People Data Provider Evaluation Checklist: 15 Questions to Ask

Evaluate a people data provider by testing it on your own accounts and then asking fifteen questions about coverage, data quality, billing, privacy and permitted use. The test tells you whether the data is useful; the questions tell you whether it is safe and affordable to depend on.

How to use this checklist

Score each question as clear, partly clear or not stated. A provider with several “not stated” answers is not necessarily bad, but you should know which blanks you are accepting. As a worked reference, we show what BusinessMCP’s public page says for each item, so you can see what a stated answer looks like. Its page is at businessmcp.com/data-api/people, and the answers below reflect it as we read it in October 2026.

Coverage and data

#	Question	What a BusinessMCP-style answer looks like
1	Which regions are excluded?	Stated: no people in the EU, EEA, UK or Switzerland, nor California, Texas, Vermont or Oregon
2	Where does the data come from?	Stated only as an in-house store; no third-party sources named
3	Is there phone data?	Not offered, per its comparison page
4	What coverage or accuracy figures are published?	None stated
5	How fresh is the data?	Last-checked email status; no refresh cadence for other fields

If a vendor gives a single accuracy percentage, ask how it was measured and on what sample. If it cannot say, discount it.

Key takeaway: a blank in the documentation is information. Decide in advance which blanks are acceptable and which are deal-breakers.

Email quality

#	Question	Look for
6	How are emails labelled?	Distinct statuses; here valid, catch_all, unknown, and pattern for unverified guesses
7	What does “verified” mean?	A method, not a badge; see catch-all addresses

Billing

#	Question	Look for
8	What is the unit of billing?	Stated per call or per item; here $0.08 search item, $0.04 finder, $0.10 enrichment
9	Are misses charged?	Stated; here only when a result is found
10	What are the minimums and trial terms?	Prepaid from $10, free trial does not pay for people calls

Work out cost per usable contact using the method in our pricing article.

Privacy and terms

#	Question	Look for
11	How do opt-outs work?	A public form and a removal time; here about a day
12	What is logged?	Here, every people call with a declared purpose
13	What uses are prohibited?	Here, credit, employment, insurance and housing decisions
14	What is the legal posture?	Honest wording; here exclusion of regulated regions, not a compliance claim
15	What do you need to declare or accept?	Here, a purchased balance and people-data terms

The prohibited uses connect to real law: consumer reporting rules such as the US Fair Credit Reporting Act apply to eligibility decisions, which is the kind of use business-contact data should stay away from. The GDPR text on EUR-Lex defines personal data broadly. Both are good reasons to take legal advice, and our article on people data and GDPR expands on the privacy items.

The test plan

1. Build a sample. Choose 100 accounts or people you know, across the regions and company sizes you sell to.
2. Run each candidate. Use the same inputs and, where relevant, the same filters.
3. Score outcomes. Count found, correct, current and deliverable.
4. Compute cost. Divide spend by usable results.
5. Check the edges. Include excluded regions, role addresses and personal domains to see how the service fails.
6. Review the logs. Confirm what the provider records and what you can export.

Use the same sample for every vendor, or you are comparing luck.

Red flags

• A headline accuracy number with no method.
• Global person-level coverage and no mention of privacy rules.
• No stated rule for misses.
• No visible opt-out route, or a slow one.
• Terms that allow any use.
• Claims of mailbox-level certainty on catch-all domains.
• No honest account of limits. BusinessMCP’s own comparison concedes a smaller store, no phone data and a per-record price that is not the lowest at volume, and that sort of admission is a positive sign.

After you choose

Document the answers, store the test results and revisit the evaluation yearly, since pricing and rules move. When you are ready to compare vendors side by side, how to choose the best people data API explains the trade-offs, and the endpoint guides on people search and the email finder show what each call involves. For the account-level alternative, see the Data API overview.

Scoring the answers

Turn the checklist into a decision by weighting the questions. Give double weight to the ones that would stop you from using the data at all: regional exclusions that cover your market, prohibited uses that cover your use case, and billing rules that make costs unpredictable. Give normal weight to the rest. A provider that fails a double-weight item is out, whatever its price.

Keep a one-page record per provider: the date you checked, the source of each answer, and the result of your sample test. When a vendor says something that is not on its public pages, ask for it in writing. For BusinessMCP’s own statements about data handling and the limits of its verification, the Data API trust page is the primary source; note that it does not describe retention periods or legal bases, so ask directly if you need them.

Who should sign off

An evaluation fails when only one function signs it. Involve the person who will use the data (sales or operations), the engineer who will integrate it, and someone responsible for privacy and legal review. Each looks at different rows of the checklist: usefulness and cost for the first, integration and error handling for the second, exclusions, opt-outs and permitted use for the third.

Give each reviewer a veto on their own area, and record the decision with the date. When the provider changes its terms or prices, rerun the relevant rows rather than starting from scratch. A one-page record per vendor, refreshed once a year, is enough for most small teams and is far better than a memory of a sales call that nobody wrote down.