Mailcatcher vs. MailHog
A long-time favorite for local SMTP testing, but the project has been largely unmaintained for years.
| Feature | Mailcatcher | MailHog |
|---|---|---|
Deployment | Hosted SaaS | Self-hosted (Docker or a single binary) |
Setup | Point your SMTP settings at us | Install, run, and keep the server up |
Team accounts & permissions | Yes | No |
Shared access without exposing your network Remote access means running your own reverse proxy or tunnel | Yes | No |
Multiple isolated projects | Unlimited | One shared inbox per instance |
HTML/text preview, headers & attachments Basic but functional | Yes | Yes |
Open source / full control Free and self-hosted | No | Yes |
Active development Development has largely stalled; Mailpit was created as its maintained successor | Yes | No |
What is MailHog?
MailHog is a self-hosted, open-source SMTP test server written in Go. For years it was the default choice for catching outgoing emails in local development, with a simple web UI and API for viewing captured messages.
Where MailHog shines
MailHog is still perfectly capable of catching an email and showing you its HTML, text, and headers, and plenty of existing projects already have it wired into their docker-compose.yml. If it's already in your stack and doing the job, there's no urgent reason to rip it out.
Where Mailcatcher differs
The honest caveat with MailHog is its development pace: commits and releases have slowed to a crawl, several long-standing issues remain unresolved, and its own ecosystem has largely moved on — Mailpit was built specifically as a maintained, faster replacement. Beyond that, MailHog shares the same limitations as other self-hosted single-inbox tools: no team accounts, no permissions, and no way to share access without exposing the instance yourself.
Mailcatcher is hosted and actively developed, with projects, users, and permissions built in, so there's no server to maintain or worry about falling out of date.
Which should you choose?
If MailHog is already running and meeting your needs, there's no rush to switch. For anything new, we'd point you toward Mailpit if you want a self-hosted, actively maintained option, or Mailcatcher if you'd rather not run and secure the server yourself.