Inboxes, in preview
Throwaway email addresses for testing sign-up, verification and magic-link flows, with the links and codes already pulled out for you.
Preview deployments solved half of a testing problem. You can run a branch somewhere real, and Hookman makes sure its webhooks land there. But the moment you try to test sign-up, an email-verification step or a magic link, you’re back to a shared mailbox, plus-addressing tricks, or skipping the flow entirely.
Inboxes is the other half, and it’s in preview now.
The idea
You ask for an address and get one back. Anything sent to it is stored, and you can read it through the API, the CLI or the dashboard.
ADDR=$(hookman inbox create --ttl 2h)# …sign up on pr-42.acme.app using $ADDR…hookman inbox wait "$ADDR" --jsonwait blocks until mail arrives (or the timeout passes) and prints the newest message. Because most test emails exist to deliver a link or a code, Hookman extracts those for you: the JSON has links and codes arrays, so a test script doesn’t need to parse HTML.
What you get
- Addresses on
in.hookman.dev(in.staging.hookman.devon staging), unguessable and created on demand. - Long-polling. The API holds a request open for up to 30 seconds waiting for new mail, so tests don’t need a polling loop.
- Attachments. Files that arrive with a message are stored with it, listed in the message and downloadable from the dashboard, API and CLI (
hookman inbox attachments). - Automatic clean-up. Inboxes expire (30 days at most, and you choose the TTL). Deleting one, or letting it expire, removes its messages and attachments. Messages are also kept for 7 days on Pro and 30 on Team.
- The raw message is available too, as an
.eml.
Limits
Inboxes are for Pro and Team plans.
| Pro | Team | |
|---|---|---|
| Active inboxes | 50 | 500 |
| Message retention | 7 days | 30 days |
| Max message size | 10 MB | 25 MB |
| Messages a month | 10,000 | 100,000 |
Why we built it
We’re the first customer. Our own acceptance run used to sign in with a standing, pre-verified account because it couldn’t complete email verification. It now signs up a fresh account against staging on every deploy and verifies it through an inbox.
What preview means
It’s switched on per organisation while we watch how it behaves, so you might not see it in your dashboard yet. It’s sending-free by design (inboxes only receive), and there’s no custom-domain support yet. If you want early access or something’s missing, tell us.
