

Ask HN: Registration email confirmation, good or bad? - adilsaleem

I realize that a lot of people (including myself) get really irritated when they have to confirm their email address upon registration. The email (mostly) goes to the spam/junk and the user gets annoyed and leaves. Plus it doesnt seem to serve any purpose.<p>I am recently making some updates to my site and I was wondering if its a good idea to remove the email confirmation upon registration. Are there any disadvantages to this approach?
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oldgregg
Keep the confirmation but go ahead and let them into the site... If they
haven't clicked the link for a few days send a couple reminders... after a
week just disable their account.

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gommm
That's what I do except that I don't disable the account (except in the case
of blatant spam) but just forbid the user to upload more than one photo until
his email has been confirmed...

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jacquesm
It depends. If you have a pre-existing relationship with your users (because
of a large free portion of your site) and posting privileges require
registration then you'll see a good conversion and people won't mind much. It
also helps if you explain _why_ you need their email address, in general I
find that is one of the key elements in dealing with users, communicate
clearly and frequently.

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ROFISH
It depends upon the application. I run a semi-popular forum, so I require
email addresses to keep the ban evaders, trolls, and spambots out. If you
think you're going to have problems with the former two, keep the email
requirement. However, if you're not doing a community related thing where
everybody has to play nice, like a service app like Basecamp, feel free to not
require it.

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oscardelben
If there are money involved (I'm thinking about Basecamp), email address
should be required.

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gstar
It depends. I have an industry website with a very narrow focus, and get about
80% verification rate.

I'm considering dropping email verification, but I believe that 80% I get now
is a very good rate.

Biggest thing to consider is your MTA. You have to have SPF at a minimum and
domainkeys is getting pretty important too. Outsource your email if you can.

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jwilliams
_Are there any disadvantages to this approach?_

Only that it's the most common method of recovering or verifying an account if
something goes wrong (e.g. forgotten password).

Doesn't necessarily mean it has to be part of registration though.

Have you considered using OpenID? You can get the user's email from that.

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andhapp
It should not be mandatory to click the like because I do not want to log on
to my email and click the link to access the site. They should be allowed to
browse the site as a guest and if should be reminded of the link every few
days.

oldgregg is bang on target...and I would second his notion.

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oscardelben
If the user's email is not important for your application, then you could just
insert a captcha to prevent spam and remove the email verification.

