Efficient Domain Extraction from URLs & Emails

From Messy Links To Meaningful Data

Every modern workflow is flooded with URLs and email addresses. They come from forms, CRMs, marketing platforms, support tools, and countless other sources. Hidden inside each one is a simple piece of information that can unlock cleaner data, sharper insights, and smarter automation: the domain.

Yet extracting that domain reliably is not always simple. Multi-part TLDs like co.uk, tracking parameters, ports, subdomains, and free email providers can turn a basic task into a recurring headache.

This is exactly where an automated n8n workflow becomes a quiet superpower. Instead of manually cleaning and parsing, you can let a reusable template handle the heavy lifting, so you stay focused on strategy, growth, and the work that really moves the needle.

Shifting Your Mindset: From Manual Cleanup To Scalable Automation

Think about the time you or your team spend doing repetitive cleanup work. Copying and pasting domains, removing protocols, checking whether an email is from a free provider, fixing edge cases like example.co.uk or unusual TLDs. It might feel small in the moment, but it adds up over weeks and months.

Automating domain extraction in n8n is more than a technical trick. It is a mindset shift.

• You stop reacting to messy data and start designing clean systems.
• You turn a tedious routine into a reliable, reusable building block.
• You create a foundation you can plug into lead scoring, enrichment, routing, and reporting.

The n8n workflow template below is designed to be that foundation. It gives you a robust, tested way to extract domains from URLs and emails, identify free email providers, and prepare your data for whatever comes next.

What This n8n Template Helps You Do

This domain extraction workflow is built to be both practical and powerful. It cleans and processes URLs and emails so you can use them confidently in your automations.

• Accepts either a URL or an email as input.
• Removes unnecessary parts like protocols and ports.
• Handles complex and multi-part TLDs such as co.uk.
• Extracts the correct domain, including second-level domains where needed.
• Identifies whether an email domain belongs to a free provider like Gmail, Outlook, and many others.
• Outputs a clear, structured result you can plug into any other n8n workflow.

Instead of reinventing domain parsing every time, you can drop this template into your existing automations and immediately upgrade your data quality.

How The Domain Extraction Works Behind The Scenes

At the heart of this workflow is a smart approach to parsing URLs and emails that respects the complexity of real-world domains.

The workflow:

• Analyzes the input and detects whether it is a URL or an email address.
• For URLs, strips away protocols (like http or https), ports, and paths so only the host is left.
• Uses an extensive list of global TLDs to correctly identify where the domain actually begins, including multi-part suffixes such as .co.uk.
• Extracts the precise domain name in a consistent format.
• For emails, isolates the domain part after the @ and checks it against a list of common free email providers.

The result is a clean, trustworthy domain value plus a simple boolean that tells you whether the email comes from a free provider. This gives you a solid base for lead qualification, segmentation, security checks, and more.

Key Features That Save Time And Reduce Friction

To support reliable automation at scale, this n8n workflow template includes several important capabilities:

• Broad URL support – Handles many different URL formats, including unusual or multi-part TLDs.
• Accurate TLD handling – Uses a comprehensive list of global TLDs so domains like lemlist.co.uk are extracted correctly.
• Precise domain extraction – Captures both top-level and second-level domains where appropriate.
• Email domain detection – Works with email addresses as input and extracts the domain consistently.
• Free email provider flag – Checks if the domain belongs to a free mail provider such as Gmail, Outlook, and many others, then returns a simple boolean.
• Reusable building block – Designed to be dropped into larger automations, ETL pipelines, enrichment workflows, and routing logic.

Using The Template In Your n8n Workflow

You can integrate this automation into your existing n8n setup with minimal effort. The workflow is triggered by variables and returns structured, ready-to-use data.

Input expectations:

• Provide a URL in a variable named url, or
• Provide an email address in a variable named email.

You only need one of these per execution. The workflow will detect what you passed in and process it accordingly.

Output fields:

• The original input (URL or email).
• The extracted domain (for example lemlist.co.uk or hitmail.com).
• A boolean flag that indicates whether the domain is a free mail provider.

From there, you can branch your workflow, apply filters, enrich data, or feed the results into other tools or databases.

Workflow Node Journey: From Trigger To Enriched Data

This n8n template is intentionally simple to understand so you can customize and extend it with confidence. It uses three core nodes:

• Execute Workflow Trigger
  This node starts the workflow. It is the entry point that receives the variables url or email. You can connect it to other workflows, webhooks, schedules, or any trigger you prefer.
• Prepare Data Before Function
  Here the workflow extracts the relevant input from the incoming data. It checks for the presence of the url or email variable and prepares the value so the next step can work with a clean, predictable structure.
• Extract Domain
  This node runs custom JavaScript code that does the core work:
  • Parses the URL or email.
  • Strips away protocols, ports, and paths when dealing with URLs.
  • Validates and resolves TLDs against a comprehensive list.
  • Extracts the final domain value.
  • Checks whether the domain belongs to a known free email provider.
  • Outputs the enriched data with the original input, extracted domain, and free provider flag.

Because this logic is encapsulated in one function node, you can easily adapt it, add your own conditions, or extend the provider list as your needs grow.

Concrete Examples: See The Automation In Action

To better visualize what this n8n template does, here are two simple examples.

Example 1: Extracting a domain from a URL

Input URL:

http://subdomain.lemlist.co.uk/hello/?utut=eafa

Output domain:

lemlist.co.uk

The workflow ignores the protocol, the subdomain, the path, and query parameters. It focuses on the correct domain and respects the multi-part TLD co.uk.

Example 2: Identifying a free email provider

Input email:

lucas@hitmail.com

Output:

• Extracted domain: hitmail.com
• Free mail provider: true

The workflow isolates hitmail.com from the email address and checks it against its list of free providers, then returns a boolean you can use for routing or scoring.

Turning This Template Into Your Automation Stepping Stone

This n8n domain extraction template is more than a single-use utility. It can become a core part of how you treat data across your stack.

Once you have reliable domain extraction, you can:

• Route leads differently based on corporate vs free email addresses.
• Prioritize outreach based on domain type or region.
• Enrich domains with external APIs for company size, industry, or technology stack.
• Clean and normalize URLs before storing them in your database or analytics tools.
• Standardize data across multiple sources in your ETL pipelines.

Use this template as your starting point. Duplicate it, tweak the JavaScript, expand the list of free providers, or connect it with other n8n nodes and external services. Each small improvement compounds, and soon you will have a powerful, fully automated data processing flow.

Next Step: Add This Domain Extraction To Your n8n Stack

Every automation journey begins with a single workflow. By integrating this template into your n8n projects, you remove friction from your daily work and unlock cleaner, more actionable data across your systems.

Use it inside your automation or ETL pipelines to:

• Effortlessly cleanse URL inputs.
• Extract accurate domains from URLs and emails.
• Verify and flag free email providers in a consistent way.

From there, keep iterating. Let this template inspire you to automate the next repetitive task, then the next, until your workflows feel lighter and your time is focused where it matters most.

For detailed and up-to-date TLD information, explore the comprehensive list on GitHub Public Suffix List. This resource underpins accurate domain parsing at scale.