At a glance
| Gmail plus-addressing | Proxy Mail QA | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | Free | Free plan, under fair use |
| Where mail goes | Every test email into one personal or shared mailbox | One private inbox per test address |
| Sharing with a team | Share the Google account’s password, or forward | Organisations with per-project access (Team plan, coming soon) |
| New accounts in the app under test | Some apps reject the + or strip the tag | Each address is a separate, ordinary-looking address |
| Codes and links | Open the email and find them | On the account’s row, ready to copy or click |
| Test account details | Kept in a spreadsheet, if anywhere | Persona, encrypted saved password, notes and tags on each address |
| Clean-up | Test mail piles up in a real inbox | Addresses and their mail are deleted when they expire |
| Risk | Test sites hold a real person’s address | Test sites only ever see disposable addresses |
Where plus-addressing is fine
- A one-off check of a single sign-up on your own app.
- Mail you want to keep, such as a receipt from a real purchase.
Where it stops working
- The inbox fills up. Dozens of verification emails a day bury the one you need, and filters only go so far.
- The app knows it’s you. Apps that strip the tag see one person, so the “new user” test isn’t one.
- Sharing means sharing a login. Handing a team the password to a Google account, with its two-step codes, is a security problem of its own.
- Real addresses on test sites. Staging environments and third-party sandboxes end up with a real person’s email address, and so can their mailing lists.
What to use instead
Create one Proxy Mail QA address per test account. The code or link appears on its row as the email lands, the persona and password you signed up with stay next to it, and the address and its mail disappear when it expires. Moving a team off a shared Gmail inbox has the step-by-step version.