sj26/mailcatcher

Health v2 · maintenance only

Adoption not part of the score

6778 stars · 605 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-29, confidence not recorded

MailCatcher is a Ruby gem that runs a lightweight fake SMTP server which catches all outgoing mail from an application and displays it in a web interface. It is designed for local development and testing, letting developers inspect emails without sending them to real recipients.

Use cases

• test email sending locally without delivering real mail
• inspect HTML and plain text emails during development
• view email attachments from my Rails app in a browser
• replace the SMTP server in dev config with a catch-all
• debug email content and source in a web UI
• catch mail from PHP apps using a sendmail replacement

When to choose

• developing Rails, PHP, or any SMTP-capable app and need to preview outgoing email locally
• you want a zero-configuration fake SMTP server with a web UI
• you need to inspect raw email source, HTML rendering, and attachments during development

When to avoid

• you need a production mail server or actual mail delivery
• you need persistent email storage or multi-user access
• your stack cannot point SMTP delivery at a local address

Facets

cli-tool · maturity stable

email http-server web-framework developer-tools email testing web-development ruby cli cross-platform smtp-server fake-smtp mail-testing devtools web-interface daemon web-server

Member repositories

For agents

markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="sj26/mailcatcher")