Precisely address validation and alternatives

Ready to decide which address validation provider can help you make the most of your address data? You’ve come to the right place. We’ve analyzed leading address validation providers and compiled our findings so you can review the data and find the solution that’s right for your business.

This article puts Precisely address validation under a microscope, and takes a closer look at how Precisely’s enterprise readiness, developer experience, and use cases compare with other providers.

You can start with a quick comparison table to see how Precisely alternatives stack up, or jump straight to the topic that catches your eye. Here’s what we’ll cover:

The foundation: address validation

Not an address validation expert yet? No problem. We’ll get you up to speed.

Address validation is a process. The first step is parsing an address into components—city, state, ZIP Code, etc.—which are then normalized and standardized to match the local postal authority's formatting guidelines. After that, the address is ready for validation.

To verify an address, address validation software compares it against an official address database to find a match.

When a match is found, the address is considered valid. When a match fails, the address is considered invalid. Matches often fail when an address is missing secondary information, such as a unit, building, or floor number.

Valid addresses can be used to access metadata, which can include ZIP+4 codes, latitude and longitude coordinates, and other data points. Metadata varies by provider, so it’s worth comparing your options to find the one that offers what you need to make the most of your address data.

Check out our comprehensive guide or quick overview article to learn more about all things address validation.

What is Precisely address validation?

Based in Massachusetts, Precisely is a software development company that specializes in business, location, and consumer data integration, governance, and enrichment. Precisely offers on-premise, cloud, and hybrid data integrity products to businesses and technical professionals.

In 2019, Precisely acquired the shipping and mailing company, Pitney Bowes (opens in new tab), leading several of their products to be mistakenly referred to as Pitney Bowes software.

Service options

To help organizations improve deliveries and better understand customers, Precisely address validation is offered through three Precisely product bundles:

1. Data Integrity Suite Geo Addressing (opens in new tab), which includes address validation, geocoding, and autocomplete
2. Spectrum Global Addressing (opens in new tab), which includes address validation and autocomplete
3. Trillium Geolocation (opens in new tab), commonly referred to as Trillium address validation software, which includes address validation and geocoding

Core capabilities

The capabilities of Precisely address validation include:

• Standardization: Format addresses according to the rules of a local postal authority
• Correction: Fix inaccurate address components and add missing information
• Validation: Verify addresses are deliverable and comply with country-specific postal standards

Technical features

Precisely provides developers with REST APIs, SDKs in seven programming languages (opens in new tab), sample requests and responses (opens in new tab), and a GitHub repository (opens in new tab).

Precisely offers several address validation APIs, each with its own set of features. Some can validate addresses from over 220 countries, (opens in new tab) while others can return delivery point barcodes, validation indicators, latitude and longitude coordinates, and National Change of Address (NCOA) updates.

Pricing info

To use Precisely’s APIs, customers can purchase credits that can be exchanged for address lookups. Some API lookups cost more credits than others, but Precisely doesn’t publicly disclose the credit-to-lookup exchange rate for any of their APIs.

What they do make available is the base price per credit, $0.01 (opens in new tab), and their three pricing models:

• 5,000 credits/month: $50 (opens in new tab)
• 100,000 credits/month: $900 (opens in new tab)
• 100,000+ credits/month: Custom quote (opens in new tab)

Trillium address validation software competitors and alternatives

Precisely’s Trillium address validation software, which is part of Precisely’s Trillium Geolocation product bundle that includes geocoding and validation, takes a different approach to address verification compared to other solutions.

We’ve compared Trillium address validation software with top competitors in the table below. For more detailed breakdowns, check out the linked resources.

Competitor comparison table

What is the Precisely Address Verification API?

The Precisely Address Verification API is a single API with four license tiers: Validate Mailing Address (opens in new tab) and its Pro (opens in new tab), Premium (opens in new tab), and USCAN (opens in new tab) versions.

Developers can call the Precisely Address Verification API via a POST request to confirm mailing addresses are real, deliverable, correctly formatted, and complete. To varying levels of detail, the API can also indicate why addresses fail to validate, parse address components, and standardize addresses to match the local postal authority’s database.

Beyond that, the discrepancies between license tiers begin to appear. Here’s the breakdown:

• Validate Mailing Address Pro builds on the Validate Mailing Address tier to provide enhanced standardization and validation, validate addresses from additional countries, transliterate addresses, and return possible matches for invalid addresses.
• Validate Mailing Address Premium includes the features of Validate Mailing Address Pro, in addition to parsing address components, returning data about those components, and identifying the geocode of a validated address.
• Validate Mailing Address USCAN extends Validate Mailing Address Premium features by providing DPV, RDI, CMRA, LACSLink, and county information for US addresses, while also validating Canadian addresses.

Address verification is also available through the Data Integrity Suite—which combines Precisely’s address verification, geocoding, and autocomplete APIs into one product powered by the Geo Addressing API (opens in new tab)—and through Trillium Geolocation—which bundles address verification, search, and geocoding APIs into one product powered by the Trillium Geolocation API (opens in new tab).

Since Precisely API lookups are exchanged for credits, it’s worth looking into the exchange rate between credits and lookups per Precisely address validation API, as the Precisely pricing page (opens in new tab) acknowledges that the rate varies by API but doesn’t publicly display them. Otherwise, you may be surprised by your monthly bill.

To learn more about other leading address validation APIs, take a look at the table below.

Click here to return to the full competitor comparison table.

How Precisely approaches address validation

Precisely offers a suite of data management solutions. Since addresses are a key data point for most businesses, Precisely offers address verification through several products to help clients keep their addresses accurate, depending on their use case.

If your business values having a single provider for address verification and any of these use cases, Precisely could be a good fit.

However, such a wide range of products can create complexity for users. With many products bundling APIs, you could end up paying for tools you don’t actually need. Plus, when users are unsure which tool to call for a given purpose, they may even end up using the wrong tool for a lookup.

If your business doesn’t prioritize having a single vendor for multiple solutions, you could be better suited by a simpler-to-use Precisely address validation alternative that combines everything into one place.

To see how Precisely’s competitors approach address validation, check out our articles on EasyPost, Google, Melissa, Postgrid, and Smarty.

Precisely address data sources and coverage

Precisely’s global address data is sourced from “databases supplied by postal organizations or other data providers (opens in new tab),” while their US address data is supplied by the USPS database (opens in new tab), and their Canada address data comes from the Canadian postal database (opens in new tab).

Precisely updates their US address database monthly (opens in new tab), and their other databases monthly or quarterly (opens in new tab).

Precisely’s global address data coverage varies by product:

• Data Integrity Suite: 220+ countries and territories (opens in new tab) (exact coverage isn’t publicly available)
• Spectrum Global Addressing: 247 countries and territories (opens in new tab)
• Trillium Geolocation: 230+ countries and territories (opens in new tab) (exact coverage isn’t publicly available)

Additionally, the four license tiers of the Precisely Address Verification API (opens in new tab) each offer different levels of global coverage. While the exact countries these subscription levels cover aren’t publicly disclosed, Precisely notes that the Validate Mailing Address Pro and Premium tiers provide “Support to addresses of more countries (opens in new tab)” than the Validate Mailing Address tier.

Regardless of product or licensing tier, Precisely’s Acceptable Use Policy (opens in new tab) doesn’t allow users to permanently store or reuse data collected from the Address Verification API. After 30 days, users must delete any address data stored outside of the APIs.

That means businesses that need to use address data for long-term analytics won’t be unable to:

• Analyze how many customers live in specific regions
• Identify how many customers live in apartments or other subunits
• Determine whether a customer falls within a specified area
• Use address data for anything beyond real-time address validation

If those use cases are requirements rather than nice-to-haves, they’ll need a different provider.

Data sources, coverage, and usage vary from provider to provider. Check out the table below to see how top providers compare.

Click here to return to the full competitor comparison table.

Precisely address validation API usability and developer experience

Precisely provides full documentation (opens in new tab) for each of their products. But with so many products available, finding the exact information you need can take some digging.

After tracking down the right doc, Precisely will walk you through setting up API request parameters, describe each response parameter, and provide loads of sample code.

In addition to full documentation, developers looking to implement Precisely APIs can make good use of Precisely’s free 2,500 credits (opens in new tab), GitHub repository (opens in new tab), and SDKs for seven programming languages: Android, iOS, Java, JavaScript, .Net (C#), Node.js, and Python (opens in new tab).

Once implemented, the Precisely APIs can receive POST requests from REST endpoints to verify addresses.

Developers needing additional response fields can call the Time Zone API (opens in new tab) and the Geocode API (opens in new tab) to obtain an address’s time zone and geocode.

Although it can take several API calls, Precisely’s API returns many of the response fields developers need from their address validation solution.

That said, businesses looking to qualify for USPS mailing discounts may need to look for a Precisely address validation alternative, as Enhanced Line of Travel (eLOT) isn’t included in the Precisely Address Verification API response (opens in new tab).

An eLOT is an alphanumeric code that allows the USPS to determine the most efficient route mail carriers can follow for deliveries. When businesses use eLOT codes to sort their parcels in the approximate carrier-casing sequence—saving USPS time and money—they can qualify for mailing discounts.

Without eLOT in their address validation API response, businesses could miss out on those savings, so it’s worth evaluating Precisely alternatives for eLOT support.

Support & free trial

If developers encounter technical issues during or after implementation, Precisely offers support through documentation (opens in new tab) and an online message board (opens in new tab). If their questions aren’t answered there, they can submit a ticket (opens in new tab) to contact technical support.

These resources may help developers resolve technical errors, but they lack the immediacy of phone-based technical support. As a result, the time between identifying an issue and resolving it can vary.

As for free trials, Precisely provides developers with 2,500 free credits (opens in new tab) to test their APIs for 30 days.

Learn more about how Precisely’s competitors support developers in the table below:

Click here to return to the full competitor comparison table.

Precisely address validation pricing and licensing model considerations

The Precisely pricing (opens in new tab) page (opens in new tab) outlines three pricing models:

• Basic: To access any Precisely API, customers can pay $50 a month for 5,000 credits. If you exceed your lookup limit, you’ll be billed per request.
• Professional: If customers need more lookups, 100,000 monthly credits are available for $900 per month (plus any overages), as long as you make an “annual commitment.”
• Enterprise: For over 100,000 credits per month, customers can contact Precisely for a custom plan.

While the Precisely pricing page lets you know how many credits you can buy each month, it doesn’t specify how many of those credits are exchanged for a single address lookup. For that information, you’ll need to contact Precisely directly.

Not all address validation providers use a credits system. The table below outlines the pricing models of leading providers.

Click here to return to the full competitor comparison table.

Precisely’s performance, scalability, and enterprise readiness

Latency and uptime are critical to an enterprise-level address validation API. Here’s how Precisely performs.

SLA-guaranteed speed

The rate limits for the Precisely Address Verification API and the Trillium Geolocation API aren’t publicly listed. The only available rate limit is for the Geoaddressing API, which defaults to 700 addresses per second (opens in new tab), according to Precisely’s documentation, not an SLA guarantee.

This speed might not be fast enough to handle enterprise-level workloads. If your business needs to validate tens of thousands of addresses per second, or plans to scale up to do so, you’ll need to consider other options—especially those that offer latency guarantees in an SLA.

Precisely’s documentation also doesn’t include the expected latency for any Precisely address validation API.

Uptime

Precisely’s Service Availability Statement (opens in new tab) promises customers 99.9% uptime for Precisely's APIs, which would include their address validation APIs. They’ll “use commercially reasonable efforts (opens in new tab)” to ensure this uptime is met every quarter.

See how Precisely’s address validation compares to competitors with this table.

Click here to return to the full competitor comparison table.

When a Precisely address validation alternative is a better choice

An alternative to Precisely address verification can make sense when your business needs enterprise-level API speed and support for mission-critical processes, as well as address data for long-term retention and insights.

Without an address validation service that lets you store and reuse data, you could end up paying more for repeated validations or miss out on the insights you need to improve customer service, analytics, and compliance.

Precisely may provide a suite of data management tools that include address validation, but for many businesses, address validation needs to be the main attraction, not a bonus feature. Another provider may be a better fit if:

• You validate a high volume of addresses at enterprise speeds. Precisely’s Geoaddressing API has a rate limit of 700 addresses per second (opens in new tab), which may be insufficient for businesses needing real-time validation.
• You value clear-cut contracting. Due to Precisely’s wide range of products and product bundles, users can end up purchasing more than they need, or even be unaware of the products they have access to.
• You store and reuse your address data. Precisely’s Acceptable Use Policy (opens in new tab) requires users to delete any stored data after 30 days.
• You want a transparent pricing model that doesn’t utilize a credits system. Precisely’s credit-per-lookup cost changes from API to API, but it isn’t publicly specified.
• You need easy-to-navigate documentation and integrations. Precisely’s documentation covers more than fifty products, so it can be difficult to find what you’re looking for, and integrations can take longer than you’d expect.
• You rely on Enhanced Line of Travel (eLOT) to qualify for USPS mailing discounts. Precisely’s Address Verification API doesn’t include eLOT in its response (opens in new tab), which can lead businesses to miss out on extra savings.
• You value immediate phone support. Precisely only offers customer support through message boards (opens in new tab) and support tickets (opens in new tab).

Final thoughts on choosing the right address validation solution

Precisely offers a broad range of data management products, including tools for data organization, data automation, and customer communication. For businesses looking for a single provider for multiple data workflows, Precisely could be a fit.

But if your business is looking for pinpoint accuracy, easy integration, best-in-class support, enterprise-level API speed, long-term data storage, clear documentation, quick proof of concept, and transparent contracting and pricing, you’ll need another provider.

That’s where Smarty’s address validation solutions come in.

But don’t just take our word for it. Sign up for a 42-day free trial or try our live API demo to see top-notch address validation in action.

Frequently asked questions about Precisely address verification

Is Precisely’s address verification USPS-certified?

Precisely’s Data Integrity Suite Geo Addressing (opens in new tab), Spectrum Global Addressing (opens in new tab), and Trillium Geolocation (opens in new tab) are CASS-certified address validation products. This means the USPS recognizes them for using Delivery Point Validation and LACSLink when validating US addresses.

Does Precisely support real-time address validation APIs?

The Precisely Geoaddressing API can validate 700 addresses per second (opens in new tab). Is that “real-time” speed? That depends on your use case. If you need near-instant validation to keep customer experiences running smoothly, you may need a faster solution.