# The test inbox

A real mailbox your tests can receive at, so sign-up confirmations and one-time codes can be part of the journey.

Plenty of important journeys route through email. Sign up and you get a confirmation link. Reset a password and you get a token. Log in and you get a one-time code. Testsnag gives every workspace a real inbox so those journeys can be tested end to end rather than abandoned at the point the email is sent.

![The Email page showing the workspace inbox address and an empty message list.](https://testsnag.com/images/docs/notifications/email-inbox-1-inbox.r1.jpg)

Marked on the screenshot:
- The generated inbox address. Reference it from a step as a double-braced token.
- Copy it if you need to paste it somewhere by hand.
- Filter by test once several tests are receiving mail.
- Messages your tests receive appear here, which is the first place to look when a wait-for-email step times out.

## The address token

Reference the inbox in any step with the email address token and Testsnag substitutes the real address at run time. Type it into a sign-up form and the resulting mail lands somewhere the test can read it.

```text
Type {{email_address}} into the email field
```

## Per-run and stable addresses

A test can use a fresh address for every run or a stable one that stays the same. Per-run addresses are the right default for sign-up flows, because most products refuse to register the same address twice, and a fresh alias sidesteps that entirely. A stable address suits a flow where the account already exists and you are only checking that mail still arrives.

## Waiting for mail and reading it

A wait-for-email step pauses the run until a matching message arrives, matching on subject, sender, or body content so a newsletter does not satisfy a step waiting for a password reset. Once it arrives, later steps can reference values pulled out of it, most usefully the first link or a one-time code, which is what makes "click the confirmation link" expressible as a step.

## Sending mail from a test

Tests can also send an email, which is how you exercise the other direction: a support inbox that should auto-reply, or a parser that should turn an inbound message into a ticket. The Email page in the sidebar shows what has arrived, which is the first place to look when a wait-for-email step times out.