Mailpit is excellent, self-hosted.
Sendpit is zero infrastructure.
Mailpit is the best open-source local email tester around. Sendpit offers the same core workflow as a managed cloud service with team access. The honest comparison, round by round.
Key Facts
- SendPit Basic: $5/mo for 3 mailboxes and up to 1,000 stored emails across all mailboxes
- Mailpit Self-hosted open-source
- Pricing and features last verified: 2026-03-18
Where Sendpit wins
vs self-hosted mailpit · verified 2026-03-18No reverse proxy, no TLS certificates, no SQLite backups, no security advisories. Sendpit is hosted; you just point SMTP at it.
Mailpit runs one inbox per instance, so separate projects mean separate instances. Sendpit gives the Basic plan 3 isolated mailboxes; Max is unlimited.
The whole product: capture, inspection, team access. Not a trial, never expires, no card required.
Owner, billing and member roles with per-mailbox access control. Mailpit has optional basic auth and everyone sees the same inbox.
The average email deliverability rate across major providers is 83.1%, with 6.4% of emails going missing entirely.EmailToolTester, 2024 Catching problems in a sandbox is cheaper than finding them in production.
Feature by feature
15 features · 2 groups| Feature | Mailpit | Sendpit |
|---|---|---|
| Shared core | ||
| SMTP capture | ✓ | ✓ |
| Spam score analysis | ✓ SpamAssassin | ✓ SpamAssassin |
| Full-text search | ✓ | ✓ |
| Responsive device previews | ✓ | ✓ |
| Webhooks | ✓ | ✓ Pro and above |
| REST API | ✓ 25+ endpoints | ✓ Basic and above |
| Where they differ | ||
| Cloud hosted | — self-hosted | ✓ |
| Multi-mailbox | — one inbox per instance | ✓ |
| Team user accounts | — | ✓ |
| Per-mailbox access control | — | ✓ |
| TLS encryption | ~ optional | ✓ TLS 1.3 |
| Storage | SQLite on your server | encrypted at rest · auto-purge |
| HTML compatibility check | ✓ | — |
| Maintenance | yours: patches, backups, uptime | managed |
| Price | open source | free tier + $5/mo plans |
Mailpit makes sense if...
- · You're a solo developer testing emails locally.
- · You prefer open-source tools you can audit and customize.
- · You're comfortable managing infrastructure and security updates.
Sendpit makes sense if...
- ✓ Your team needs shared access to test emails.
- ✓ You want separate mailboxes per project or environment.
- ✓ You don't want to manage servers, containers, or security patches.
- ✓ You need role-based access control with per-mailbox permissions.
Many teams use both: Mailpit for solo local development, Sendpit for CI, staging and anything teammates need to see. They share a workflow, so switching costs nothing.
Frequently asked questions
Is Mailpit free?
▾
Yes, Mailpit is completely free and open source. You self-host it and there are no usage limits. Sendpit also has a free tier, but it is a hosted service-you do not need to set up or maintain any infrastructure. The trade-off is self-hosted freedom versus managed convenience.
Can I use Sendpit and Mailpit together?
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Yes. Some teams use Mailpit locally during development and Sendpit for shared staging environments. Mailpit runs on your machine for individual development, while Sendpit provides a shared cloud inbox that the whole team can access. The SMTP configuration swap takes seconds.
Does Sendpit have Mailpit's search and filtering?
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Sendpit offers search across emails by subject, sender, and recipient. Mailpit provides more advanced local search capabilities since it has direct access to the stored data. For most development workflows, Sendpit's search is sufficient. If you need complex regex-based email searching, Mailpit's local approach has an edge.
Why use Sendpit instead of self-hosting Mailpit?
▾
If you are comfortable running Docker or a binary on your server, Mailpit is an excellent choice. Sendpit makes sense when you want zero infrastructure-no server to maintain, no Docker container to keep running, no backups to manage. It also provides team features like shared access, roles, and permissions that Mailpit does not include out of the box.
Does Sendpit support Mailpit's API features?
▾
Sendpit provides a REST API for retrieving emails, attachments, and headers (Basic and above), plus webhooks for push notifications (Pro and above). Mailpit has its own API for similar operations with no plan gating. Both let you programmatically access captured emails. Sendpit adds webhook-based real-time notifications that Mailpit does not natively offer.
How long does it take to switch from Mailpit to Sendpit?
▾
About thirty seconds. Update your SMTP host, port, username, and password in your environment configuration to point at Sendpit instead of your local Mailpit instance. No code changes required-your application sends email via SMTP the same way regardless of the destination.
Free forever, not a trial
1 mailbox · 3 seats · 200 stored emails · full inspection · no card · never expires also comparing: Mailtrap · MailHog · MailCatcher · Mailosaur · Ethereal Email