Sunday October 12, 2025
Weekend database upgrade & maintenance.
Author: Jeff P
Streamline Email Testing in Healthcare with Mailsac
In healthcare, email communication intersects with patient care and data security. The margin for error is virtually nonexistent. Mailsac’s SaaS platform offers a robust email delivery suite, tailored to meet the rigorous demands of healthcare IT security, compliance, and operational efficiency. Mailsac has been integrated into systems at many enterprises in the healthcare industry, and has been relied on 24/7 for email testing for over a decade.
Enhanced Security and Compliance
Security Audits: Mailsac is built to pass IT department security audits, aligning with healthcare standards like HIPAA. Its infrastructure ensures patient data is safeguarded during email testing.
Data Privacy: With disposable email addresses, Mailsac supports testing that avoids exposing real patient information, maintaining privacy and compliance.
Collaborative Testing Environment
Unified Inbox: Devs and QAs can collaborate effectively using Mailsac’s unified inbox feature, which consolidates test emails from both persistent and temporary email accounts into a single view.
SSO Integration: Simplify access while enhancing security with Single Sign-On (SSO), allowing seamless integration into existing healthcare IT ecosystems.
Automated and Efficient Testing
CI/CD Integration: Mailsac’s API automates email tests within CI/CD pipelines, reducing manual effort and accelerating development cycles in fast-paced healthcare settings.
Scalable Solutions: Whether scaling up operations or integrating new services, Mailsac’s scalable platform adapts to the evolving needs of healthcare enterprises, ensuring email testing is never a bottleneck. There’s no need to manage server resources, deployments or upgrades.
Comprehensive Compatibility Testing
Device and Platform Coverage: Guarantee that critical communications are accessible across all devices and platforms used by healthcare professionals and patients alike.
Deliverability Assurance
Inbox Placement: Rigorous testing with Mailsac ensures healthcare emails achieve high deliverability, crucial for appointment reminders, test results, and other sensitive communications.
Optimizing Patient Communication
Email Optimization: Test and refine email content for clarity and engagement, ensuring messages to patients are both accessible and actionable.
Conclusion
For healthcare organizations, Mailsac offers a precision toolset for email testing — ensuring security, efficiency, and compliance while enhancing collaborative efforts between QA and development teams. Since 2012, Mailsac has practiced technical excellence and has helped hundreds of customers in healthcare manage their unique challenges.
10 Common Email Testing Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them
Email testing is an essential step in the QA process, ensuring that communications reach their intended recipients accurately and efficiently. However, even experienced QA teams can fall into common traps that undermine their efforts. Here are ten frequent email testing pitfalls and strategic ways to avoid them, streamlining your workflow and enhancing email reliability.
1. Ignoring Mobile Responsiveness
Pitfall:
Not testing how emails render on mobile devices, leading to formatting issues or poor user experiences.
Solution:
Use email testing tools that simulate various mobile devices and screen sizes to ensure your emails look great everywhere.
2. Overlooking Email Client Diversity
Pitfall:
Focusing on a single email client, ignoring the fact that your audience uses a wide range of email services with different rendering engines.
Solution:
Test emails across multiple clients (like Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo) to identify and fix client-specific issues.
3. Neglecting Deliverability Tests
Pitfall:
Assuming emails reach the inbox without verifying, risking them being flagged as spam.
Solution:
Conduct deliverability tests with tools that provide insights into spam scores and help optimize for better inbox placement.
4. Underestimating the Importance of Content Clarity
Pitfall:
Creating content that’s confusing or misleading, leading to poor user engagement.
Solution:
Ensure your messages are clear, concise, and actionable. Test variations to see which performs best in terms of user engagement.
5. Skipping Accessibility Checks
Pitfall:
Forgetting to make emails accessible to all users, including those with disabilities.
Solution:
Include text alternatives for images, use sufficient contrast ratios, and test with screen readers to ensure accessibility.
6. Failing to Test Links and Attachments
Pitfall:
Assuming all links and attachments work without thoroughly testing them, which could lead to a frustrating user experience.
Solution:
Manually check each link and attachment in different environments to ensure functionality and security.
7. Ignoring Email Load Times
Pitfall:
Overloading emails with high-resolution images or complex HTML, leading to slow loading times.
Solution:
Optimize images and streamline code to improve load times, ensuring a smooth user experience.
8. Forgetting to Validate Email Lists
Pitfall:
Sending tests to outdated or incorrect email addresses, skewing testing results.
Solution:
Regularly cleanse and validate your email lists to ensure accuracy and relevance.
9. Overlooking Privacy and Compliance
Pitfall:
Neglecting privacy laws and email regulations, risking legal issues and damaged reputation.
Solution:
Stay informed about regulations like GDPR and CAN-SPAM, ensuring your email practices are compliant.
10. Not Leveraging Automation
Pitfall:
Performing repetitive tests manually, which is time-consuming and prone to human error.
Solution:
Incorporate automated testing workflows to save time, reduce errors, and increase efficiency.
In Conclusion
By being mindful of these common pitfalls and implementing the suggested solutions, QA teams can significantly improve their email testing processes. Tools like Mailsac offer zero-configuration custom private domains, comprehensive Swagger REST APIs, and a generous free tier, making it easier for teams to test emails effectively and efficiently. Remember, the goal is not just to send emails but to ensure they are delivered, readable, and engaging across all devices and clients.
Integrating Email Testing into Your CI/CD Pipeline: A Step-by-Step Guide
Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) pipelines are at the heart of modern software development practices, enabling teams to automate testing and deployment processes to increase efficiency and reliability. Integrating email testing into your CI/CD pipeline is crucial for applications that rely on email functionality, ensuring that every update maintains or enhances the quality of email communications. This guide walks you through the process step by step, ensuring a seamless integration of email testing into your CI/CD workflows.
Step 1: Understand Your Email Testing Needs
Before diving into integration, clearly define what aspects of your email functionality need testing. This might include deliverability, content accuracy, responsiveness, and interaction with email clients. Understanding these needs helps in selecting the right tools and defining the scope of testing within your pipeline.
Step 2: Select the Right Email Testing Tools
Choose tools that offer API integration capabilities and can simulate various email scenarios. Tools like Mailsac allow for seamless integration into CI/CD pipelines, offering features such as disposable email addresses, REST API access for automated testing, and custom domain testing capabilities.
Step 3: Set Up Your Email Testing Environment
Configure your chosen email testing tool within your development and staging environments. Ensure it’s capable of capturing and analyzing the emails sent by your application during the automated testing phase. This setup should mimic your production environment as closely as possible to ensure accurate results.
Step 4: Integrate Email Testing into Your CI/CD Pipeline
Incorporate email testing tasks into your CI/CD pipeline configuration. This involves:
- Triggering Email Tests: Automate the sending of emails based on specific triggers within your pipeline, such as a successful build or deployment to a staging environment.
- Monitoring and Logging: Ensure your email testing tool captures detailed logs and analytics, providing insights into the success or failure of email deliveries and content rendering.
- Analyzing Results: Set up mechanisms to analyze the results of email tests, identifying issues like failed deliveries, content errors, or rendering issues across email clients.
Step 5: Automate Feedback Loops
Implement automated feedback loops to alert developers and QA teams of any issues detected during email testing. This can be done through integration with project management tools, sending notifications via email, Slack, or other communication platforms used by your team.
Step 6: Continuous Monitoring and Optimization
Even after successful integration, continuously monitor the performance and effectiveness of your email testing within the CI/CD pipeline. Use insights gained from testing to refine and optimize email functionality, ensuring ongoing improvement and adherence to best practices.
Step 7: Document and Educate Your Team
Document the integration process, tools used, and best practices for email testing within your CI/CD pipeline. Educate your development and QA teams on the importance of email testing and how it fits into the broader context of quality assurance and software reliability.
Conclusion
Integrating email testing into your CI/CD pipeline is a strategic move that enhances the quality assurance process for applications relying on email communications. By following this step-by-step guide, your team can ensure that email functionality remains robust, reliable, and responsive to the needs of your users. Tools like Mailsac can play a pivotal role in this process, offering the flexibility, ease of integration, and comprehensive testing capabilities necessary to meet the demands of modern software development practices.
The Complete Checklist for Email Testing in QA Projects
Email remains a critical communication tool in business, making its reliability and functionality crucial for a wide range of applications. For QA teams, ensuring that emails are sent, received, and displayed as intended across various environments and platforms is a non-negotiable part of the software development process. This checklist provides a comprehensive guide for QA professionals to thoroughly test email functionality, ensuring a seamless user experience.
1. Preparation and Planning
- Define Objectives: Clearly outline what you need to test, such as deliverability, content, links, and attachments.
- Identify Email Scenarios: List all the scenarios in which an email would be sent. This includes transactional emails, marketing emails, notifications, and any others specific to your application.
- Understand the Audience: Know the email clients (e.g., Gmail, Outlook) and devices (e.g., smartphones, tablets) your audience uses.
2. Functional Testing
- Deliverability: Ensure emails reach the recipient’s inbox, not the spam folder.
- Send and Receive Verification: Confirm that emails are sent and received without errors in all scenarios.
- Link and Attachment Testing: Check all links and attachments for correct functionality and security.
- Formatting and Layout: Verify that emails display correctly across different email clients and devices.
- Accessibility Testing: Ensure emails are accessible, including alternative text for images and readable fonts for those with visual impairments.
3. Content and Design Testing
- Spelling and Grammar: Verify the accuracy of content, including spelling and grammar.
- Branding Consistency: Ensure the email design aligns with your brand’s guidelines and messaging.
- Responsive Design: Test emails on various screen sizes to ensure the design is responsive and elements are clickable.
4. Security and Compliance Testing
- Data Protection: Confirm that personal data is handled securely, in compliance with laws like GDPR.
- Email Authentication: Check for SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records to prevent phishing and ensure sender authenticity.
5. Performance Testing
- Load Testing: Assess the system’s ability to handle high volumes of emails without performance degradation.
- Speed Testing: Evaluate the time taken to send, receive, and load emails, ensuring it meets user expectations.
6. Integration and Automation Testing
- Integration Checks: Verify that email functionality integrates seamlessly with other systems and workflows.
- Automation Suitability: Identify processes that can be automated, such as regression tests for email functionalities.
7. User Acceptance Testing
- Real User Simulation: Conduct tests that mimic real-user scenarios to ensure the email meets user needs and expectations.
- Feedback Collection: Gather and incorporate feedback from actual users to refine email functionality.
Review
Email testing is a critical component of QA that ensures your application communicates effectively and reliably with users. By following this comprehensive checklist, QA teams can systematically address and rectify potential issues, enhancing the overall user experience.
Interested in simplifying and accelerating your email testing process? Mailsac offers a robust platform designed to streamline email testing for QA teams. With features like disposable email addresses, zero-setup custom domain support, and extensive API access, Mailsac enables you to focus on what matters most—delivering a flawless product. Try Mailsac for free today, getting test email in seconds, and discover how we can elevate your QA email testing to the next level.
Why Professional QAs and Software Devs May Choose Mailsac Over Disposable Email
Email deliverability testing, and QA testing web apps with multiple account permissions, are critical aspects of software development and Quality Assurance (QA). Although disposable email websites and gmail addresses are a common choice for this task, they present several significant drawbacks for enterprises. This article will detail the advantages of using dedicated email deliverability platforms like Mailsac instead.
Limitations of Disposable Email
1. Security and Privacy
Disposable email platforms typically make all emails public. These websites are frequently crawled by scammers to acquire sensitive information.
Disposable email services often lack robust security measures, exposing sensitive test data. This lack of security can compromise the integrity of testing and risk breaches of confidential information. They rely on security through obscurity – random email addresses that are hopefully unguessable.
Disposable email providers typically do not have Information Security and Assurance programs, and cannot pass a Vendor Risk Assessment.
2. Business Agreements
The terms of service for disposable email services are often unsuitable for professional development and testing contexts. They can include problematic clauses and offer limited protections for users, which isn’t ideal for businesses. The terms and privacy policies tend to be non-negotiable.
3. B2B Interfaces
Disposable email services often lack capabilities for Business-to-Business (B2B) interfacing. This limitation can hinder the integration of these services into larger, automated testing suites, significantly limiting their usefulness in professional testing scenarios.
4. Uptime and Performance
Disposable email services are often slow and lack reliable uptime. These performance issues can introduce unnecessary delays into the testing process and create uncertainties around the reliability of test results. If an email was delayed, it can be hard to know if it was on your end, or theirs.
Advantages of Using Mailsac
Mailsac, as a dedicated email deliverability platform, provides a solution to these limitations and offers considerable advantages for professional QAs and software devs.
1. Enhanced Security
Mailsac prioritizes security, providing secure paid private inboxes and whole subdomains for testing.
You can test your application’s email functionality without risking sensitive data being leaked or public, or sold to a data broker.
2. Professional Business Agreements
Mailsac offers business-friendly terms of service, custom terms, P.O.s, multiple users, SSO and other features designed with the needs of professional QAs and software developers in larger companies with legal and security requirements. This provides a more suitable environment for business operations and testing.
3. Integration and functional testing
Mailsac provides powerful REST APIs, webhooks, and web sockets for integrating into CI/CD and workflows. Companies frequently integrate mailsac seamlessly into their automated testing suite. Using a consumer disposable provider often results in unexpectedly failed builds. Using a professional provider gives you comprehensive and efficient testing and enables continuous deployment.
4. Reliable Performance
Mailsac has high uptime and quick API and UI performance, ensuring a smooth and reliable email testing process. We believe performance is a feature.
5. Share test environment account email addresses
When you are testing a web application, you can use email addresses that are private to your Mailsac account to sign up for your app. Then share those inboxes with your teammates. For example, you may be testing a web app with two RBAC roles – administrator and readonly user. Each can have a unique mailsac email address. Your web app sends a sign-in link via email. All team members can access it (using mailsac’s multi-user or SSO feature). And since it’s not disposable email, the sign-in link to your app’s dev environment won’t be public.
While disposable email services may appear convenient, they come with considerable drawbacks for professional QAs and software devs. They can be against company policies because they may leak proprietary business information. Mailsac, with its robust features and focus on business needs, provides a far more effective solution for email deliverability testing.
QA Testing Email Deliverability using Mailsac: An Overview for QA Managers
The importance of Quality Assurance (QA) testing in software development and operations cannot be overstated. It ensures the product or system performs as expected, minimizing the risk of unexpected failures in production environments. A crucial aspect of QA testing involves testing email deliverability. This article will focus on how to use Mailsac, a leading tool in email testing, to execute this task effectively.
What is Mailsac?
Mailsac is a service providing temporary, “for-test-only” email addresses that can be used for testing and development purposes. Mailsac’s uniqueness lies in its capability to accept emails sent to any unique, auto-generated email addresses under its domain, thus eliminating the need for pre-generating email addresses or setting up a dedicated testing email server.
Why Use Mailsac for Email Deliverability Testing?
Email deliverability testing is vital to ensure emails are correctly dispatched from your application and are appropriately received by your users. Mailsac offers the flexibility to test various email formats and content, inspect the received emails, and verify they are correctly formatted and contain the correct data. This helps mitigate common issues such as emails being marked as spam, lost emails, or broken email formats.
How to Perform QA Testing with Mailsac
Let’s delve into the steps to conduct QA testing for email deliverability using Mailsac.
Step 1: Set Up a Mailsac Account
First and foremost, you need to create a Mailsac account. Visit the Mailsac website and follow the sign-up instructions.
Step 2: Send Emails to Mailsac
Next, send emails from your application to any addresses on the mailsac.com domain. Mailsac is designed in such a way that you don’t need to pre-generate the email addresses. Just decide on the address you want to use and send the email. The inbox will be created automatically when an email is received.
You can send the emails from anywhere, too – personal or work addresses, fake senders, CLI tools, software applications – without a separate sending gateway.
Step 3: Check Email Deliverability
After sending the emails, you can verify their delivery in the Mailsac interface. Here, you can view the received emails, check their contents, and confirm they are correctly formatted. Mailsac also enables you to check if attachments are included correctly using the Unified Inbox or API, and whether the links and images in the email are functioning properly.
Advanced Testing with Mailsac API
For more sophisticated or comprehensive testing, Mailsac offers a robust JSON REST API and Web Socket API. This empowers you to automate the process of sending emails, checking their delivery, and verifying their contents. These API calls can be integrated into your automated testing suite, enabling you to conduct in-depth email deliverability tests as a part of your regular testing process.
Wrapping Up
Mailsac presents a powerful and versatile method to test email deliverability as a part of your QA process. It allows you to send emails to any address on its domain, and the inboxes are created automatically when an email is received. By integrating Mailsac into your QA testing, you can significantly enhance the quality and reliability of your email notifications, thus offering a better user experience. Sign up and start receiving email in seconds.
Unveiling Mailsac’s New API Endpoint Feature: Inbox Filter
A look at filtering email messages with the Mailsac API
Mailsac has rolled out a new API endpoint feature, dubbed “inbox filter.”
It limits email messages using the to, from, and subject fields. Say goodbye to the conventional OR logic of /api/inbox-search and embrace the power of logical AND.
The Inbox Filter Endpoint: Technical Breakdown
The /api/inbox-filter API endpoint accepts the following optional query parameters:
- andSubjectIncludes: Filter messages by text included in the subject line
- andFrom: Filter messages by text included in the FROM envelope
- andTo: Filter messages by text included in the TO envelope
This endpoint delivers results only when at least one query condition is specified, otherwise, expect a 400 error. The response is capped at 100 results, so adjust your query or prune your account accordingly.
JavaScript Unit Test with Mocha and Axios
To illustrate the usage of the /inbox-filter API endpoint, here’s a JavaScript unit test using Mocha and Axios:
const axios = require('axios');
const assert = require('assert');
describe('Inbox Filter API Endpoint Test', () => {
it('should return filtered messages', async () => {
const mailsacApiKey = 'your-api-key-here';
const endpoint = 'https://mailsac.com/api/inbox-filter';
const andSubjectIncludes = 'Important';
const andFrom = 'johndoe@example.com';
const andTo = 'janedoe@example.com';
const response = await axios.get(endpoint, {
headers: { 'Mailsac-Key': mailsacApiKey },
params: { andSubjectIncludes, andFrom, andTo },
});
assert.strictEqual(response.status, 200);
assert.strictEqual(Array.isArray(response.data.messages), true);
response.data.messages.forEach((message) => {
assert.strictEqual(message.subject.includes(andSubjectIncludes), true);
assert.strictEqual(message.from[0].address.includes(andFrom), true);
assert.strictEqual(message.to[0].address.includes(andTo), true);
});
});
});
Looking for a robust email testing solution that can simplify your workflow and improve efficiency? Look no further, friends. Mailsac offers powerful features like this new inbox filter API endpoint and many more, tailored to meet the needs of developers, testers, and businesses alike. Discover the benefits of Mailsac today and elevate your email management game. Try Mailsac for free or learn more about our plans and join our growing community of satisfied users at forum.mailsac.com.
Streamlined Mailsac Updates: Enhancing Email Testing with UI, Performance, and Security Improvements
Get ready for some boring news. At Mailsac, we release a steady stream of updates – week by week, all year long – with no fanfare. We avoid breaking changes wherever possible. Most of our customers have Mailsac integrated deeply into their CI/CD and QA processes. Breaking your build is not cool.
Here’s a recap of improvements we made over the past few months:
- Updated UI interfaces for managing things like API keys, email addresses, and more. We’re modernizing the main website for security and ease-of-use. Stay tuned for a lot more of this.
- Additional “Copy text” buttons and cross-browser compatibility improvements.
- POP3 server fixes to some edge cases around Windows line endings.
- Over 50 security updates to dependencies which are (hopefully) completely transparent to you.
- Performance and security upgrades to our underlying servers.
Over time, SaaS services add too many features, getting clunky and slow user interfaces. At Mailsac we’re not beholden to venture capital or shareholders. Customers have our full attention. You pay us for dev and QA tools to help test email. Thus we prioritize speed and singleness of purpose to deliver you those tools. We want to be extremely helpful, yet stay out of your way.
If you’ve ever got issue with Mailsac, paying customers can contact us at support@team.mailsac.com. A human being will reply pretty quickly, getting you unblocked. (For non-paying users, please ask for help at https://forum.mailsac.com )
The Hidden Costs of Neglecting Email Testing for Your Business
As a business manager in a software company, you understand the importance of effective communication with your customers. Email remains a critical channel for connecting with your audience, but many organizations overlook the importance of thoroughly testing their email sending capabilities. Failing to test your outbound email systems can lead to embarrassing mistakes, decreased customer satisfaction, and even regulatory consequences in certain industries. In this blog post, we’ll explore the downsides of neglecting email testing and explain why it should be a priority for your business.
Sending Duplicate or Incorrect Emails
One of the most common issues businesses face when not testing their email sending capabilities is accidentally sending duplicate or incorrect emails. This can happen due to software bugs, incorrect configuration, or simple human error. When customers receive multiple copies of the same email or emails containing inaccurate information, it can create confusion, erode trust, and damage your brand reputation. By investing in proper email testing, you can catch these errors before they reach your customers.
Personalization Mistakes
Email personalization is essential for connecting with customers on a deeper level. However, without proper testing, you may encounter issues like incorrect name insertion or the use of outdated customer data. These mistakes can make your emails appear unprofessional and impersonal, undermining your efforts to build strong relationships with your customers. Email testing can help ensure your personalization efforts are successful and your customers feel valued.
Missing Critical Notifications
When your email sending capabilities are not tested thoroughly, there’s a risk of failing to send important notifications to customers. This can include transaction confirmations, account updates, or even password reset emails. Delayed or missing notifications can lead to customer frustration, increased support requests, and potential security issues. Implementing a comprehensive email testing strategy can help ensure your customers receive timely and accurate notifications.
Deliverability Issues
Email deliverability is crucial for ensuring your messages reach your customers’ inboxes. If you don’t test your email sending capabilities, you may encounter issues like high bounce rates, being marked as spam, or being blocked by email service providers. These problems can severely impact your email marketing campaigns and customer communication efforts. Proper email testing can help you identify deliverability issues and address them before they harm your business.
Regulatory Consequences
In certain industries, companies are required to send timely and accurate notifications to customers, such as financial services or healthcare. Failing to meet these requirements due to untested email systems can result in regulatory consequences, including fines or legal actions. By prioritizing email testing, you can ensure compliance with industry-specific regulations and avoid potential penalties.
Conclusion
As a business manager, it’s essential to recognize the importance of thoroughly testing your email sending capabilities. Neglecting this critical aspect of your communication strategy can lead to various issues, including duplicate emails, personalization mistakes, missed notifications, deliverability problems, and regulatory consequences. By investing in proper email testing, you can ensure your messages are accurate, professional, and effective in reaching your customers. This will ultimately contribute to increased customer satisfaction and a stronger brand reputation.