MoeMail - Cute open-source temporary email with REST API

What Is MoeMail

You know the drill. You want to try a new productivity tool, download a free e-book, or join a forum — and the first thing it asks for is your email address. A few weeks later, your inbox is flooded with newsletters you never asked for, promotional blasts you can't unsubscribe from fast enough, and the occasional phishing attempt that makes you question every account you've ever created.

Protecting your real inbox shouldn't feel like a second job. That's exactly the problem MoeMail was built to solve.

MoeMail is a cute, open-source temporary email service that gives you disposable email addresses on demand. Instead of handing over your primary address to every website you barely trust, you generate a temporary one, use it for the signup or download, and let it expire when you're done. Your real inbox stays clean, private, and spam-free.

Built on a modern stack of Next.js, Cloudflare Pages, and the D1 database, MoeMail offers instant mailbox creation, real-time email delivery, and automatic expiration — all wrapped in a friendly, adorable interface that doesn't take itself too seriously. And because the entire project is open source on GitHub, anyone can audit the code, verify how data is handled, or even self-host it for free.

For developers, there's a complete REST API with full OpenAPI interface support, making MoeMail easy to plug into your own applications and workflows. And true to its privacy-first mission, the service is completely free with no user tracking.

MoeMail's Core Features

Let's look at what MoeMail actually does for you — feature by feature, from the perspective of what you get out of it.

Instant Mailbox Creation

You can use it to generate custom or random temporary email addresses instantly, choosing from validity periods of 1 hour, 1 day, 7 days, or permanent. Need a throwaway address for a quick signup? Set it to expire in an hour. Testing a multi-step verification flow that spans a few days? The 7-day option has you covered. The flexibility means you're never stuck with an address that outlives its usefulness.

Real-Time Email Management

Your personal dashboard shows incoming messages in real time, so you can see verification codes, activation links, and confirmation emails the moment they arrive. No more refreshing a separate tab wondering whether the email is going to show up — MoeMail polls automatically and keeps everything front and center.

Email and Mailbox Sharing

You can use it to share individual emails or entire mailboxes with others through secure share links that come with configurable expiry. Whether you're collaborating with a teammate on a testing task or walking a new employee through a support demo, sharing a temporary mailbox beats forwarding screenshots back and forth. The link can be set to expire, so access is always time-boxed.

Webhook Notifications

You can use it to receive real-time POST notifications on your own server whenever a new email arrives at any of your mailboxes. Each webhook payload carries the full message details — sender, subject, content, and HTML — with an X-Webhook-Event: new_message header so your system knows exactly what it's receiving. This turns MoeMail into a drop-in email intake layer for automated workflows.

OpenAPI REST Interface

You can use it to integrate MoeMail into your own applications through a standard REST API with 12 fully documented endpoints. From generating mailboxes and retrieving messages to managing share links, the API covers the entire lifecycle. Authenticate with a simple X-API-Key header and you're ready to build.

Single-Account Multi-Mailbox Management

You can use it to create and manage multiple temporary email addresses under a single account. Every mailbox is isolated, so each one operates independently — perfect for managing several test scenarios, client accounts, or projects at the same time without cross-contamination.

Who Uses MoeMail

MoeMail fits into more workflows than you might expect. Here's a look at who gets the most value out of it.

Developers building signup flows or authentication systems often need to test email verification end-to-end. With MoeMail's API, you can programmatically generate temporary mailboxes, wait for incoming messages, and extract verification codes — all within your automated tests. It turns email testing from a manual chore into a repeatable, scriptable step.

Privacy-conscious users who sign up for untrusted websites, one-time services, or content downloads frequently find MoeMail indispensable. Why hand your real address to a random marketing site when you can use a disposable one and walk away clean?

QA testers who need multiple isolated email addresses for testing registration, password reset, and notification flows will appreciate the single-account multi-mailbox approach. Each test scenario gets its own clean mailbox, and nothing bleeds over between cases.

Teams that need to share access to a temporary mailbox — customer support reps walking through demos, or product teams collecting feedback from a test account — can use MoeMail's share links to give collaborators view access without exposing credentials.

Anyone tired of forum or newsletter spam who wants to keep their primary inbox clean will find MoeMail a low-friction solution. Sign up with a temporary address, and when the spam starts rolling in, the address simply expires.

That caveat aside, MoeMail covers the vast majority of everyday scenarios where you'd rather not expose your real inbox.

Quick Start

Getting started with MoeMail takes less than a minute. Here's the fastest path from signup to your first temporary address.

Step 1: Sign Up

Create an account to securely access your personal dashboard. Registration is required — it's what keeps your mailboxes isolated and protected under your own profile.

Step 2: Create Your First Mailbox

From your dashboard, generate a custom or random temporary email address instantly. If you have a preferred prefix in mind, you can specify it; otherwise, let MoeMail pick one for you. You'll also choose the validity period that fits your needs.

Step 3: Use the Address

Head over to whatever service you're signing up for and use your new temporary address. Verification emails, activation links, and confirmations will appear in your MoeMail dashboard in real time.

Step 4 (For Developers): Connect via API

If you're a developer, grab an API Key from your profile (available with DUKE or EMPEROR role) and start using the REST API directly. Here's how simple it is to create a temporary mailbox with curl:

curl -X POST https://your-domain.com/api/emails/generate \
  -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "name": "test",
    "expiryTime": 3600000,
    "domain": "moemail.app"
  }'

The expiryTime field accepts milliseconds, with four built-in options:

That's it. Four steps, and your real inbox is protected.

Ecosystem & Integration

MoeMail isn't just a nifty dashboard — it's a developer-friendly platform designed to slot into your existing workflows. Here's what the ecosystem looks like.

OpenAPI Interface

The full OpenAPI definition is available at https://docs.moemail.app/api.html#openapi. Authentication is handled via a simple header:

X-API-Key: YOUR_API_KEY

Once you have your key (created in the personal center, requiring DUKE or EMPEROR role), you can call any of the 12 REST endpoints. These cover the complete lifecycle:

• System configuration — query supported domains, default roles, and limits

• Mailbox management — generate, list, and delete temporary mailboxes

• Message retrieval — fetch messages for a mailbox, including paged lists and full content

• Share link management — create, list, and delete share links for both mailboxes and individual messages

Webhook Integration

When a new email arrives at any of your mailboxes, MoeMail sends a POST request to your configured webhook URL. The payload includes the sender, subject, both plain-text and HTML content, and timestamps — everything your backend needs to process the message programmatically.

Two things to keep in mind: your webhook endpoint must respond within 10 seconds, and any non-2xx response triggers retries. This makes MoeMail a reliable notification layer for automation.

Test Server for Local Development

MoeMail ships with a built-in test server:

pnpm webhook-test-server

This starts an HTTP server on port 3001 (http://localhost:3001) that prints received webhook message details — perfect for validating your integration locally. For external testing, expose the server via Cloudflare Tunnel:

pnpx cloudflared tunnel --url http://localhost:3001

Self-Hosting on Cloudflare

Since MoeMail is fully open source, you can self-host it for free on Cloudflare's free tier. The architecture is built around Next.js, Cloudflare Pages, D1, and Drizzle ORM, so deploying your own instance is straightforward — and you get complete control over your data.

Community and Support

For questions, feature requests, or just to connect with other users, join the Telegram community at @moecloudflare. The GitHub repository (github.com/beilunyang/moemail) is also the place to report issues, review code, and contribute.

Share Link Format

Share links follow a predictable structure: https://your-domain.com/shared/{token} for mailboxes and https://your-domain.com/shared/message/{token} for individual messages. Each link can have its own expiry, set at creation time.

FAQ