A hosted alternative to MailHog and Mailpit

MailHog and Mailpit are local mail catchers: you run a program (or a container) on your machine, point your app at port 1025, and read mail in a web page on port 8025. They are good tools, and for plain local development they may be all you need. Email Blackhole is the same idea hosted, which changes what you can do.

Differences

	MailHog / Mailpit	Email Blackhole
Run it	you install and run it (binary or Docker)	nothing to run; open the page
Reachable from	the machine or network it runs on	anywhere: CI runners, staging, a teammate's laptop
Real internet mail	only if you expose a port 25 and a domain yourself	built in: a public address that accepts mail from the internet and shows SPF, DKIM and DMARC results
Storage	in memory by default (MailHog); Mailpit can persist to a database	free: memory only, 60 minutes; paid: permanent inbox, 30-day retention
Tests	HTTP API	HTTP API with a wait-for-email call, webhooks and live events
Cost	free; you run it	free sessions; $1.99 a month for a permanent inbox

When to keep MailHog or Mailpit

You are offline or want nothing leaving your machine.
You send large volumes or need your own retention rules, since a hosted free session is limited (30 messages an hour, 2 MB each).
You want Mailpit's extras, such as HTML and CSS compatibility checks, link checking, SpamAssassin scoring or relaying messages on, which Email Blackhole does not offer.
Policy forbids a third-party service for test data.

When Email Blackhole fits better

CI: a pipeline can use it without starting a service container, and the same inbox is reachable from the app under test and from the test runner.
Staging and real providers: send from SendGrid, SES or Mailgun to the public address and see whether the mail authenticates, which a local catcher cannot show without extra setup.
A team that does not want everyone to run the same container.

Switching

Your app only needs different SMTP settings. Press Copy as .env in the sandbox and use the SMTP_* values instead of localhost:1025. For tests, replace calls to the local API with the wait call. Complete examples: Playwright, Cypress.