead Magnet: Now that you have a lead magnet, drive traffic to it. To do so, come up with an organic and/or paid strategy to direct visitors from Google or your social media platforms to the lead magnet hosted on your site.
   4. Collect Lead Contact Information: Offer your lead magnet using lead capture software or a landing page. An embedded or pop-up form should request the lead’s email address, then they should receive the lead magnet immediately, completing the trade.

When done right, online lead generation can provide you with a steady stream of inbound leads, which can lessen the pressure on the sales team to gather new contacts.

 

How to keep your email list healthy for effective marketing campaigns

How much are email lists worth to your business? That depends more on quality than quantity, but even organically built email lists naturally degrade over time as subscribers opt out, change email addresses and develop new needs. As this happens, you might notice:

• Low open rates

• Low click-through rates

• High unsubscribe rates

• High bounce rates

This is why it’s important to practice good email hygiene and list management by:

• Using targeted messaging and CTAs to get the right subscribers (i.e. those who are more likely to stay interested and open your emails). Segment your list using factors like demographic and buyer journey stage so you can personalize your message content.

• Setting followers’ expectations early to minimize unsubscribes and spam complaints. Explain on your sign-up page and in your first message the types of content and frequency of emails the recipient should expect. Even better if you can give them a choice.

• Cleaning your email list regularly by either re-engaging or, if that fails, removing inactive users. Look in your database or email marketing software for subscribers who haven’t opened your messages in six months and consider what type of offer or content could get them back on board.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Bottom Line: Buy Email List

At the end of the day, whether you purchase an email list for your company is a choice best left to you. We would caution against buying third-party email lists for cold emailing to avoid the risks involved. With a little extra financial and/or time investment, you can get a much better result by doing it yourself or enlisting the help of a lead generation company.