MailDev
Node-based local SMTP catcher.
MailDev is a Node-based local SMTP catcher with a web UI. Install it with npm or Docker, point SMTP at port 1025, and read captured mail on port 1080. It can fire a webhook when mail arrives and optionally relay caught messages to a real SMTP host, which is useful in CI.
At an early stage the deciding factors are what the free tier actually covers, what the first paid invoice looks like, and how much of a founding engineer's week the setup costs. Feature depth that only matters at a million sends a month is noise until it is not.
Against a waitlist, a launch announcement, onboarding email, and the first transactional sends, MailDev covers developer experience and webhook coverage, and does not cover scheduling and SDK breadth. Whether that gap matters depends on how central those are to the build.
- Free tier: Free
- Best published rate per 1,000: Tiers not published in comparable form
- Starts at: Free
- DX score: 6/10
- Deliverability: Not applicable.
- Operating since: Not published
- Scheduling: No
- SDKs: None
- Webhooks: Yes
Not applicable.
Node-centric local development and CI.
New projects that could start on Mailpit for closer HTML rendering.
- › Installs with a single npm install or docker run
- › SMTP on 1025 with a web UI and REST API on 1080
- › Optional webhook on new mail for CI assertions
- › Relay mode can forward caught mail to a real SMTP host
- › Vue UI renders modern HTML email less faithfully than Mailpit
- › Release cadence is slower than Mailpit
Features at a glance
| API | Yes |
| SMTP | Yes |
| SDKs | None |
| Webhooks | Yes |
| Templates | none |
| React Email | No |
| Batch send | No |
| Scheduled send | No |
| Suppressions | No |
| Multi-tenant | No |
| Inbound parsing | No |
| Event stream | No |
| Idempotency keys | No |
| Dedicated IP | No |