Mailosaur alternative

A Mailosaur alternative for small teams testing email

Mailosaur is a complete testing platform, covering email and SMS, previews across email clients and enterprise contracts. Its plans start from $20 a month billed annually, and receiving mail on your own domain requires the Enterprise plan. MailBots does one part of that job, receiving email, for less. It costs $10 a month for a catch-all subdomain of your own domain, with an API, webhooks and extracted codes.

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Side by side

Feature	Mailosaur	MailBots
Entry paid plan	Personal: from $20 / month billed annually	Starter: $10 / month
Team plan	Core: from $50 / month billed annually, 5 seats	Pro: $15 / month, 3 members
Monthly volume	15,000 on Personal (500 a day), 75,000 on Core (2,500 a day)	5,000 on Starter, 25,000 on Pro
Address format	`anything@SERVER_ID.mailosaur.net`	`anything@otp.example.com`
Your own domain	Enterprise plan only	Included on every paid plan
SMS testing	Add-on from $37.50 / month	Not offered
Email client previews	Add-on from $25 / month	Not offered
Verification codes	Extracted by the API	Extracted into the `otp` field
Retention	Not listed on the pricing page	72 hours
Free trial	14 days	None

Mailosaur figures are from its pricing page and its custom domain documentation on 4 November 2026. The pricing page shows annual prices; check it before you buy, because plans change.

When Mailosaur is the better choice

You test SMS codes as well as email, and want both in one tool.
You need to see how a message renders in Outlook, Gmail and other clients.
You receive more than 25,000 test emails a month.
Your company buys through enterprise contracts, with custom users and permissions per team or project.
You want to try it first. Mailosaur offers a 14-day trial; MailBots has no trial of its paid plans.

When MailBots fits better

Your tests must use your own domain, and an enterprise plan is more than you need. Some signup forms and fraud filters reject known testing domains, while mail to your own subdomain looks like any customer's.
You want to pay monthly. MailBots plans are billed month to month, with no annual commitment.
You only need email. Starter is $10 a month and Pro, for a team of three, is $15.
You want mail pushed to you. Signed webhooks post each message as it arrives.
You want to read test mail in an ordinary mail client over POP3S or IMAPS.
Your manual testers want a free browser extension that highlights the code.

Moving tests over

Add a subdomain such as otp.example.com and point it at MailBots with one TXT and one MX record, as the DNS guide shows.
Replace anything@SERVER_ID.mailosaur.net with anything@otp.example.com. Every address on the subdomain is accepted, so the per-test addresses you already generate keep working.
Replace the Mailosaur client call with the messages endpoint and match on envelope_to, or receive a webhook.
Read the code from otp, which plays the role of the codes Mailosaur extracts.

The Cypress guide has a complete test that does all of this.

Questions

Does MailBots test SMS?

No. MailBots receives email only. If your app also sends SMS codes, Mailosaur or another SMS testing tool is still needed for that part.

Is MailBots cheaper than Mailosaur?

For email alone, yes: $10 a month billed monthly against from $20 a month billed annually, and your own domain is included rather than reserved for Enterprise. Mailosaur's plans include higher volumes, so compare at the number of emails you actually send.

Is this comparison independent?

No. MailBots wrote it from public pricing pages and documentation, and you can read how the comparison was made. Mailosaur is a trademark of its owner, and MailBots is not affiliated with it.