You might be unsure of the best email testing tool to utilize to execute email workflow testing after setting up your email components. The Mailinator tool for email testing is one of the best and most affordable email testing tools you can imagine at this crucial time. What makes it the best tool available though (and is it still the king)?

Continue reading to learn more about this tool's functionality, features, and various Mailinator options for effective email testing.

What is Mailinator?

If you want to automate your email and text message process testing, Mailinator is your best option. It is a versatile tool that gives users access to inboxes on-demand whenever they need them and allows testing of different systems' email workflows. It accepts and displays emails sent to any conceivable address on the Mailinator domain, which is an online service for disposable email.

With Private Domains, API access, SMS numbers, Webhooks, and more, Mailinator Subscriptions greatly enhance your testing capabilities. This helps explain why thousands of testers, ranging from individual users to clients on an enterprise scale, rely on Mailinator for email testing.

The free functionality is one of the reasons why Mailinator is popular among other alternatives. Even though there is a paid version, they both enable companies of all sizes to receive marketing emails and text messages in a secure domain from different inboxes.

Free version features

Mailinator has many features:

  • The free option allows you to sign up without making payments.
  • You will continually receive receive-only public inboxes.
  • You can use any address made up of Roman letters and numbers to access Mailinator inboxes at any time, simultaneously with an infinite number of other users.
  • Your emails received in any inbox cannot be accessed by anyone to view or delete them.
  • Any user, including you, can suspend the retrieval of messages from any inbox at any moment.
  • After a certain amount of time, all messages in any inbox are automatically erased. As previously received messages are replaced by new ones, the storage time is based on the load on the Mailinator at the time.
  • Email subject, To, and From headers are supported. As well as text, it can detect HTML elements. Paid version features
  • You can obtain a personal domain for $159 a month, and only you or five of your teammates can see your messages.
  • There is a cap on the number of incoming messages even though you get 50 MB of storage for your emails (2,000 per day for the moment).
  • To route messages, delete them, and click links, you can make rules. You can also get API access to all emails and retrieve emails via the web, API, or webhook.
  • On request, an unlimited Enterprise package is also available.

How to Test Emails With a Disposable Email

Disposable email is a no-cost email service that enables you to receive an email with a temporary address that expires after a set period. (One such provider is MailSlurp - a free email API service for developers and testers).

Testing with disposable email addresses

Most applications use email in some way. To test this functionality end-to-end it is important to write integration tests that use real email addresses. To start testing with a disposable email, you need to:

  • First, if you don't want to provide your actual email address, register for arbitrary applications and services.
  • Periodically employ ephemeral email accounts, and check the email sending capabilities to see if your emails are ever sent.
  • Carry out integration tests to confirm form submission, registration, unsubscribing, and other actions.
  • Run tests like integration tests to check that actions like signing up, submitting forms, subscribing, and unsubscribing work as intended before launching your website.

Note: The use of disposable emails allows you to preview how an email will appear to recipients. It allows you to examine your emails' dynamic content, such as subject line personalization, localization, or different email content for various people.

What Alternative Approaches Should You Use in Place of Disposable Emails?

What functionality you want to test will determine which option is optimal. For instance,

1. Email sending functionality

Using a test server is the safest way to determine whether your app can send emails. Useful tools include SMTP Bucket, Mailcatcher, Mailhog, and others including MailSlurp.

2. Email content

Before sending emails to actual recipients, you have a plethora of choices for previewing them. Litmus and Email on Acid are the most well-liked specialized email content testing tools.

3. Email workflows

It takes more extensive skills to confirm account confirmation or the verification of password resets. Of these email testing tools, MailSlurp is a nice illustration.

To conduct thorough email testing, you can utilize MailSlurp as a phony SMTP server. Several virtual inboxes are provided, along with the ability to preview all incoming messages, obtain a list of HTML issues, and execute automated email tests using the email API. Bcc testing, email forwarding, and app load testing are also supported. Since your test emails can never get through to your actual customers, MailSlurp is safe to use and has no negative effects on the reputation of your domain.

Bottom Line

Few programs offer functionality that is comparable to the sophisticated Mailinator features. But Mailinator comes with some downsides. Consider carefully what needs to be tested and how frequently before making a decision. You'll likely require a different testing strategy or a fully functional email testing solution like MailSlurp.