Inbucket Hosting Live In 5 Minutes

Deploy Inbucket hosting and catch every email your staging and development apps send, without reaching a real inbox. xCloud runs the pinned Inbucket 3.2.0 image behind a Basic Auth gateway, generates the web password, mounts a persistent storage volume and publishes the web UI and REST API over HTTPS — SMTP accepts mail only for the test domain you choose.

Deploy your Inbucket

No terminal
No technical skills needed
No lock-in, cancel anytime

What is Inbucket?

Inbucket is an open-source disposable email testing server. It accepts mail for a test domain over SMTP, stores it, and lets you read it in a web UI or over a REST API instead of delivering it.

Point an application's outbound mail at it during development or staging and inspect every message it sends.

From Sign-Up to a Live Mail Catcher In Just 3 Easy Steps

A test mail server normally means a container, a login gateway in front of it, a storage volume, a domain and a certificate before the first message arrives. This is the same result without assembling any of it.

Step 01
Sign Up
Create your xCloud account and pick Inbucket from the OneClick catalog. Choose your domain and server, then set the Test mail domain (it defaults to inbucket.test) — the only recipient domain SMTP will accept.
Step 02
We Deploy It For You
One click. We bring up the official Inbucket image pinned by immutable digest behind an nginx Basic Auth gateway, mount the inbucket_storage volume, generate the web password for the admin user and publish the web UI and REST API over HTTPS. The Inbucket container has no published web port; SMTP gets its own TCP port.
Step 03
Point Your App At It
Sign in as admin with the generated password, then set your app's SMTP to the host and port shown with no encryption or login. Send to an address at your test domain, type the part before the @ into the mailbox box and the message appears. Open the SMTP port in your own firewall for the hosts that send mail.

Everything Inbucket Does, On Your Own Server

Inbucket runs in full here: a mail catcher with a web UI and REST API on your own domain, behind a password.

Catch Test Email Safely
Inbucket stores what it receives and never relays mail onward, so staging and development email is inspected instead of delivered to real inboxes.
Live Monitor Tab
The Monitor tab streams every incoming message as it arrives, so you can watch your app send mail in real time.
REST API For Test Assertions
Read captured messages over the REST API from your automated tests, protected by the same Basic Auth login as the web UI.
Accepts Only Your Test Domain
SMTP accepts recipients at the Test mail domain you chose at install; mail for any other domain is refused. More domains can be added in the Environment editor.
Capped And Self-Cleaning Storage
By default each mailbox keeps up to 100 messages for 24 hours, and both limits can be changed in the Environment editor.
Persistent Storage Volume
Received messages live on the inbucket_storage volume and survive an xCloud Restart.

Everything You Need To Run Your Email Testing 24/7

Managed hosting for Inbucket, so the parts that keep it online are not your problem.

Inbucket 3.2.0 deployed instantly
Official image pinned by digest
Web password generated for you
Basic Auth on the web UI and API
Free SSL certificate
Server backups and snapshots
Server security updates included
30+ server locations
Unused balance refunded

What You Can Do With Inbucket

Catch staging and development email
See every message your apps send without any of it reaching a real inbox.
Watch mail arrive live
Keep the Monitor tab open while you trigger sign-ups, resets or notifications and see each message the moment it lands.
Assert on email in automated tests
Fetch captured messages through the REST API so your test suite can check what was sent.
Give a team one shared test inbox
Anyone with the admin login can open any mailbox on the test domain, so QA and developers inspect the same messages.

Inbucket Screenshots

Inbucket home page with the mailbox lookup box

An Inbucket mailbox listing a captured test message

Inbucket Monitor tab streaming incoming messages live

Inbucket vs Alternatives

Mailpit: Another self-hosted tool for capturing test email that you can also deploy from the xCloud OneClick catalog.
MailHog: A self-hosted SMTP test server, the same kind of tool as Inbucket that you run and maintain yourself.
Mailtrap: A hosted email testing service, so captured mail lives with a SaaS provider rather than on a server you control.

Simple Pricing. Everything Included.

Dedicated Cloud VPS sizes, pre-configured for Inbucket hosting. Pick the one that fits, and resize any time.

Cloud VPS 6 GB

Cloud VPS 16 GB

More headroom if Inbucket sits alongside other developer tools.

$59.99per month

16 GB RAM
6 vCPU cores
200 GB NVMe SSD
30 TB
Unlimited

Get started

Every size is a dedicated Cloud VPS we provision, patch, monitor and restore. Billed monthly with no lock-in — delete the server and the unused balance comes back to your account. Inbucket itself is licensed by Inbucket's maintainers under the MIT License.

Docker hosting

Already Have a Server? Bring Your Own

Connect any VPS — DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode, AWS, Hetzner or bare metal — and deploy Inbucket on it through the same panel, for a per-server management fee instead of a Cloud VPS rental.

Free

Start your journey without cost.

$0forever

1 server
10 sites

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Starter

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The same platform, discounted at 6–10 servers.

$4per server / month

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Unlimited sites
All features included
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Agency

The same platform, discounted at 11+ servers.

$3per server / month

11+ servers
Unlimited sites
All features included
Bring any VPS provider

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Priced per connected server, so your rate adjusts automatically as you add or remove servers. You pay your own provider for the server itself.

Self-managed hosting

Ready To Run Your Own Mail Catcher?

Inbucket on xCloud runs on a dedicated Cloud VPS that we provision, patch, monitor and restore. Deploy faster. Own the server. Stay in control.

Fast Provisioning
Deploy faster using an xCloud Managed Server built with optimized stacks and high-speed SSDs.
Enterprise-grade security
Protect your infrastructure with a free SSL certificate and more advanced security features at no additional cost.
Intuitive Control Panel
From Server creation to application deployment, everything can be managed from our intuitive control panel.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Feel free to contact us with any questions or concerns you may have.

How is Inbucket different from a real mail server?

Inbucket only stores what it receives and never relays mail onward. It is a testing tool, not a way to send email to real recipients.

How do I sign in?

Use the username admin and the generated web password from the credentials panel. Requests to the web UI and REST API without it are refused with 401.

Which addresses are accepted?

Only the Test mail domain chosen at install (default inbucket.test); mail for other domains is refused. You can add domains in the Environment editor.

Can I read mail over POP3?

No. POP3 is not published because upstream accepts any password and it would expose every mailbox. Use the web UI or the REST API.

Is the SMTP port open to the internet?

The SMTP port is published on the server's public address, but xCloud does not open it for you. Open it in your own firewall only for the hosts that send mail. SMTP is plaintext and unauthenticated, so never send real or sensitive mail to Inbucket.

How do I change the web password?

Edit INBUCKET_WEB_PASS in the Environment editor, using letters and digits only, then Save & Redeploy.

Edit environment variables and redeploy

How many messages are kept, and for how long?

By default up to 100 messages per mailbox with 24 hour retention. Adjust INBUCKET_STORAGE_MAILBOXMSGCAP and INBUCKET_STORAGE_RETENTIONPERIOD in the Environment editor.

What should I back up?

The inbucket_storage volume, if you need to keep messages. Messages are removed automatically after the retention period regardless.

Backups in xCloud

What survives a restart?

Captured messages on the inbucket_storage volume survive an xCloud Restart, because it is a persistent named volume.

Does xCloud automatically back up or update Inbucket?

No. The template pins Inbucket 3.2.0 by immutable digest. To upgrade, read the upstream release notes and bump the image tag and digest together on your own schedule. Server-level backups and snapshots are available on every Cloud VPS.

What are the server requirements, and why does this page sell 6 GB?

The template's baseline asks for 1 CPU core, 256 MB of RAM and 2 GB of disk; measured idle use of the app in QA was about 6.5 MiB. This page sells the 6 GB tier as the entry rung, which leaves plenty of headroom above that baseline.

Is xCloud officially partnered with Inbucket?

No. No official partnership or endorsement between xCloud and the Inbucket project has been verified. This is a deployment and server-management option for the open-source Inbucket project, which is MIT licensed.

Can I cancel anytime?

Yes. There is no lock-in — cancel any time. Hosting is billed monthly and charged for what you actually use, so when you delete the server the unused balance is refunded to your account, less up to 10% in payment-processing fees.