If your app sends emails, you know how easy it is to break something (or worse, land in the spam folder).
That’s where Mailtrap steps in. It gives developers and product teams a full stack of tools to send and test emails and monitor them across staging and production.
But is it the right solution for your needs?
Let’s find out and after that, look at the most promising alternatives.
What is Mailtrap?
Mailtrap is an all-in-one email delivery platform for developers and product teams working on web apps.
Whether you’re testing your email code or sending real transactional emails, Mailtrap gives you the tools to do it reliably and with full control over your email infrastructure.
It started as a Mailtrap inbox – a secure place to catch test emails without reaching real recipients.
Today, it’s a full platform for sending, testing, and monitoring email performance with features tailored for QA environments and production use cases.
Top Mailtrap features
- Email API & SMTP support: use the Mailtrap MCP server or classic SMTP to send emails from your app in minutes. Great for PHP, Node.js, or any backend. The API supports sending transactional emails, attachments, and more – fully customizable with the templates API.
- Email Sandbox: built for email testing, the sandbox uses a fake SMTP server so you can test your emails in staging. It includes an HTML checker, spam score analysis, and QA automation to spot formatting errors, broken links, and deliverability risks before you go live.
- Deliverability and analytics: track every email request, status, bounce, and open. Get insights on inbox placement, reputation, domain configuration, and failed delivery. A must-have for keeping your email system healthy and your code efficient.
- Email Marketing Suite: segment your contacts, use pre-built or custom email templates, and schedule campaigns. Especially helpful if you’re managing both transactional and marketing flows in the same account.
- Collaboration tools for teams: share a Mailtrap inbox, manage access by team roles, and handle sandbox and production projects side by side. From testing HTTPS endpoints to managing domains and recipients, it’s all in one place.
- Integrations & videos: use new integrations with tools like Postman, GitHub, or CI pipelines. Need help? There’s a full video library with walkthroughs on how to set up, test, or even cancel your subscription.
How much does Mailtrap cost?
There are two ways you can purchase Mailtrap: Email Sending and Email Sandbox.
The first is built for actual campaigns, while the latter is meant for internal testing.
Email Sending has a free plan that lets you send up to 1,000 emails per month for 100 contacts.
Paid plans start at $15 per month for 10,000 emails and 5,000 contacts.
Email Sandbox also has a forever-free plan that lets you test up to 100 emails per month. Paid plans start at $14.99 per month for 5,000 tested emails.
Real reviews from Mailtrap users
“We’d like to see an email marketing feature added soon. It’s a crucial part of our business, and at the moment, we have to use a different platform to send out marketing emails. Kind of a hassle to use—and pay for—multiple platforms for similar tasks.”
– G2 Review
“Nothing to dislike. Their verification process, while time-consuming, makes sense. Thankfully, the ability to send test emails meant I didn’t have to slow down software production. I could delay validation until the product was more mature.”
– G2 Review
“Their statistics were completely wrong. I sent over 5,000 emails and it said I had no bounces. I contacted them 7 times and never got a single reply. Extremely bad customer service—or rather, no customer service at all.”
– Capterra Review
Top alternatives to Mailtrap for your next email campaign
While Mailtrap does some things well, looking at other solutions and comparing features is never a bad idea.
So check out these three fantastic alternatives:
#1 Woodpecker
Woodpecker is a cold email tool that helps you send 1-on-1 style emails at scale without landing in spam. It’s designed for sales teams, agencies, and lead generation pros who want full control over outreach.
From domains and inbox warm-up to lead sourcing and deliverability tracking, it covers every step of cold emailing.
Key features
- Free catch-all email verification (powered by Bouncer)
- Inbox rotation & adaptive sending to stay under sending limits
- Free warm-up for every email account
- Campaign builder with condition-based flows
- Deliverability monitor + domain audit tools
- Agency panel for managing multiple clients
- Works with Gmail, Outlook, and custom inboxes
- Native integrations: Hubspot, Pipedrive, Calendly, Zapier
Pricing
- Starter: from $20/mo (500 prospects, 6K emails/month)
- Growth: from $126/mo (10K prospects, 120K emails)
- Scale: from $903/mo (100K prospects, 1.2M emails)
- Max: $6,666/mo (unlimited everything)
- Add-ons like agency panel, domains, and more are available
There is a 7-day free trial available – we recommend giving it a go.
Pros and cons
- “A very intuitive UI that makes campaign management simple.” (G2)
- “Great UX design, making it easy to navigate and use.” (G2)
- “A powerful platform that centralizes all email marketing needs.” (G2)
- “The only downside, in my opinion, is the time difference from Poland to Mountain Standard Time. Even with that time difference, they are responsive to inquiries and support cases.” (G2)
#2 Mailjet
Mailjet is a full-featured email marketing and transactional platform with a strong visual editor, advanced segmentation, and real-time collaboration.
It’s ideal for marketers who want to design, personalize, and automate emails with no code needed.
Key features
- Drag-and-drop email editor with AI copy assistant
- A/B testing, automation workflows, and landing pages
- Real-time collaboration and multi-user access
- Deliverability tools: validations, previews, spam score
Pricing
- Free: 6,000 emails/month, 200/day
- Essential: from $17/mo (15K emails, unlimited contacts)
- Premium: from $27/mo (includes automation + A/B testing)
- Custom plans are available for enterprise
Pros and cons
- “Cost effective, high availability and support. The APIs are quite extensive. This makes the implementation and automation much easier. As a frequent user, the UI is intuitive, making the usage easy.” (G2)
- “It took me a while to figure out the navigation. It was not easy to learn where everything is and how to use the features. Some of the features are hard to determine, but once I learned them, it was okay. The customer support is good. They blocked some emails unfairly, (once even my own email!).” (G2)
#3 MailReach
MailReach is built for one thing: perfect inbox placement. It helps businesses raise and maintain sender reputation through warm-ups and spam tests. It’s used by sales teams, recruiters, and lead gen agencies that rely on email to hit growth targets.
Key features
- Automated email warm-up (Google, Outlook, custom inboxes)
- Spam score checker with live placement insights
- Domain health checks (SPF, DKIM, blacklist, etc.)
- Deliverability dashboard + AI assistant
Pricing
- $25/month per inbox (includes 20 spam test credits)
- Custom agency pricing available
Pros and cons
- “MailReach automates the process of sending emails to your receiver and the learning curve is minimal. You just need to sign up, choose a plan, connect your email address and start with warm-up emails to test the best strategy to reach your targets.” (G2)
- “Till now I have not faced any big issues as such, but few times it works slow when you are trying to send emails with very large amount of recipients.” (G2)
Send emails with confidence
Mailtrap does a solid job covering the full email lifecycle. It’s especially useful for dev teams who need both a safe sandbox and a reliable production engine.
That said, it’s not built for cold email or deep marketing automation. If that’s what you’re after, tools like Woodpecker, Mailjet, or Mailreach might suit you better.
It all depends on your use case, and how close you are to the inbox.