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MailHog

What is MailHog?​

MailHog is an SMTP testing tool that catches outgoing dev email and shows it in a web UI instead of delivering it. It was one of the most widely used dev mail catchers for years, but the project has been effectively unmaintained since 2022. Laradock still ships it for existing setups, but new projects should prefer Mailpit, a modern, actively maintained, drop-in replacement written in Go.

Start MailHog​

./laradock start mailhog

Stop MailHog​

./laradock stop mailhog

This stops the container without deleting anything. MailHog keeps caught messages in memory only (no data volume), so stopping, restarting, or removing the container also clears every caught email, there's nothing on disk to preserve.

To remove the container:

./laradock remove mailhog

Configuration​

MailHog has no defaults.env, its ports are fixed directly in mailhog/compose.yml:

PortPurpose
1025SMTP, point your app's mail driver here.
8025Web UI, browse caught mail here.

Because these are hardcoded ("1025:1025" and "8025:8025"), there's no MAILHOG_*_PORT variable to override in .env. If you need a configurable port, use mailpit or maildev instead.

Connect your app​

Open the web UI at http://localhost:8025. Point your app's SMTP settings at the mailhog container name (not localhost) on port 1025:

MAIL_MAILER=smtp
MAIL_HOST=mailhog
MAIL_PORT=1025
MAIL_USERNAME=null
MAIL_PASSWORD=null

Clear captured mail​

MailHog has no persistent storage, so any of these throw away everything it has caught so far:

  • From the web UI: open http://localhost:8025 and click the trash/delete-all button in the top bar.
  • Via the HTTP API, from your host machine:
curl -X DELETE http://localhost:8025/api/v1/messages
  • By restarting the container (same effect, since nothing is written to disk):
./laradock restart mailhog

Common issues​

  • Mail isn't showing up in the UI. Confirm your app's .env uses MAIL_HOST=mailhog (the container name), not localhost or 127.0.0.1, those only resolve from your host machine, not from inside another container.
  • Port 1025 or 8025 already taken on your host. MailHog's ports aren't configurable via .env. Either free the port, or switch to mailpit or maildev, both of which expose MAILHOG-equivalent ports through env vars.
  • Caught mail disappeared after a restart. Expected: MailHog only keeps messages in memory, restarting or recreating the container always clears them. There's nothing to back up or restore.
  • Considering MailHog for a new project. The upstream project is largely dormant. Use Mailpit instead, same idea, actively maintained, configurable ports.

Prefer the actively maintained successor? See Mailpit. New to Laradock? Start with Getting Started.