You might think that temporary email services are mostly used by intruders or spammers for sending product promos, ads and the worst of all – Viruses. This is, however, not a fact always. A temporary email service can prove to be one of the best ways to get rid of spam. You can use your primary mailbox exclusively for receiving personal and business emails, while the temporary mailbox can get stuffed with all the unnecessary registration and correspondence hailing from multiple social forums and services.
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What is a disposable temporary email service?
Disposable temporary emails are self-destructing email accounts. Which means, after a certain period of time they are deleted on their own. As your real email account is not used, so it does not get littered and you do not need to waste your time browsing through a pool of spam to find the important email messages.
Top 5 disposable temporary email services
There are several noteworthy apps and sites that can help you to create one such account. Here’s a list of five best disposable temporary email services according to our experts.
Feature comparison
| Service | Email life | Inbox life | Custom email id | Recover Inbox |
Inbox status |
| 10MinuteMail | 10 Minutes | 10 Minutes | No | No | Private |
| Guerrilla Mail | 1 Hour | Always | Yes | Yes | Public |
| Mailinator (Free) | Few Hours | Always | Yes | Yes | Public |
| ThrowAwayMail | 48 Hours | 48 Hours | No | No | Private |
| Blur | Always | Always | No | Yes | Private |
| EmailOnDeck | 1 Hour | 1 Hour | No | Yes | Private |
| Temporary Email | 24 Hours | 24 Hours | No | Yes | Private |
| Inboxes | 7 Days | 30 Days | No | No | Public |
| Nada | 7 Days | Always | No | Yes | Private |
| YOPmail | 8 Days | Always | Yes | Yes | Public |
1. 10MinuteMail
What makes 10MinuteMail top our list of the best disposable temporary email services is its ease of use. Open the website and you will be welcomed with a temporary email id and a 10-minute countdown timer, indicating the time left before the account is deleted. However, if you wish you can reset the timer before it reaches zero.
However, once the account is deleted, nobody can ever access it, not even you. Which means, if you want to reset the password of a service where you have used this temporary email service, you won’t be able to do it. Email ids are automatically generated, and you have to live with it. There’s no option of using a custom email id. Also, you cannot compose a new email, but you can reply to the received emails.
2. Guerrilla Mail
Guerilla Mail comes with all the standard features that you would expect from a temporary email service, though it tends to offer added advantages. You get an automatically generated email id, but you can use a custom id as well (e.g. [email protected]). In fact, you can further scramble that id to protect your privacy.
Other than that, emails are stored for an hour. Guerrilla Mail also offers the option to compose and send emails using your temporary id. Yes, you can send emails using it. Also, you can use 10 different domain extensions for the same inbox.
You can also access the same inbox at a later point of time simply by using the email id. In fact, anyone can access that inbox if he knows the id. Hence, make sure to not use this email id for services where you may store some sensitive information.
3. Mailinator
The Mailinator inboxes are public and can be accessed by anyone. You do not need to sign up. This is, however, a receive-only temporary mail service and you cannot send anything from it. All the emails received in the Mailinator inboxes are deleted after a few hours.
Mailinator offers a very interesting service called ‘Team Inbox’, which allows you to have a private Mailinator using your own domain. Any member of your team can access and use all the inboxes of your domain in a single user interface. Private Mailinator also gives you an option to prevent certain emails from being deleted automatically and save them for future references. Team Inbox is, however, a paid service.
4.ThrowAwayMail
Another very easy-to-use disposable temporary email service on the block, ThrowAwayMail is among the most used options among netizens. The inbox with this service is deleted after 48 hours (2 days) of inactivity. Every time you visit the inbox, it will be extended for another 48 hours. But, if you do not visit your mailbox within the next 48 hours, it will be gone, forever.
5. Blur
Blur works in a different way than the regular disposable temporary email service providers. You can mask your original email id with a temporary email id provided by Blur, and whenever your temporary email id receives an email, it will be automatically forwarded to your original email id. However, you can choose to block spam emails in the temporary account itself, keeping your inbox clean and anonymous.
Blur also offers paid services, where you can mask your phone no. and credit card details as well.
Summing up
Depending on the purpose, you can choose to go for the most appropriate service for your requirements.
10MinuteMail and ThrowAwayMail are great options when it comes to privacy as the disposable temporary email account once deleted can never be accessed by anyone.
Guerrilla Mail and Mailinator can be accessed by anyone, hence you can use your inbox anytime in future to reset your password, but privacy goes for a toss.
Blur is a great tool if the purpose of getting a disposable temporary email id is to hide your identity and not preventing spams.
