Mailinator Alternatives for Receiving Test Email

Mailinator’s free side is simple: make up any address at mailinator.com and read the mail on the website. What catches testers out is everything around that. The public inboxes are open to anyone, take no attachments and delete mail after a few hours. The API and private inboxes need a subscription, from $79 a month billed yearly or $99 month to month, unless Mailinator approves you for its free Verified Pro tier.

So the right alternative depends on the test. For a public inbox a script can read, Maildrop and Mailsac are free. For mail that must stay private, the hosted testing tools start at nothing for small volumes. For mail that should never leave your own machine, Mailpit is free and you run it yourself.

If all you want is a throwaway address for signing up to something, this is the wrong article. Our guide to temporary email generators and safer alternatives covers that job.

What Mailinator gives you

Public, free. Unlimited inboxes at mailinator.com with no sign-up. Mailinator’s own FAQ lists the limits: every email is readable by anyone, mail lasts a few hours, attachments are not allowed, and the system is receive-only. Its documentation says the public side is meant for occasional, personal use.

Verified Pro, free with verification. A tier for single users that includes a private domain, API access and webhooks, with 10MB of storage and about 60 emails a day. The cost, in Mailinator’s words, is valid contact details and good behaviour. It is not meant for company teams, and Mailinator says a firm with three or more such accounts may be told to pay.

Business, paid. Mailinator’s pricing page puts Business at $79 a month billed yearly or $99 billed monthly, for 100,000 emails a month, one private domain and five team seats. Business Plus is $159 or $199, and Enterprise starts at $699.

Mailinator alternatives compared

Free public inboxes

Maildrop is the closest thing to public Mailinator. Make up any address at maildrop.cc and read it on the site, with no sign-up and no password. Its API is a single GraphQL address that, according to its developer documentation, needs no key at present and allows 50 queries in any ten seconds. The limits are strict. Messages must be plain text or HTML under 500k, attachments are thrown away, an inbox holds ten messages, and an inbox that receives nothing for 24 hours is cleared.

One Maildrop detail matters for automated tests. The first time a mail server it has not seen sends to a maildrop.cc address, Maildrop tells that server to try again later, a spam defence called greylisting. Its documentation says most servers retry within 15 minutes. A test that waits 30 seconds for the first email can fail for that reason alone.

Mailsac is aimed squarely at testers. Any address at mailsac.com receives mail with no sign-up, and anyone can read it. A free account adds an API key, one private address and 1,500 “operations” a month. An operation is one email received, one API call or one forward, and Mailsac reckons a typical test uses about three. Public mail is kept for four days, six messages to an inbox. Attachments on public addresses can only be fetched through the API. Its own FAQ warns that some senders block disposable domains and that non-paying users can be throttled.

Guerrilla Mail gives you a random address, or one you choose, and keeps each email for an hour. Its site has an API, and its FAQ tells webmasters it can be used to check that a site sends its emails correctly. Anyone who knows the inbox ID can open the inbox.

YOPmail keeps mail for eight days but is built for dodging spam, and it is covered in the other article.

Private testing tools

Mailtrap Email Sandbox is a fake SMTP server. You paste its SMTP settings into your app, and every message the app sends lands in a sandbox that only your account can see. Mailtrap says the sandbox is not designed to deliver to real addresses, and forwarding a caught email onwards is a paid feature. The free plan is small: 50 test emails a month, one sandbox that holds ten emails, one user. Paid plans run from Basic at $17 a month (500 emails) through Team at $42 and Business at $123 to Enterprise at $498, each about a fifth cheaper billed yearly.

testmail.app gives you a namespace, and mail goes to [email protected]. Change the tag and you have a new inbox, so one account covers any number of test users. Emails are read back through a JSON or GraphQL API. The free plan allows 100 emails a month and keeps them one day. Essential is $12 a month, or $9 billed yearly, for 10,000 emails kept up to three days. Pro is $39, or $29 billed yearly, for 50,000 emails kept up to 30 days.

Mailosaur has no free plan, only a 14-day trial. Personal starts at $20 a month billed yearly for one user, one inbox with unlimited addresses, and from 15,000 inbound emails a month. Core starts at $50, also billed yearly, for five seats and several inboxes, and SMS testing is an add-on from $37.50 a month. The pricing page does not say how long messages are kept.

Ethereal is a free fake SMTP service aimed mostly at users of the Nodemailer library, though it accepts mail from any SMTP client. You create an account with one click or from code, send through smtp.ethereal.email, and open a preview link for each caught message. Nothing is delivered. Messages are deleted after a few hours and each address has a 100MB quota. Preview links need no login, so anyone you send one to can read that message.

Tools you run yourself

Mailpit is an open-source SMTP server with a web inbox and a REST API, shipped as a single program or a Docker image. Your app sends to it instead of a real mail server, and the mail stays on your machine. It also checks HTML against common email clients, checks links and scores messages with SpamAssassin. By default it keeps the newest 500 messages, in a temporary database that is deleted when Mailpit exits.

Mailpit’s own README says it was inspired by MailHog, which it describes as no longer maintained. MailHog’s last release on GitHub dates from 2020. Use Mailpit for anything new.

Inbucket describes itself as a disposable webmail server similar to Mailinator. It accepts mail for any address and shows it through a web page, a REST API or POP3, with no database to set up. Its built-in defaults keep messages in memory for 24 hours, up to 500 to a mailbox, and the Docker image is set to 72 hours and 300. If what you want is a Mailinator of your own behind the firewall, this is it.

smtp4dev does the same job on Windows, Linux and Mac, with IMAP and POP3 access, a documented API and 100 messages kept per mailbox by default. Its README tells Docker users to read its security notes first, so the server is not left open to the internet.

Which one to pick

• A quick look to see that a sign-up email arrives, with made-up data: Maildrop. Nothing to register.
• Automated tests against a public inbox, free: Mailsac, because the mail stays four days and its API is made for tests that wait for a message. Maildrop if you would rather not hold an API key.
• Work on your own machine: Mailpit. It costs nothing, needs no account and no email leaves your computer.
• Staging or CI where the mail must be private, at low volume: testmail.app’s free plan (100 emails a month) before Mailtrap’s (50).
• A team that sends a great deal: this is where Mailinator itself earns its price.

The sums for the cheapest paid plans, taking monthly billing where it is offered: testmail.app is $12 for 10,000 emails, which is $1.20 per thousand. Mailsac’s $18 plan covers about 7,500 test emails by its own estimate, or $2.40 per thousand. Mailosaur’s $20 plan, billed yearly, allows 15,000, about $1.33 per thousand. Mailtrap’s $17 plan allows 500, which is $34 per thousand. Mailinator’s $99 buys 100,000 emails and five seats, under $1 per thousand, but only if you use them.

For one developer, our pick is Mailpit for daily work and testmail.app for the few tests that need a real address on the internet. Both are free at that scale.

What happened to the old list

The 2019 version of this article listed ten disposable inboxes. Getairmail’s address no longer resolves, and Dispostable did not respond when we opened it. Guerrilla Mail and Maildrop are above. YOPmail, 10 Minute Mail and Temp Mail are sign-up throwaways and belong in the other article. Fake Mail Generator and MintEmail still load and are the same kind of site. 33Mail forwards aliases to your real inbox, which is a different job from catching test mail.

Quick answers

Is Mailinator free?

The public inboxes are. Private inboxes and the API need a subscription from $79 a month billed yearly, or the free Verified Pro tier, which is for individuals who pass Mailinator’s verification.

Is Mailinator safe?

The public side is safe only for data you would not mind a stranger reading. Mailinator’s own FAQ says all public emails can be read by anyone and tells you not to expect privacy. It promises privacy only on subscribers’ private domains.

What is the best free Mailinator alternative?

Maildrop for a public inbox with no sign-up, Mailsac for a public inbox with a free API key, and Mailpit if you can run a tool on your own machine.

Is there a free alternative to Mailtrap?

Mailpit, if you can run it yourself. Ethereal is the free hosted option: a fake SMTP service that catches mail and never delivers it.

Can I use a domain other than mailinator.com?

Mailinator’s Verified Pro and paid plans come with a private domain. Mailsac’s paid plans add a custom domain, and YOPmail publishes alternate domains and a new one each day.