How to read mail and extract verification codes

Mailcraft mailboxes are receive-only — you buy an address, register an account with it anywhere, and the confirmation email lands with you. Here’s how to read that email and pull the code out of it in seconds.

Where mail shows up

Every mailbox you buy appears in your account under “My mailboxes”. Open an address and you see the inbox: sender, subject, time. Mail arrives in real time — the typical delay from a service sending it to it showing up is 10–30 seconds.

You can’t send from a mailbox — that’s deliberate. These boxes exist to receive confirmations, codes and activation links, not to send.

Pulling the code out fast

When you open a message in the web inbox, Mailcraft finds the verification code in the text (4–8 digits — the common shape for GitHub, OpenAI, Stripe, Telegram and friends) and shows a “Copy code” button. One click and the code is on your clipboard, ready to paste into the sign-up form — no squinting at the email to find the digits.

If the service sent a confirmation link instead of a numeric code, just open it from the email — it takes you to that service’s activation page.

IMAP access (Thunderbird, Apple Mail, scripts)

Working with dozens of boxes, or want to automate receiving? Connect over IMAP. There’s a single server for the whole platform:

• Host: mail.mailcraft.org
• Port: 993
• Encryption: SSL/TLS
• Username: the full mailbox address (john.smith@…)
• Password: the mailbox’s IMAP password (shown on the mailbox card in your account)

The same settings work in Thunderbird, Apple Mail, Outlook, and any IMAP client or library (imaplib in Python, webklex/php-imap in PHP, etc.).

Exporting your mailbox list

Bought a batch? “My mailboxes” exports to CSV and TXT — addresses, passwords and IMAP settings — to hand boxes to a teammate or load them into your own tooling. Formats: full CSV (email,password,imap_host,imap_port,imap_ssl), simple email:password, and addresses-only.

When a code doesn’t arrive

1. Wait 30–60 seconds. Most mail arrives in 10–30 s, but some services queue sending.
2. Check you’re registering with the same address you opened in the inbox — easy to mix up across dozens of boxes.
3. Refresh the inbox on the mailbox card.
4. Check the mailbox lifetime. The Mass tier lasts 30 days; Standard and Premium are permanent. If a Mass box has expired it no longer accepts mail — grab a fresh one.
5. Some services only send the code after a captcha or anti-fraud check on their side — that’s their flow, not delivery.

Next steps

Still picking boxes for a specific service? See the sign-up guides — e.g. how to sign up to OpenAI. And pricing and volume discounts are visible without an account — start from 10 boxes; the per-box price drops with volume.