Due to its lackluster HTML preview and no solution for avoiding accidental sends or domain reputation hits, Mailinator, the king of disposable email addresses, falls quite short for email testing purposes. 👑
Don’t worry though — I’ve been testing the functionality of various email testing tools and will provide you with the Mailinator alternatives that made it into my top 5.
The alternatives I recommend in this article are for email testing specifically. If you’re looking for disposable email service alternatives, click here.
Mailinator alternatives: snapshot
For diversity’s sake, I’ll showcase 1 all-encompassing email testing tool, 2 for qualitative tests (how good and deliverable your emails are), and 2 for quantitative tests (load and stress testing of email systems). They are as follows:
- Mailtrap for developer and marketing teams who are looking for a platform where they can send, test, and control their infrastructure all in one place;
- Litmus for small businesses and teams who are looking for an email testing tool that’ll help them design and preview their emails more efficiently;
- Mailgun for users who are comfortable working with code and could use other messaging services provided by its parent company;
- Wormly for users who need to see how their SMTP server performs under a load;
- GMass for Gmail-oriented users looking to test their connection, as well as do some light email testing on the side.
Comparison criteria
- Range of testing features – How many features dedicated to email testing does a tool have? Will testing your email-sending functionality with it impact your domain reputation?
- Ease of use – How easy to use is a testing tool compared to Mailinator? Can it be integrated into your app and does it offer extensive documentation?
- Analysis and reporting – Can you analyze your emails with the testing tool similarly to, or better than, Mailinator? Do you get reports about how well your emails and campaigns are doing (e.g., bounce rates, open rates, click-through rates, etc.)?
- Security and compliance – Does the testing tool/platform follow the latest security standards? Is it compliant with GDPR and other similar regulations?
- Pricing and affordability – Does the pricing model of the testing tool allow you to scale your business, does it have a free plan and, most importantly, is it worth your money?
Disclaimer: The ratings, features, and prices are up-to-date as of writing this article, but they could be different when you’re reading it as they’re prone to change.
Best alternative: Mailtrap Email Delivery Platform
Free plan: ✅
Pricing from: $14.99/month
Mailtrap is an Email Delivery Platform that offers both an Email API/SMTP service and an Email Testing solution. With Mailtrap, you can test your email deliverability, check spam score and headers, conduct technical tests (e.g., DNS authentication, inbox placement, etc.), and inspect email components and interaction elements.
Testing emails with Mailtrap is super seamless, as you can either copy/paste the SMTP credentials provided to you after creating an account or integrate Email Testing with your app using pre-made code snippets. Check it out! 👇
Besides the stellar reviews on Capterra and G2, I’m happy to see that Mailtrap also gets a lot of community love on Reddit and X (ex-Twitter) as well.
How is Mailtrap different from Mailinator?
The biggest difference between Mailtrap and Mailinator is that the former provides a safe sandbox testing environment instead of a temporary email. This way, you can test your emails without affecting your domain or accidentally sending messages to real users.
Mailtrap features:
- HTML/CSS support – Besides being able to see your emails in raw, you can also analyze their HTML/CSS and easily remove or fix any faulty lines of code.
- Spam checker – Significantly reduce the amount of potential email deliverability issues by keeping track of your spam score.
- HTML check – See how your code is rendered across different browsers/clients.
- Email headers – Inspect the original header values and get a plethora of information for debugging purposes.
- Multiple inboxes – Share the testing process with your teammates, create new projects, and add multiple objects within.
- Templates testing – Test your email templates with Mailtrap API and then easily switch from staging to production once you’re ready to dispatch them.
- QA automation – Cover all your testing scenarios with Mailtrap’s Email Testing API.
- Email API/SMTP – Once you’re done testing your emails or templates, simply switch over to the Email API/SMTP, an inseparable part of the platform, and send them out.
- Ready-to-use integrations – Integrate Mailtrap Email Testing API with pre-made code snippets for major programming languages such as Node.js, Ruby, PHP, Python, and 20+ more.
- For more information, be sure to check out the official GitHub documentation.
- Email Marketing (Beta) – Recently released, Mailtrap’s Email Marketing Suite allows you to build and deliver promotional emails, schedule email campaigns, and more.
| Feature | Mailtrap Email Testing | Mailinator |
| Email sandbox | ✅ | ❌ |
| Email preview | ✅ | ✅ |
| HTML check | ✅ | ❌ |
| Email headers | ✅ | ❌ |
| Automatic authentication | ✅ | ❌ |
| Multiple inboxes | ✅ | ❌ |
| Email templates | ✅ | ✅ |
| SMS Testing | ❌ | ❌ |
| Free plan | ✅ | ✅ |
| Affordable/scalable pricing | ✅ | ❌ |
| Spam check | ✅ | ❌ |
Litmus
Free plan: ❌
Pricing from: $79/month
Litmus is an email marketing platform that allows you to create, personalize, and analyze the emails you send. For example, with Litmus, you can create personalized emails with the straightforward builder and preview how it looks in over 100+ apps and devices.
Additionally, Litmus offers various deliverability tools, such as spam testing, email analytics, and others, that help you ensure your emails go where they’re supposed to.
What I liked the most about this platform is that it’s super easy to use. The UI is straightforward, has everything you need in one place, and you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to test your emails. 🚀
Litmus is also quite popular on social media, as I’ve found nothing but solid user reviews, both on Reddit and on X.
How is Litmus different from Mailinator?
Being a qualitative testing tool, Litmus provides you with way more options for previewing your emails and adapting them to your needs and wants. However, it has quite a high entry-plan price, and the more expensive ones are on the steeper side.
Litmus features:
- Email builder – Create attractive emails from scratch, using templates, or import HTML. Then, you can easily sync them with your preferred email service provider.
- Cross-client previews – Test and preview 100+ popular email clients to see how your emails look. What I love about this feature is that you can also check out how they look in dark mode.
- Spam testing – Scan your emails against more than 20 different spam filters and get expert advice based on the results on improving your deliverability
- Accessibility check – Review your emails’ text alignment and justification and make sure your recipients with cognitive and visual impairments can read your messages.
- Audio recording – Listen to your emails and read a transcript so your recipients with screen readers will have an outstanding experience.
- Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) testing – Improve the performance of your email content on mobile devices. However, keep in mind that this is currently available only for Gmail and G Suite.
- Integrations with popular marketing tools – Integrate Litmus with your ESP or perhaps with your Slack, so you get real-time notifications. Or, you can integrate with HubSpot, Salesforce, or other CRMs.
| Feature | Litmus | Mailinator |
| Email sandbox | ❌ | ❌ |
| Email preview | ✅ | ✅ |
| HTML check | ✅ | ❌ |
| Email headers | ✅ | ❌ |
| Multiple inboxes | ❌ | ❌ |
| Email templates | ✅ | ✅ |
| SMS Testing | ❌ | ❌ |
| Automatic authentication | ✅ | ❌ |
| Email logs | ✅ | ❌ |
| Spam testing | ✅ | ❌ |
| Accessibility check | ✅ | ❌ |
| AMP testing | ✅ | ❌ |
| Free plan | ❌ | ✅ |
| Affordable/scalable pricing | ❌ | ❌ |
Mailgun
Free plan: ✅
Pricing from: $49/month
Mailgun is a cloud-based email service that’s designed primarily for sending, receiving, and tracking emails, but it also has a few testing solutions for improving deliverability rate and sender score, which I found quite useful.
Moreover, you can opt for managed deliverability service and get a dedicated Technical Account Manager (TAM), custom strategies and expert guidance, deliverability reporting and monitoring. Of course, this is reserved for the not-so-cheap custom plans.
When it comes to the user interface, I have to say it’s pretty clean but to actually use the platform to its fullest, you’ll have to be comfortable with coding or have a dev-savvy team member.
I’ve also found some nice user impressions on X, but just be careful when registering an account. On G2 and Capterra, though, Mailgun is praised mostly for its API and extensive documentation. However, there are some negative remarks regarding its uptime and customer support, so heads up.
How is Mailgun different from Mailinator?
The primary difference between Mailgun and Mailinator is that the former offers email validation and other deliverability-improving features, such as parsing and inbox placement testing. Mailgun’s API is also focused on sending transactional emails, instead of automatization, end-to-end workflow testing, and registering to services without using your real email address.
Mailgun features:
- Email preview – Check how your emails look in over 100+ devices and clients, including dark mode, which is always a plus in my book.
- Email validation – Validate your emails in real time by embedding Mailgun API in your signup page or form. Moreover, you can also validate your existing mail addresses by simply uploading a CSV file, which will get you an assessment of your list hygiene.
- Inbox placement testing – Diagnose various deliverability issues by testing your inbox placement and identifying where your emails are landing.
- Email parsing – Use the email parser provided by Mailgun to extract data from HTML emails and automate processing, saving you time and effort.
- Burst sending (email marketing software) – Mailgun processes and parses your inbound messages, and delivers the results to your application via webhook.
- Strong security measures – SSAE-16 SOC I & II certified, HIPAA and GDPR compliant, 2FA and SAML SSO available. You can read more about it here.
- Reputation monitoring – Mailgun logs and indexes every action taken on your message for up to 30 days. This allows you to see exactly what happened and troubleshoot any issues.
| Feature | Mailgun | Mailinator |
| Email sandbox | ✅ | ❌ |
| Email preview | ✅ | ✅ |
| HTML check | ✅ | ❌ |
| Email headers | ✅ | ❌ |
| Multiple inboxes | ❌ | ❌ |
| Email templates | ❌ | ✅ |
| SMS Testing | ❌ | ❌ |
| Free plan | ✅ | ❌ |
| Affordable/scalable pricing | ✅ | ✅ |
| Email validation | ✅ | ❌ |
| Inbox placement testing | ✅ | ❌ |
| Dedicated support | ✅ | ❌ |
Wormly
Free plan: ✅
Pricing from: $44
Capterra: N/A 🚫 G2: 3.5 🌟
If you’re looking to test your SMTP server instead of your emails or their content specifically, Wormly would be one of your best bets. It sends a test email directly to your mail server for troubleshooting, and offers other diagnostic features, such as POP3 mail test, FTP server testing, and others.
Concerning the interface, I have to admit, it seemed a bit hard to grasp at first, but after clicking around for a while, I felt at home in no time.
Wormly also isn’t popular on social media, so it’s not a Kardashian among testing tools, but it still gets some love on X.
How is Wormly different from Mailinator?
Being a quantitative tool designed for load and stress testing, Wormly differs from Mailinator by allowing you to measure the performance and functional behavior of your SMTP server. Yes, you can’t see how your stylish HTML emails look, but you can see what’s going on under the hood of your server.
Wormly features:
- Protocol monitoring – Monitor SMTP, POP3, IMAP or other protocols and ensure they remain online and perform efficiently by getting uptime reports with SLA metrics.
- Server health monitoring – Keep a close eye on metrics such as CPU load, RAM usage, disk I/O, or other custom data important for your server health.
- SMTP Test/Mail Server Test – Check whether your SMTP server is properly configured and accessible from the internet, and ensure it can send messages.
- DNS Lookup/DNS Query Test – Perform DNS lookups and queries to check the DNS of a domain.
- Remote Ping Test/Ping Online – Remotely ping a server or a website from different locations and access the network latency and connectivity to the target server.
- SSL Tester – Check the SSL/TLS configuration of a website or server, ensuring that everything is valid and properly configured.
| Feature | Wormly | Mailinator |
| Email sandbox | ❌ | ❌ |
| Email preview | ❌ | ✅ |
| Multiple inboxes | ❌ | ❌ |
| Email templates | ❌ | ✅ |
| SMS Testing | ❌ | ❌ |
| Automatic authentication | ❌ | ❌ |
| SMTP testing | ✅ | ❌ |
| Server health monitoring | ✅ | ❌ |
| DNS lookups | ✅ | ❌ |
| SSL testing | ✅ | ❌ |
| Free plan | ✅ | ❌ |
| Affordable/scalable pricing | ✅ | ❌ |
GMass
Free plan: Very limited, but yes ✅
Pricing from: $25 per month
Capterra: 4.8 🌟 G2: 4.8 🌟
GMass is a service for testing email marketing campaigns that also offers various useful testing tools such as their SMTP Test Tool, with which you can check your connection to any SMTP server including popular email service providers.
Additionally, GMass offers features for marketing automation and testing, such as follow-up emails, behavior-based campaigns, scheduled sending, etc.
Using all of these, and other, features is also super simple thanks to the intuitive user interface. There’s also an extension for Chrome, which is quite neat if you ask me.
On top of having almost perfect marks on both Capterra and G2, GMass also has love on social media.
How is GMass different from Mailinator?
The biggest difference here is that GMass is a Google-oriented service, whereas Mailinator provides fake, test email accounts. However, the two services also differ greatly in the tools and features they offer, and you can be sure you won’t be able to test your campaigns with Mailinator as well as you would with GMass.
GMass features:
- Email analyzer – Diagnose your email for issues such as SPF, DKIM, DMARC, blacklists, and more. The tool is built into GMass, so you can inspect any email before you send it out.
- Email validation – Paste your mailing list and let GMass run a validation test on each address, letting you know which ones are legit and which are invalid.
- Email extractor – This tool can come in handy if you have a big body of text with emails scattered all over it. Simply paste the text in the GMass tool and it will find and extract the emails in the text and organize them into a nice little list.
- Inbox placement – See where your emails are landing with the GMass email tester and watch your deliverability tests in real-time. GMass also offers an additional, Spam Solver tool, which can additionally help your mails land in the main folder.
- Link checker – Paste your HTML into the empty box and validate all of your links in the campaign, making sure they’re 100% functional. You also get screenshots of them, which can come in handy.
- SMTP Tester – Enter your domain name, port, and other details to check the connection of any SMTP server. For example, you could check the connection of Mailtrap’s SMTP server.
| Feature | GMass | Mailinator |
| Email sandbox | ❌ | ❌ |
| Email preview | ❌ | ✅ |
| Email analyzer | ❌ | ❌ |
| Email extractor | ❌ | ❌ |
| Inbox placement | ✅ | ❌ |
| Email templates | ❌ | ✅ |
| SMTP Tester | ✅ | ❌ |
| SMS Testing | ✅ | ❌ |
| Automatic authentication | ✅ | ❌ |
| Free plan | ✅ | ❌ |
| Affordable/scalable pricing | ✅ | ❌ |
| Link checker | ✅ | ❌ |
Comparison sheet of Mailinator alternatives
For convenience’s sake, here’s a chart to help you compare the best Mailinator alternatives:
| Feature | Mailtrap | Litmus | Mailgun | Wormly | GMass |
| Sandbox | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Email preview | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Automatic authentication | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Multiple inboxes | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Email templates | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Spam check | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| SMTP test | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Email validation | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ |
| Free plan | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
On your marks, get set, test
And with that sheet, we’ve reached the end of our article. So, no more tables, I promise! 🤞
Now I leave you with the task of choosing the best Mailinator alternative. In my own case, Mailtrap was the ultimate solution as it ticks all of the boxes for my team and me.
However, I know that needs and desires differ, so one last bit of advice I could give you is: consider how many emails you want to test, what you want to test exactly, and keep in mind your budget.
Happy testing!