testing-email.md

Receiving and Testing Emails

Local email

The normal development environment starts Mailpit with Ghost. Run:

pnpm dev

Emails sent by the development site are captured at http://localhost:8025 rather than delivered. The Docker development configuration connects Ghost to Mailpit automatically.

Testing with Mailgun

For testing transactional email delivery, configure Ghost's mail setting with an SMTP provider. For testing newsletter delivery, configure the separate Mailgun settings used by Ghost's bulk email service. Mailgun sandbox domains only send to recipients that have been added and verified in Mailgun.

Keep credentials in your local configuration and do not commit them.

Most development does not need real delivery. Use Mailpit unless the behavior being tested depends on the external provider.