Self-Hosted Disposable Email Service (IMAP catch-all)

Overview

A self-hosted temporary (“disposable”) email web service, a deployment of the open-source disposable-mailbox project, that generates a random address on demand and reads incoming mail from a catch-all IMAP mailbox.

Why It Exists

Throwaway email addresses are useful for testing signup flows and protecting a real inbox. This evaluates and self-hosts a PHP application that turns one catch-all IMAP mailbox into an on-demand disposable-address service.

What We Built

A Dockerized deployment of the open-source disposable-mailbox app (PHP, php-imap): a catch-all IMAP mailbox feeds the web UI, which lists messages for any randomly generated address and allows deletion. Work here was integration, configuration, and containerization (docker-compose.yml) of the upstream OSS code rather than building the application from scratch.

Technologies & Approach

PHP with the php-imap library against a catch-all IMAP account; Docker Compose for a reproducible self-host. Framed honestly as evaluation/deployment of an existing GPL-3.0 open-source project.

Outcome / Impact

A running self-hosted disposable-email service, demonstrating IMAP integration and the ability to evaluate, configure, and containerize third-party OSS for a privacy/testing use case.

Capabilities Demonstrated

• Self-hosting and containerizing open-source web applications
• IMAP catch-all mailbox integration
• Standing up privacy/testing tooling (disposable email)