About zephbox
Who's behind this, what it actually does, and how it's built — not the usual "About Us" filler.
What zephbox is
zephbox generates disposable email addresses for receiving OTP codes, verification links, and one-off signups without exposing a real inbox. Free tier works instantly with no signup; Premium adds a developer REST API with OTP/magic-link extraction, webhooks, custom domains, and email forwarding for anyone automating signup or verification testing.
The problem that started this
Almost every free trial, download gate, and one-off signup wants an email address before it'll let you in. Handing over a real one means it ends up on a marketing list, sometimes a breach database, occasionally a spam operation — indefinitely, for a service you used exactly once. The disposable-email category exists to solve that, but a lot of the existing options solve it badly: throwaway domains that half the internet already blocklists, inboxes with no API for anyone trying to automate a test, or sites so cluttered with ads that the actual product is an afterthought.
Why it exists
Most temp mail services fall into one of two camps: consumer tools with no API worth using, or developer tools that bolt privacy on as an afterthought. zephbox was built to not have to choose — private-by-default aliases for everyday users, and a real API (not a scraped HTML endpoint) for developers and QA teams who need to automate the same flow.
How it's actually built
Addresses are backed by a managed pool of real Gmail and Microsoft accounts plus custom domains, so Gmail/Outlook-style aliases are structurally indistinguishable from real accounts where that matters for deliverability. Incoming mail syncs in near real time, OTP and magic-link extraction runs server-side against the message content, and every alias auto-expires and hard-deletes on a timer rather than sitting around indefinitely. See Security & Privacy for exactly what's retained and for how long.
Design principles we actually hold to
Receive-only, always. An address that can send mail is an address that can be used for spam or phishing — zephbox addresses never gain that ability, on any plan. Delete means delete. An expired mailbox isn't archived somewhere "just in case" — the address and every message tied to it are permanently removed on schedule. No dark patterns on quotas. Free-tier limits are stated plainly rather than hidden behind a paywall you discover mid-signup. The API is a first-class product, not an afterthought — it's documented, versioned, and built to the same reliability bar as the web interface, because a broken API silently fails someone's CI pipeline instead of just annoying a human.
What zephbox deliberately doesn't do
It doesn't try to be a permanent email replacement, a way to dodge KYC/identity verification for anything that legitimately requires it, or a tool for bulk-creating accounts to abuse a platform's free-trial or referral system — see the Anti-Spam Policy for where that line is drawn and enforced. It also doesn't pretend to guarantee that any specific website will accept a zephbox address; deliverability is high, not universal, and some sites actively fight disposable-mail detection with methods no provider can fully outrun.
Who runs this
zephbox is an independently run product, not backed by a large company. That's worth knowing both ways: decisions get made quickly and directly, but it also means support responses and feature timelines are handled by a small team rather than a dedicated support org. If something's wrong or you're not sure about a claim on this site, the fastest way to get a real answer is the contact page.
Where zephbox is today
The core product — instant no-signup addresses, Gmail/Outlook-style aliases, the live inbox, and the developer API — is live and in active use. Custom domains and email forwarding are available on Full Access. The site itself is available in five languages (English, German, Spanish, Indonesian, and Brazilian Portuguese), maintained as complete translations rather than machine-translated stubs. We treat this as a product that's still being actively built, not a finished thing bolted onto a landing page — expect it to keep changing.
Where to go from here
Read what temp mail actually is if you're new to the concept, browse real use cases to see where it fits, check pricing for Free vs. Premium, or jump into the API documentation if you're integrating zephbox into a test suite or agent.