Testing of the email notifications – i.e. tests that business application is sending appropriate emails to right people is pretty boring but important part of the development of business applications. Developers are tend to underestimate this part of functionality.
Btw. although this piece of work is usually very simple, there’s very often a funny story linked to it. I can tell you several funny stories how hundreds of real users accross the globe were spammed from development environment with purchase orders, invitation to auctions or requirements for approval. This happened at least once in every company I worked for 😉
The best idea is to setup local SMTP server and use it instead of corporate one. And of course be careful to not allow the test emails to be sent to real users.
Recently my colleague @nemecpav showed me this ultra-simple application called Antix SMTP Server for Developers. This application is so simple, that I was even not able to find a way to configure for example a port where SMTP is listening. But at the end, why do would I need to change it?
And this application does the job perfectly. Zero configuration, just run it. And its free.
It’s running in a try, listening on SMTP port and behaves like a folder where all outgoing emails are placed. It’s a folder, so you can switch views in an explorer-like manner.
You can open the outgoing emails in the email client to verify the content, headers etc.
And finally – you do not need to worry that your test email will reach the real users 🙂
milan boruvka / log 
using very similar tool for Mac OS — called fakemail — see http://www.lastcraft.com/fakemail.php
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I used hushmail for queuing and testing mail via SMTP on an API.
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