Ask HN: should you have users verify accounts through e-mail confirmation? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: should you have users verify accounts through e-mail confirmation?

9 pointspalidanx8 comments

I'd like to hear from the HN community what you think about the pro/con of a user having to verify a new user account on a website by clicking an e-mail verification.

So the workflow would be + go to website + create account + click e-mail confirmation + login

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Multiple times I've had someone complete a registration, only to find that they'd mistyped their own email address. Twice. Without their subsequent "Where's my confirmation?" email I might not have known, and they might never have completed their registration successfully.

It's a pain, but it's now reasonably familiar, and it serves a specific purpose - confirming the email address.

If you can get accurate details from people without requiring the explicit test of the explicit function then I'd be interested.

That is right. But you need to reduce friction in signup to allow user to explore app.

So a better way could be Signup => Allow them in but say that email confirmation is required for next login => Send email confirmation => Allow login only with confirmation.

I think people reasonably expect it these days. I'm often comforted by it because generally a site with it also has the correct lost password recoveries by email, etc.

I love how this is downvoted b/c someone disagreed. Silly.

It depends of your needs. If you plan to use their email (newsletters, password recovering, ...), then that's very valuable to have a verified email. But if you don't, I think you could go further by removing the email field from the signup form.

You also could allow the user to create an account and access the website directly but remind him that he needs to verify its email address. Of course it depends on your website and what you are offering, but allowing user to access your application as fast as possible should be a good idea.

Take the example of twitter which allows you to create an account and start using it without the verification. But it reminds you to verify the email everytime you log in.

We've found it's easiest to just ask for email adress twice in the initial form (and try to prevent pasting for the second field). Works pretty darn well. Email confirmation is a hassle to build and often for users to act on, from our experience.

When a company does not use or correctly use email confirmation [1], and I start subsequently receiving emails regarding an account I never set up, I consider that a form of abuse on the part of the company.

Please confirm the email addresses of your users.

[1] And I've had more than one major player boggle the latter.

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