// legal

last updated September 10, 2026

Terms of Service

These Terms of Service (the "Terms") govern access to and use of mailQA — the website at mailqa.io, the dashboard, the SMTP listeners, the REST API and the @mailqa/client SDK (together, the "Service"). The Service is operated by KAPTIVA SOLUTIONS LLC ("KAPTIVA", "we", "us"), a limited liability company organized in the United States.

By creating an account, joining an organization, generating an API key or sending mail to the Service, you agree to these Terms. If you use the Service on behalf of a company or other organization, you represent that you have the authority to bind it, and "you" means that organization. If you do not agree to these Terms, do not use the Service.

The Acceptable Use Policy, the Refund and Cancellation Policy and the Privacy Policy are part of these Terms.

1. What mailQA is, and is not

mailQA captures email sent by an application under test so that people and test suites can inspect it and assert on it. Mail that reaches mailQA is stored in an inbox belonging to your organization and is never delivered onward to any recipient.

  • Nothing is delivered. Mail sent to a mailQA address, or through the SMTP sink with your organization's credentials, stops at mailQA. The Service cannot be used to send or relay mail to anyone, and must not be relied on to.
  • It is a testing tool, not an archive. Messages are kept for the retention window of your plan and then deleted automatically. mailQA is not a system of record, a compliance archive or a backup of your outbound mail.
  • Inboxes are shared within an organization. Every member of your organization can read every message captured in it, and every API key of the organization can retrieve them.

2. Accounts and organizations

  • You must be at least 18 years old and able to enter into a binding contract. The Service is intended for businesses and professional use.
  • You must provide accurate account information and keep it current. You are responsible for keeping your password, sessions, API keys and SMTP credentials confidential, and for everything done with them until you tell us at support@mailqa.io that they have been compromised.
  • An organization is created by its first user, its owner. Owners and admins may invite members, create API keys and rotate SMTP credentials, and are responsible for whom they invite. Anything done by a member of an organization, or with one of its API keys, is attributed to that organization.
  • Public receiving addresses (anything@your-org.mailqa.io) accept mail from the internet only after an organization owner has verified their email address. We may refuse, suspend or reclaim a subdomain that infringes a third party's rights, impersonates a person or organization, is reserved, or is used in breach of these Terms.

3. Acceptable use

Your use of the Service is subject to the Acceptable Use Policy. In short: capture only mail you are entitled to capture, do not use mailQA to send anything, and do not use it to attack, overload or circumvent anyone's systems, including ours. We may suspend access while we investigate a suspected breach.

4. Your content

"Customer Content" means everything your organization sends to or stores in the Service: messages, their headers and attachments, the links and codes extracted from them, and the names and addresses of inboxes.

  • You own it. We claim no rights in Customer Content. You grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to store, process, display and transmit Customer Content solely as needed to provide, secure and support the Service and to comply with the law.
  • You are responsible for it. You represent that you have every right and lawful basis needed to send Customer Content to mailQA — including, where the SMTP sink captures mail addressed to real people, whatever notice or consent the law requires of you — and that Customer Content does not infringe anyone's rights or break any law.
  • We do not read it except as needed to operate the Service (parsing, sanitising and indexing it), to answer a support request with your permission, to investigate suspected abuse or a security incident, or where the law requires us to.
  • We delete it on schedule. Messages expire at the end of your plan's retention window, and their attachments and raw source are deleted with them. You may delete a message, empty an inbox or delete an inbox at any time. Deletions are permanent and cannot be reversed by us.

5. Plans, fees and payment

  • Every plan is paid. Capacity — inboxes, monthly message volume, messages per inbox, message size, retention and seats — is set by the plan your organization subscribes to. Current plans and prices are on the pricing page. Limits are enforced by the Service: mail that exceeds them is refused with an SMTP error rather than queued.
  • Free trial. An organization's first subscription starts with a free trial of the length shown at checkout (currently 14 days). You provide a payment method when the trial starts and are charged for the first time when it ends; cancel before then and nothing is charged. The trial is offered once per organization, and we may withhold it from an organization we reasonably believe was created to obtain another one.
  • Billing is handled by Stripe. You provide a payment method when you subscribe, on pages hosted by Stripe; we never receive your card number. Subscriptions are billed in advance, monthly or annually, and renew automatically at the end of each period until cancelled. By subscribing you authorise us and Stripe to charge the payment method on file for each renewal.
  • Plan changes. You may change plan at any time from the dashboard. Stripe prorates the change, crediting unused time on the current plan against the new one, and the new limits apply as soon as the subscription changes.
  • Failed payments. If a renewal charge fails, Stripe retries it for a short period during which the Service keeps capturing mail. If payment is not collected, the subscription lapses and the organization stops accepting mail until it is paid.
  • Taxes. Prices exclude taxes. You are responsible for any sales tax, VAT, GST or similar tax that applies to your purchase; where we are required to collect it, it is added at checkout.
  • Price changes. We may change prices with at least 30 days' notice by email to organization owners or in the dashboard. A change applies from your first renewal after the notice period. If you do not agree to it, cancel before it takes effect.
  • Refunds are governed by the Refund and Cancellation Policy.

6. Cancellation, suspension and termination

  • You may cancel at any time from the billing portal linked in the dashboard. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period, and the Service keeps working until then.
  • We may suspend or terminate your access, with notice where practical, if you materially breach these Terms or the Acceptable Use Policy, if your payment is overdue, if your use threatens the security, integrity or reputation of the Service (including the reputation of the domains and addresses it sends from), or if the law requires it.
  • Effect. When a subscription ends, the organization stops accepting mail. Captured messages continue to expire on their normal retention schedule. Account and organization data is deleted on request, as described in the Privacy Policy, and we may delete it after a reasonable period of inactivity following termination.
  • We may discontinue the Service or part of it. If we discontinue the Service entirely, we will give at least 30 days' notice and refund any prepaid fees for the period after shutdown.

7. The API, the SDK and changes to the Service

  • The REST API and the SDK may be used only with your own organization's credentials and within the rate limits published in the API reference. We may throttle or block traffic that degrades the Service for others.
  • We aim to keep the /v1 API stable. We may add endpoints and fields at any time. Where a change would break existing clients, we will give reasonable notice in the documentation or by email.
  • The @mailqa/client package is open source under the MIT licence stated in the package. That licence governs the SDK's code; these Terms govern the Service it talks to.
  • We may add, change or remove features of the Service. Features marked beta or preview are provided as-is and may change or be withdrawn without notice.

8. Intellectual property

The Service — its software, design, documentation, name and logo — belongs to KAPTIVA and its licensors and is protected by intellectual-property law. These Terms give you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable right to use the Service for its intended purpose during your subscription, and nothing more. You may not copy, modify, reverse engineer, resell or sublicense the Service except as the law expressly allows or as these Terms permit.

If you send us feedback or suggestions, we may use them without any obligation to you.

9. Third-party services

The Service depends on third parties for payments, transactional email, error reporting and hosting. They are listed, with what each handles, on the Subprocessors page. Their services are subject to their own terms; in particular, Stripe's terms apply to payments.

10. Security and your responsibilities

We maintain technical and organisational measures designed to protect Customer Content, described in the Privacy Policy. No method of storage or transmission is completely secure. You are responsible for using the Service in a way that suits the sensitivity of the mail you capture: do not route mail containing sensitive personal data through mailQA unless you have assessed that doing so is appropriate and lawful, and prefer test accounts and synthetic data.

11. Disclaimer of warranties

THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE". TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, KAPTIVA DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE AND NON-INFRINGEMENT, AND ANY WARRANTY THAT THE SERVICE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED OR ERROR-FREE OR THAT EVERY MESSAGE WILL BE CAPTURED. Delivery of mail across the public internet to mailQA depends on networks we do not control, and we do not warrant that it will arrive.

12. Limitation of liability

TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, KAPTIVA WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR FOR ANY LOSS OF PROFITS, REVENUE, DATA OR BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY, ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THE SERVICE OR THESE TERMS, HOWEVER CAUSED AND UNDER ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

KAPTIVA'S TOTAL LIABILITY FOR ALL CLAIMS ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THE SERVICE OR THESE TERMS WILL NOT EXCEED THE AMOUNT YOU PAID US FOR THE SERVICE IN THE TWELVE MONTHS BEFORE THE EVENT GIVING RISE TO THE CLAIM.

Some jurisdictions do not allow some of these limitations. In those jurisdictions our liability is limited to the greatest extent the law permits.

13. Indemnification

You will defend, indemnify and hold harmless KAPTIVA and its members, officers, employees and contractors from any claim, loss or expense (including reasonable legal fees) arising out of Customer Content, your use of the Service in breach of these Terms or the law, or your violation of any third party's rights.

14. Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of the United States and of the state in which KAPTIVA SOLUTIONS LLC is organized, without regard to conflict-of-laws rules. The state and federal courts located in that state have exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute arising out of these Terms or the Service, and you consent to their jurisdiction. Before starting proceedings, each party agrees to notify the other in writing and to negotiate in good faith for at least 30 days. Nothing in this section prevents either party from seeking injunctive relief in any court of competent jurisdiction.

15. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms. For material changes we will give at least 14 days' notice by email to organization owners or by a notice in the dashboard before the change takes effect. Continued use of the Service after that date is acceptance of the new Terms. The date at the top of this page identifies the version in force.

16. General

  • Entire agreement. These Terms, with the policies they incorporate, are the whole agreement between you and KAPTIVA about the Service and replace any earlier agreement.
  • Assignment. You may not assign these Terms without our written consent. We may assign them in connection with a merger, acquisition or sale of assets.
  • Severability and waiver. If a provision is unenforceable, the rest remain in effect. Not enforcing a provision is not a waiver of it.
  • Force majeure. Neither party is liable for delay or failure caused by events beyond its reasonable control.
  • Export and sanctions. You may not use the Service where doing so would violate United States export-control or sanctions law.
  • Notices. We may notify you by email to your account address or through the dashboard. Notices to us go to legal@mailqa.io.

17. Contact

KAPTIVA SOLUTIONS LLC, operator of mailQA.

Questions about this document? Write to legal@mailqa.io.