Mailpit

What is Mailpit?

Mailpit is a modern, fast, Go-based SMTP testing tool. It runs a fake SMTP server that catches every email your app sends and shows them in a web UI, instead of actually delivering them. Laradock builds it as its own container so you never accidentally send real email from a dev environment.

Start Mailpit

Laradock CLI

./laradock start mailpit

Docker Compose

docker compose up -d mailpit

Mailpit keeps caught mail in memory only, there's no data volume in its compose.yml. Any mail it has caught is gone the moment the container stops or restarts, that's expected, not a bug.

Stop Mailpit

Laradock CLI

./laradock stop mailpit

Docker Compose

docker compose stop mailpit

This also clears every caught email, since nothing is written to disk. To remove the container as well:

Laradock CLI

./laradock remove mailpit

Docker Compose

docker compose rm -sf mailpit

Configuration

All settings live in mailpit/defaults.env and can be overridden by adding the same line to your own .env:

Variable	Default	What it does
MAILPIT_HTTP_PORT	8125	Host-side port for the web UI (container port 8025).
MAILPIT_SMTP_PORT	1125	Host-side port for the SMTP catcher (container port 1025).

Connect your app

Open the web UI at http://localhost:8125 to see caught mail. Other containers on the same Laradock network (workspace, php-fpm, ...) reach Mailpit by its container name on its container-internal ports, 8025 and 1025, not the host-side MAILPIT_HTTP_PORT/MAILPIT_SMTP_PORT values:

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

From your host machine (a native mail client, a script outside Docker), use localhost and the host-side ports instead: SMTP on MAILPIT_SMTP_PORT (1125), web UI on MAILPIT_HTTP_PORT (8125).

Clear captured mail

Click the trash icon in the web UI to delete all messages, or delete them from the command line via Mailpit's REST API:

Laradock CLI

curl -X DELETE http://localhost:8125/api/v1/messages

Docker Compose

curl -X DELETE http://localhost:8125/api/v1/messages

This talks to the published web UI port from your host, so the command is identical either way; there's no container-specific form of it. Restarting the container (see Start Mailpit) achieves the same thing, since caught mail doesn't survive a restart anyway.

Read caught mail from a test suite

Mailpit exposes a JSON API, handy for E2E tests that need to grab a verification code or a magic link out of an email your app just sent, without a human opening the UI:

curl http://localhost:8125/api/v1/messages

Each entry includes an ID you can pass to GET /api/v1/message/{ID} for the full body (HTML/text/headers). See the Mailpit API docs for the full schema. From inside another container, use the container-internal address instead: http://mailpit:8025/api/v1/messages.

Common issues

• Mail isn't showing up in the UI. Confirm your app's .env uses MAIL_HOST=mailpit (the container name) and MAIL_PORT=1025 (the container-internal SMTP port), not localhost/MAILPIT_SMTP_PORT, those only resolve from your host machine, not from inside another container like workspace or php-fpm.
• Mail I caught yesterday is gone. Expected: Mailpit only keeps mail in memory. Any ./laradock stop mailpit, ./laradock restart mailpit, or host reboot clears it.
• Port already in use on your host. Change MAILPIT_HTTP_PORT (and/or MAILPIT_SMTP_PORT) in .env and restart: ./laradock restart mailpit.
• Confusing the two ports. MAILPIT_SMTP_PORT (1125 by default) is what you send mail to from your host; MAILPIT_HTTP_PORT (8125) is where you view it in a browser from your host. Containers on the Laradock network use the container-internal 1025/8025 instead, not either of these.

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Looking for the older Go-based tool Mailpit replaced? See MailHog. Need a full mail server instead of a dev catcher? See Mailu. New to Laradock? Start with Getting Started.