What is Mailinator?

The Public Mailinator service is very different from what you think of when you think of an email service. In short, No one owns any inbox because they are all public! Any email you read here can be read by anyone else in the world.
Think of it this way - Mailinator is a web site. A Web site that accepts emails for absolutely any address @mailinator.com. No sign-up. No account creation. EVERY POSSIBLE INBOX @mailinator.com ALREADY EXISTS. Email addresses are not "created" by you or anyone else, they're already here all waiting for incoming email.
From there, the Mailinator web site then lets anyone read any of those emails. No signup. No privacy. No ownership. All public. Use any inbox you want - even if 100 other people are using it too.

So that's it? It's a "public" email system?

Yes but there are a few other differences:

• All emails are automatically deleted after a few hours. Once they're deleted, they're gone forever.
• You cannot send email from Mailinator. It is a "receive-only" system.
• You have NO privacy in the public Mailinator system. Our privacy policy goes into more detail. Don't use Mailinator for anything that you care to keep private!
• No attachments. Mailinator removes all attachments from emails in the public system.

Sounds cool. How do I sign-up?

You don't. Unless you're interested in a paid subscription (see below) you can't (and don't need to) signup for Mailinator to view any inbox or read any email.

Ok. I want someone to send me an email at Mailinator. What inbox should I use?

The simple answer is any one you want. How about joe111@mailinator.com or happydragon@mailinator.com. Seriously - there are trillions of choices.
Note that popular names like say bob@mailinator.com has been used by thousands of users over the years and that email address is probably on thousands of spam lists. Check it out if you want to see a nice collection of the spam it received today.

I need an email that the system deleted - can you get it back for me?

As mentioned, the Mailinator system automatically deletes email after a few hours (new incoming email pushes out old email so exactly how long depends on how much email Mailinator is getting at any given time).

Email in the public system is only stored in RAM - not to disk. When it's deleted by the system or by a user - It's GONE.

Someone sent me an email from a mailinator.com email address!

No they did not. Mailinator cannot send email. There is no place in the website to send email.

If you received an email from an address at mailinator.com, it's likely the "from" address was forged.

Does the public Mailinator system track my usage?

Mailinator does not keep logs of access to the website. (We also do not use Google Analytics)

Any user may read any email without sign-up, passwords, or personal information. Mailinator does not store identifying information about user access (i.e. IP address). Mailinator has been this way for many years and does not plan to change this.

Note however - this is subject to change if compelled by law enforcement.

Also note - this statement is specific to the Mailinator public site (i.e. addresses at mailinator.com). It does not apply to private domains (paid subscribers).

So what data does the public Mailinator system keep?

Mailinator tracks real-time data to detect abuse of our website and bans abusers or specific emails when appropriate.

Several days of aggregate data that show website-usage trends is kept. No identifying information is present in this data.

Some emails are kept for spam analysis. This is far less than 1% of total email volume and may only extend an email's life to a few days. No email lives longer than that. Some data is kept around incoming email trends.

What are Paid Subscriptions?

The primary business use-case for Mailinator is for Software teams to test their email systems. Turns out it's incredibly great to be able to utilize hundreds or even thousands of inboxes during that testing without being bothered to sign-up for all those email addresses.

Paid subscriptions help companies do just that with features that add privacy and accelerate the testing process.

Features? Like what?

• Your own "private" Mailinator. You can setup multiple private domains (like say, "myQAteam.com") and point them at the Mailinator email system. All emails sent to that domain will work just like the public Mailinator system except they go into a private inbox only your team can see.
  In fact, you can see every incoming email (to all incoming inboxes) your Private domain Super-Inbox.
• With a paid subscription, you get API access inboxes and emails programmatically. This is perfect for using a Mailinator email flow in an automated testing framework. For example, you can completely automate your website's sign-up flow including the "click the link in an email to verify your address".
• Private SMS - some paid plans get a private SMS number. This works just like private email except of course, any text message (instead of email) sent to that number arrives in your team inbox.
• No attachments. Mailinator removes all attachments from emails in the public system.

Great - can I get a Trial?

Yes! Click the Request-Trial link on the Mailinator website.