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choose better software

What Is Mailinator?

Mailinator was first built to provide infinite mailboxes at a given domain.
The original use case was to create a “throw-away” email address so that users could avoid having inboxes that were used for signing up for various web services.
Over time, this utility became useful for programmers needing to validate that their workflows deliver emails as intended.
Today, Mailinator is the predominant resource for world-class QA testing teams looking to automate their email and sms workflow tests.

Who Uses Mailinator?

Mailinator is used by Developers, Dev/Ops Teams, QA Testers, and QA Testing teams. Companies like Docusign, FitBit, HP and others count on Mailinator to ensure that their automated workflows work.

Mailinator Software - Mailinator Homepage

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Reviews of Mailinator

Average score

Overall
4.7
Ease of Use
4.7
Customer Service
4.4
Features
4.5
Value for Money
4.6

Reviews by company size (employees)

  • <50
  • 51-200
  • 201-1,000
  • >1,001

Find reviews by score

5
71%
4
26%
3
1%
1
2%
Curtis
Curtis
Senior Director in US
Verified LinkedIn User
Computer Software, 1,001–5,000 Employees
Used the Software for: 1+ year
Reviewer Source

Used Weekly for Testing

5.0 2 years ago

Comments: Very good

Pros:

Works great for testing without having to setup a whole mail server

Cons:

Lots of spam, but does not matter just ignore it

João
Tec in Portugal
Computer & Network Security, Self Employed
Used the Software for: 2+ years
Reviewer Source

A swiss army knife of the email servers

5.0 2 years ago

Pros:

The ease it lets us create new emails to test and saves us from spam

Cons:

Nothing, it delivers what it promises. It's features let me help my family from cyber attacks.

Thomas
Marketing in US
Real Estate, 2–10 Employees
Used the Software for: Free Trial
Reviewer Source

Horrible sales team

1.0 3 years ago

Comments: Terrible

Pros:

Someone at Mailinator or likely the sales team blew up our inbound leads with a couple of dozen leads. All fake leads including their @mailinator domain.

Cons:

The ridiculous spam of fake leads that put our sales team through

Manybrain Response

3 years ago

Hi Thomas, Unfortunately, it sounds like someone at another company was harassing your team. Mailinator is a receive-only system, meaning that it can not send emails. Whomever sent those was spoofing the @mailinator address. Again, sorry for the misfortune, but I can assure you that nobody from Mailinator would have been able to do this. -Albert

Jim
Engineer in US
Oil & Energy, 51–200 Employees
Used the Software for: 1-5 months
Reviewer Source

Does what it says on the Tin

4.0 2 years ago

Pros:

You can get a lot done with a free version and get what you need accomplished. Does exactly what it says it should. No fuss no muss. Good documentation.

Cons:

Wish there was better filtering available on the API. You end up drinking from the firehose.

Jason
software developer in Canada
Information Technology & Services, 51–200 Employees
Used the Software for: Free Trial
Reviewer Source

member role control

4.0 2 years ago

Comments: great

Pros:

like the private domain and redirect features

Cons:

all feature are good, if I have to say something, I will point the api documentation

Dinesh
Software Engineer in India
Computer Software, 5,001–10,000 Employees
Used the Software for: 1-5 months
Reviewer Source

Mailinator for email testing

4.0 2 years ago

Pros:

verified status to users for customized private email inbox

Cons:

not having attachment for even verified accounts but only paid

Chad
Chad
CTO in US
Verified LinkedIn User
Information Technology & Services, 11–50 Employees
Used the Software for: 6-12 months
Reviewer Source

Fantastic Email and SMS Testing Service

5.0 2 years ago

Comments: I use Mailinator to quickly test email and SMS scripts.

Pros:

I liked how simple it was to immediately use without signing up for an account. I was also thrilled with how easy it was to broaden its use scope with an account.

Cons:

I didn't like that you had to have a paid subscription to use the SMS testing. However, I completely understand that there are more costs associated with that functionality.

Manybrain Response

2 years ago

Thanks for the review, Chad!

Verified Reviewer
Verified LinkedIn User
Construction, 10,000+ Employees
Used the Software for: Free Trial
Reviewer Source

Comes in handy for testing!

4.0 2 years ago

Pros:

It's easy to set up, and I'm able to generate multiple emails on the fly in a programatic way. I don't have to set up personal mailboxes to do some testing, involving email workflows.

Cons:

I'm currently still testing out different features, so none so far.

Param
Param
Software Developer in India
Verified LinkedIn User
Computer Software, 11–50 Employees
Used the Software for: 1-5 months
Reviewer Source

Mailinator's Verified Pro is amazing!

5.0 2 years ago

Pros:

- The user interface is convenient to navigate through. - The simplicity. - Fast setup on a custom domain name.

Cons:

- An e-mail sending feature would be great!

Rex
Rex
Salesforce Platform Manager in US
Verified LinkedIn User
Nonprofit Organization Management, 11–50 Employees
Used the Software for: 1-5 months
Reviewer Source

Excellent tool for email automation

5.0 2 years ago

Comments: This tool allows me to have multiple staff debug, test and QA internal platform email automation without creating additional testing artifacts on on production platform.

Pros:

It's very simple to set up and use and the cost is on point.

Cons:

I only use the basic features and have experienced no issues or shortcomings with the tool.

Rajesh
Engineering Manager -SDET in India
Computer Software, 51–200 Employees
Used the Software for: 1-5 months
Reviewer Source

Excellent product especially for small startups

5.0 2 years ago

Comments: Excellent- 10/10!

Pros:

Mailinator is a life saver! it has helped the test team here at pepper content automate lot of our onboarding/login flows thanks to the ability of accessing OTPs via emails.The ease of use and setup is flawless and the APIs work smoothly.Documentation is good and the customer support is very fast. The verified pro version is a great product for small startups which may not have the resources to get paid version.I learn about mailinator in my current company and it is definitely going to be one of my favorite products going forward.

Cons:

Nothing really - may be some more APIs for mail parsing. Sometimes I get a bounce message which can be removed. Also onboarding documentation could be improved - I didnt really know how/which authorization token to use.

Daksh
QA in India
Computer Software, 1,001–5,000 Employees
Used the Software for: 2+ years
Reviewer Source

Best Mail testing software

5.0 2 years ago

Comments: Overall, I can say it best service for testers.

Pros:

We don't require a password and also we don't require an account to create.

Cons:

Few things like some of the email templates are not displayed properly as per UI purpose which work perfectly on gmail and outlook.

Devin
COO in US
Real Estate, 11–50 Employees
Used the Software for: 1+ year
Reviewer Source

The simplest solution for QA and software/workflow testing

5.0 2 years ago

Pros:

Incredibly easy to use, highly intuitive, and virtually no learning curve. We use Mailinator for creating dummy addresses for workflow and software testing, and it saves us from bogging down our actual inboxes with test data. Mailinator has made it easy to test complex workflows involving multiple stakeholders without needing to toggle between a variety of inboxes--we now get all our test communications flowing into one place, which has enabled us to speed up our QA process significantly.

Cons:

I don't have any complaints about the product. If they could eventually roll out an SMS inbox without needing to use the API, that would be incredible, but that's a big ask and is the only "weakness" I can think of offhand.

Mohammed
Sales development representative in Saudi Arabia
Computer Software, 11–50 Employees
Used the Software for: 1+ year
Reviewer Source

Mailinator adding massive value to our business.

5.0 2 years ago

Comments: My overall experience was great
Mailinator adding massive value to our work

Pros:

Speed of delivery is really impressive.

Cons:

Maybe need to have better ux/ui design.

Yunus
SDET in US
Information Technology & Services, 51–200 Employees
Used the Software for: 1-5 months
Reviewer Source

Alternatives Considered:

The Power of Mailinator

5.0 2 years ago

Comments: I use Mailinator public and private inboxes to automate our E2E tests. Mailinator has very critical role at this point.

Pros:

Public and private inbox are awesome feature. Also it is very easy to automate the process with API

Cons:

I like Mailinator a lot. I think the UI can be improved a little bit. It can be more user friendly

inna
QA Team Lead in Ukraine
Information Technology & Services, 201–500 Employees
Used the Software for: 2+ years
Reviewer Source

Not bad

4.0 3 years ago

Pros:

Sometimes we have troubles with emails getting. UX is not user-friendly.

Cons:

It is not easy to find and manage my profile setting.

rajiv
Principal SDET in India
Information Technology & Services, 51–200 Employees
Used the Software for: Free Trial
Reviewer Source

Email testing made easy

5.0 2 years ago

Comments: I was in the market for an email testing tool to use for my Automated test cases. After a lot market research I found Mailinator which in my opinion is one of the best for the features it offers for fraction of the price compared to the competition. For a small use case like mine , I get to send/receive 300 messages a month which seems a very reasonable for free tier. There is also SMS feature available. Being able to send/receive test messages via API just makes the experience very seamless. I would definitely recommend Mailinator to my peers.

Pros:

The ease of API access, Feature set, seamlessly integrated with Cypress Automation

Cons:

API Documentation could be a little more structed

Manybrain Response

2 years ago

Thanks, Rajiv. We're glad you are enjoying Mailinator. If you're open any additional conversations to help us improve the service, please email [email protected] to find some time to chat.

Jordan
Senior QA Automation Engineer in US
Computer Software, 11–50 Employees
Used the Software for: 1-5 months
Reviewer Source

Love the Automation

5.0 3 years ago

Comments: It is so much easier and quicker to complete testing automation scripts with Mailintor.

Pros:

I love the APIs that are available for interacting with the emails we send. This makes it so much easier to automate testing in our environment

Cons:

I wish it were easier to find a single email in the domain provided. As of right now, I have to find the mailbox, search for the applicable inbox, get the email ID, then I can interact with that particular email.

Manybrain Response

3 years ago

Thanks for your review, Jordan. Please reach out to [email protected], as we likely have some suggestions that could improve your ability to find/interact with emails.

Sudip
Sr. Web Developer in India
Information Technology & Services, 51–200 Employees
Used the Software for: 1-5 months
Reviewer Source

Experience using mailinator

5.0 2 years ago

Pros:

Product easy to use and it's quite easy to implement.

Cons:

Nothing as of now, but pricing could be more splitted and inexpensive, it's too expensive then it's peer products.

Tatiana
QA Manager in US
Hospital & Health Care, 51–200 Employees
Used the Software for: 6-12 months
Reviewer Source

Good tool to use in automation

5.0 3 years ago

Comments: Out system sends a lot of email from where users can take actions. Using mailinator allowed us to automate those actions in Cypress without opening it in a new browser window as it has API.

Pros:

Access to API and documentation on how to use the api.

Cons:

Searching through emails using api, how long the email addresses are.

Paxton
Senior Engineering Manager in US
Internet, 1,001–5,000 Employees
Used the Software for: 2+ years
Reviewer Source

Easy to set up and use

5.0 3 years ago

Pros:

Easily receive email at arbitrary email accounts for testing purposes. Can easily see the raw email and embedded links

Cons:

Latest UI is better than before, but still a bit dated styling. The actual functionality is fine.

Daryl
Customer Success Architect in US
Security & Investigations, 1,001–5,000 Employees
Used the Software for: 1-5 months
Reviewer Source

New test cases

5.0 2 years ago

Comments: Excellent, I continue to use it and will be testing out the API's here soon

Pros:

Ease of deployment and the ability to be up and running in minutes

Cons:

So far being only into for weeks I don't have any cons at this time

Minott
Business Analyst in US
Education Management, 51–200 Employees
Used the Software for: 1-5 months
Reviewer Source

Just write for capturing emails from testing software

5.0 3 years ago

Comments: Ther are a lot of smtp capture products for local machines but we are testing on a publicly available site so we need to generate real emails but not have to depend on someone to recieve them. Mailinator captures them so we can see right away that the email notifications are working properly

Pros:

I appreciated there was almost no setup to perform. Once we had the account we were able to start capturing emails immediately. Being able to add other users so they have access for their testing purposes is great.

Cons:

The only thing i wish I could do was add more than 5 Team members. I would have to remove some that hadn't used it for a while to add someone who needed to test some email notifications.

Charles
Data Manager in US
Higher Education, 201–500 Employees
Used the Software for: 1-5 months
Reviewer Source

SA Student Affairs

4.0 3 years ago

Comments: It has served my purpose well. Thank you for offering it.

Pros:

Ease of use and the fact that you have a free version.

Cons:

I don't have anything to mention at this time.

Manybrain Response

3 years ago

Thanks for your review, Charles!

Amber
Associate Sales Engineer in US
Computer Software, 51–200 Employees
Used the Software for: 1-5 months
Reviewer Source

Very useful for testing

4.0 2 years ago

Pros:

I use mailinator to assist with testing various workflows, it's easy to use and convenient

Cons:

It would be nice to be able to link a mailinator account to multiple emails (a professional and personal)