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

docker compose up -d mailpit

Stop Mailpit

docker compose stop mailpit

This stops the container without deleting its data. To remove the container: docker compose rm -f 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. Point your app's SMTP settings at the mailpit container name (not localhost) on its internal port 1025:

MAIL_MAILER=smtp
MAIL_HOST=mailpit
MAIL_PORT=1125
MAIL_USERNAME=null
MAIL_PASSWORD=null

Common issues

• Mail isn't showing up in the UI. Confirm your app's .env uses MAIL_HOST=mailpit (the container name), not localhost or 127.0.0.1, those only resolve from your host machine, not from inside another container like workspace or php-fpm.
• Port already in use on your host. Change MAILPIT_HTTP_PORT (and/or MAILPIT_SMTP_PORT) in .env and restart: docker compose up -d mailpit.
• Confusing the two ports. MAILPIT_SMTP_PORT (1125 by default) is what your app sends mail to; MAILPIT_HTTP_PORT (8125) is where you view it in a browser. They're not interchangeable.

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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.