Summary:

PerfectMail does not use Active Directory for e-mail address validation. Rather, t makes use of the SMTP Recipient Filtering setting in Microsoft Exchange to extract that information from your Exchange server during the mail transmission.

Active Directory (AD) can be a problem for third party tools. AD integration/configuration is not necessarily consistent and we've had reports from third party vendors who are very experienced with AD but still encounter quirky behavior; AD can require a bit of finesse. However, with SMTP Recipient Filtering enabled we simply do not need AD as we can authenticate e-mail addresses directly with Exchange.

By default Exchange will accept all e-mail, regardless of the recipient. SMTP Recipient Filtering is a feature where Exchange will only accept e-mail that it can either route or deliver. PerfectMail uses an algorithm to interactively query Exchange using the SMTP protocol to validate e-mail addresses rather than relying on AD. The implementation is very straightforward and works flawlessly.