💡 Thought of the day: an user-friendly alternative to Yopmail?

April 26, 2021

Who has never been tempted by the use of a temporary/disposable mail service (like Yopmail or Mailinator for example) to test the sending of mail from an application without being spammed afterwards?

For the record, it happened to me on many occasions - like many of you I presume - to receive emails from other structures which were testing on the same inbox, thus revealing information that should not be disseminated…

It is even possible to guess the use of inboxes by company or organization… Aucun texte alternatif pour cette image

Indeed, testing emails on a public platform is practical, but it is not risk free (use of a box by multiple actors, leak or disclosure of secure data, confidentiality).

So, what alternatives exist?

  • an other public service (in saas mode) (doing more or less the same thing) and with the same advantages and disadvantages:

disadvantages include: the data security

advantages include: implementation time, cost, in saas mode

selection criteria: prefer known and trustworthy services

  • an other private service (in saas mode) (mailtrap for example)

disadvantages include: cost of the service

advantages include: no implementation time, in saas mode

selection criteria: prefer services with the corresponding SLA

  • a local SMTP server that forward mails to a dummy box (such as hMailServer or mailhog + mhsendmail for example)

disadvantages include: implementation time, cost

advantages include: mastery of the solution and its security

selection criteria: practical for technical profiles such as developers for local tests, less for non-technical

  • a SMTP server with dedicated test inboxes on its own network (postfix server under linux for example)

disadvantages include: implementation time, disproportionate cost for QA tests or internal acceptance

advantages include: mastery of the solution and its security

selection criteria: Is it a good investment for my organization, is this server going to be used wisely?

Do you have other ideas in mind?

Which do you think is the easiest to implement?


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Words by Sylvain MARTIN an experienced developer living in Nantes in France. I am passionnate of innovation and WEB technologies. You should follow me on Twitter