Mailinator FAQs
You'll find frequently asked questions about the Mailinator service below. Please Note: Mailinator is a receive-only email system, so it cannot send email. It also cannot fill out forms. Therefore, any malicious activity of that sort has nothing to do with the Mailinator service or its employees.
Yes! Mailinator gives you inboxes on demand, so testing your system’s email workflow is easy. Moreover, Mailinator Subscriptions simplify testing even further, because they add private domains, API access, SMS numbers, webhooks, and more. So if you’re testing an email workflow, request a trial today!
Public Mailinator is a free, disposable email service. In fact, every possible address @mailinator.com already exists, so anyone can use it. Because there’s no signup and no login, you don’t even need to “create” an address — every possible one is already there. Typically, people use Public Mailinator when they need to share an email address but don’t want to risk spam to their real one. For example, just make up an address on the fly, such as joe123@mailinator.com or happybill@mailinator.com. Then visit the Mailinator website, open that inbox, and read any email sent to it.
Mailinator subscriptions let businesses do serious email testing. For example, you can create thousands of email addresses on the fly, which is especially convenient for testing environments. In short, subscriptions include:
- Complete privacy for all your emails.
- Every email address at your Private Domain(s). That's millions of email addresses ready to go! We'll give you your own Private Domain when you subscribe, but you can change it to a domain you own at any time.
- WEB and API access to all inboxes, emails, and SMS messages.
- Optional private SMS numbers attached to your account for SMS testing.
- Persistent storage for your messages. Keep messages around as long as needed.
- High rate-limits in both reading and receiving emails. Mailinator's public spam filters are turned off for Private Domains.
- Webhook actions to take whenever an email is received. Forward it, auto-click its links, delete it, and more.
- Setup user accounts for all your team members.
- Enterprise accounts can get Single-Sign-On (SSO) for extra security.
Public emails (sent to an address @mailinator.com) last several hours, and then the system auto-deletes them. Once deleted, they’re gone for good. Mailinator Subscriptions, however, give you permanent, first-in-first-out storage instead. In other words, your emails stay until you delete them (via web or API), or until your storage fills up and pushes out the oldest messages. Finally, paid plans offer several storage levels, so you can keep emails indefinitely if you choose.
No — Mailinator is a receive-only system. As a result, the website has no option to send email. Our SPF, DMARC, and DKIM records confirm this. Therefore, any email that claims to be “sent from” a Mailinator address carries a forged FROM address, and you should treat it that way.
Here are some limitations of the free system. Note, though, that paid Mailinator Subscriptions don’t have these limits:
- All emails are public. Any person can read anywhere. Do not expect privacy.
- Emails only last a few hours. After that, the system deletes them for good.
- You may not send emails from Mailinator. The system is receive-only.
- The public system does not allow attachments.
- The Public system has certain limitations based on email size, rate-limiting, spam prevention, etc.
You can find Mailinator’s official Privacy Policy by clicking here.
Mailinator doesn’t keep logs of website access. In fact, anyone can read an email without signing up, logging in, or sharing personal information. Mailinator also doesn’t store identifying information, such as your IP address, and it has worked this way for years. Note, however, that this could change if law enforcement compels it. Finally, this policy applies only to the Mailinator public site (addresses @mailinator.com), not to the private domains that paid subscribers use.
Mailinator tracks real-time data to detect abuse, and it bans abusers or specific emails when needed. In addition, we keep several days of aggregate data showing website-usage trends. However, this data contains no identifying information. We also keep a small number of emails — far less than 1% of total volume — for spam analysis, and only for a few days.
That question doesn’t quite make sense, because nobody owns public Mailinator email addresses (those ending in @mailinator.com). Since the public system has no accounts, signup, or login, anyone can use any address.
You don’t! All the inboxes at Mailinator already exist. Simply send an email to anyaddress@mailinator.com then go to that inbox in the Public Mailinator system, and your email will be there.
No. Mailinator is a receive-only email system, and developers and QA testers mainly use it to test automated workflows. As a result, Mailinator cannot fill forms or send emails.