Terms of service

The short version

A summary, not a substitute — the sections below are the actual terms. It is here because you deserve the shape of the deal in ten seconds.

You get

Disposable mailboxes and an API, free, with no account and no warranty.

You must not

Use it for anything illegal, or to attack, defraud or harass anyone.

We may

Stop an address or a domain that is causing harm, without notice.

Nobody promises

That a message will arrive, or that the service will be up. Do not build something safety-critical on a free disposable inbox.

1. What the service is

grabmail provides temporary email mailboxes reachable through this website and an HTTP API. Mail sent to an address on a domain we host is accepted, stored for 5 days, then deleted.

The service receives mail only. It cannot send mail, and no feature will be added that lets it.

2. Accounts and addresses

Public domains require no account. Anybody may use any address on them, which means anybody who knows an address may read its mailbox. You accept that as a condition of using a public address.

Custom domains are tied to a key. Keeping that key secret is your responsibility; anyone holding it can read the mailboxes it covers.

You may not claim exclusive rights over an address on a public domain, and we will not reserve one for you.

3. Acceptable use

Nothing illegal, nothing designed to harm another person or service, and nothing that degrades the service for everyone else. In particular: no fraud, no harassment, no using a mailbox here as the receiving end of an attack on a third party, and no attempt to read mailboxes on a domain you do not control.

We may suspend an address, a pattern of addresses or an entire domain, with or without notice, where we believe that policy is being broken. Where the situation allows it we will say why.

4. Retention and deletion

Messages are deleted 5 days after they arrive, read or not. Deletion is permanent and there is no backup from which anything can be restored.

You may delete a message earlier, from the inbox or the API. We do not undertake to keep anything for any period, and we may delete content sooner where we must.

5. Availability

The service is provided as it is: no uptime commitment, no service credits, and no guarantee that a given message will be delivered, stored or retrievable.

We may change, suspend or discontinue any part of it at any time. Where a change removes something people rely on, we will say so on the status page beforehand when circumstances permit.

6. Paid custom domains

Billing

Per domain, in advance, at the price agreed when you subscribe.

Cancellation

Whenever you like. The domain keeps working until the end of the paid period, then stops being accepted.

Refunds

The unused part of a period is refunded if we end your use of the service for a reason other than a breach of these terms.

Price changes

Apply from your next renewal, never mid-period, and you are told before that renewal.

7. Liability

To the fullest extent the law allows, we are not liable for losses arising from use of the service, including lost messages, missed verification codes, lost business or lost data.

Where liability cannot be excluded it is limited to what you have paid us in the twelve months before the claim — which for a free user is nothing. That is the ordinary bargain of a free service, stated rather than buried.

8. Changes to these terms

These terms may change. The date at the top is the current version. Continuing to use the service after a change means accepting it.

Material changes — anything altering what you may do, or what we may do with your content — are announced on the status page before they take effect.

9. Notices

Formal notices are served through the registrar of record for grabmail.io. We do not publish a contact mailbox: a service whose whole purpose is disposable, unauthenticated email is not a place to send anything you need read.