November 7, 2024

Dummy SMTP Email Testing with Mailtrap

Many web applications & social networks have features that are delivered via e-mail. While in development these features often require a testing sandbox of some kind. It is possible to set this up manually.

But a new service named Mailtrap offers these features by default.

You can sign up for a free account just to gauge the features with a single inbox. The goal is to test how your e-mails will be sent, how they behave, and how they look on the user’s end.

The benefits allow developers to save costs & time setting up their own servers, or running through an existing SMTP/POP3 setup. But here are the primary benefits:

  • no need to tune your mail server
  • no need to clean up your database from the customers’ email addresses
  • no need to make any special tweaks in your application code
  • Can be used for both development and staging purposes

Mailtrap homepage screenshot

After sending a test e-mail you can log into Mailtrap’s web UI to see how it looks & functions. Then you can forward that same e-mail to other addresses, or pull it down via e-mail applications such as Thunderbird or Outlook.

There’s a bunch of information on the Mailtrap FAQ page which should answer most people’s questions.

If you’re more curious about the development side you’ll be happy to know Mailtrap has full API documentation accessible right from their website. TutsPlus actually published a brief introductory guide for setting up Mailtrap on a demo application.

To learn more visit the pricing page where you can sign up for a free account & test out everything Mailtrap has to offer.

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Jake is a creative writer and UI designer by trade. You can follow him on twitter @jakerocheleau or learn more at his personal website JakeRocheleau.com.

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