Mailcatcher captures emails from your dev environment so you can preview HTML, inspect headers, and test safely. Free plan available; paid plans from €20/month.
Category
Developer Tools
Pricing
Freemium: Free plan at €0/month (unlimited projects/users, 10 emails per project, 10 MB storage); Professional plan at €20/month (unlimited emails, 2 GB storage, advanced user management, priority support); Enterprise plan with custom, usage-based pricing billed by invoice (SSO, custom branding, custom SLA, dedicated support).
Mailcatcher is a cloud-hosted email-testing tool for developers, acting as a fake SMTP endpoint that intercepts outgoing emails from an application during development instead of delivering them to real inboxes. Once connected (the site advertises SMTP setup in about 60 seconds), captured messages appear in a web dashboard where teams can view HTML and plain-text previews, inspect full headers (including custom ones), and download attachments to verify their content. It is aimed at engineering and QA teams who need to check transactional or marketing email templates render correctly and behave as expected before going live, without risking accidental sends to real users. Mailcatcher also ships integration guides for common platforms such as WordPress, Shopware 6, and TYPO3, plus an MCP server for connecting AI tools to captured email data, and offers team collaboration with per-project access so multiple people can review the same test inbox safely.
Key Features
Fake SMTP capture — Acts as a hosted SMTP endpoint that intercepts outgoing application emails during development instead of delivering them to real inboxes.
HTML & text previews — View captured emails as rendered HTML and plain text to check how they will actually look to recipients.
Header inspection — Inspect full email headers, including custom headers, for debugging deliverability and formatting issues.
Attachment downloads — Download and verify any files attached to captured test emails.
Team collaboration — Share captured emails with teammates and manage project access without exposing real recipient addresses.
Framework integration guides — Step-by-step setup guides for connecting Mailcatcher via SMTP to WordPress, Shopware 6, and TYPO3, plus an MCP Server for AI tool connectivity.
Pros & Cons
Pros
Quick setup — SMTP connection advertised as ready in about 60 seconds with no local server to run
Free plan available with unlimited projects and users, useful for trying it out or light personal use
Full email inspection: HTML/text previews, headers, and attachment downloads in one dashboard
Built-in framework integration guides for WordPress, Shopware 6, and TYPO3
Team collaboration features let multiple people review the same captured emails
Cons
Free plan is capped at just 10 emails per project and 10 MB of storage, which is tight for active testing
Unlimited email volume requires the paid Professional plan (€20/month)
As a hosted third-party service, test emails leave the local dev environment rather than staying self-hosted
Public pricing details beyond the three listed tiers (e.g. Enterprise costs) are not disclosed