Testing Glossary
If some Mailtrap Testing phrases confuse you, you'll find the definition here. Also, the glossary contains a list of miscellaneous terms to help you better understand Mailtrap functionalities.
Testing
API Testing - Mailtrap Testing API is compatible with most programming languages. It uses the REST protocol and returns calls in JSON format. Here's the link where you can see the details of API documentation. With API, you can make actions related to an inbox, a project, email forwarding, email content, message headers, and more.
CORS Domains - CORS is Cross-Origin Resource Sharing. It’s a mechanism that allows restricted resources to be requested from another domain outside the domain from which the first resource was served. You can specify a list of domains, which will have access to Mailtrap API.
Inbox - a virtual inbox, with its own credentials, to organize your emails. Mailtrap automatically puts your emails into inboxes, so it’s easier for you to locate the data, share results with team members, or invite new members to a specific inbox. Typically, users have inboxes for different environments, e.i. staging, development, and testing. Find out more about Sharing Inboxes from our knowledge base.
POP3 - stands for Post Office Protocol 3. It’s among the most widely used protocols for receiving various emails. By default, POP3 works on two ports - 110 and 995. Using this protocol is advisable if you’re the only person accessing the email account or you’re worried about privacy.
POP3 automatically removes the email from the server after the client retrieves it, that’s why POP3 is more secure. If you want to know more about SMTP, POP3, and other protocols, go to our IMAP vs. POP3 vs. SMTP blog post.
Project - your Mailtrap inboxes can be grouped into different projects to separate testing environments, companies, and also projects you work on. Note that the number of projects is limited based on your Mailtrap plan. And if you want to share a project, check Sharing Projects in our knowledge base.
SMTP - you can choose an inbox, then select an integration in the SMTP Settings tab. Then, It’s only a matter of copying and pasting the code to the right file in your project. Or, you can copy-paste our SMTP settings directly to your email client, MTA, and other supported services. Note that these are hidden, and you need to click Show Credentials to reveal them.
STARTTLS - it’s an email protocol command that relays security information between an email server and an email client. The command shows an email client that Gmail, for example, wants to upgrade to a secure connection with TLS or SSL. STARTTLS is also commonly used with IMAP.
Miscellaneous Terms
Email Headers - all the original values of the email headers displayed as a table.
HTML Source - the HTML source code of an email that you send to Mailtrap.
MTA - Message (or Mail) Transfer Agent. It’s the software that relays emails between senders’ and recipients’ computers via SMTP. To find out more about MTA, check out our related blog post.
MTA Settings - when setting up a Mailtrap inbox, you get the SMTP settings to copy-paste into your MTA. That way, your MTA will use Mailtrap servers.
RAW - it’s your processed email, and it consists of a series of required and optional text headers followed by a message body. These details may be important for diagnosing email delivery issues.
Text - the plain text version of an email. If your email has only an HTML version, the Text tab won’t be available. This is true the other way round too.