I Test 200+ SaaS Tools a Year. Here's Why Temp Mail Is My Secret Weapon.

Marcus | Product Manager | December 2024

My job is basically signing up for things.

As a product manager at a mid-size software company, I spend a ridiculous amount of time evaluating competitors, testing new tools, and staying current with what's happening in our space. Last year alone, I created accounts on 200+ platforms. Probably more — I stopped counting in October.

You know what happens when you sign up for 200 tools with your work email?

Chaos. Absolute chaos.

The Moment I Knew Something Had to Change

Picture this: It's 9 AM on a Monday. I open my inbox to prep for our weekly product sync.

847 unread emails.

Now, I'm not one of those inbox-zero people. Never have been. But this was different. Buried somewhere in those 847 messages was feedback from our VP on the Q4 roadmap. Also in there:

23 "Your free trial is expiring!" warnings
41 product update newsletters I never subscribed to
17 "We miss you!" re-engagement campaigns
8 partnership requests from tools I tested for exactly 4 minutes
Countless "Did you know you can upgrade to Pro?" nudges

I spent 45 minutes just finding the one email that actually mattered.

That afternoon, I discovered temp mail. Should've happened years ago.

What Even Is Temp Mail?

For the uninitiated: temp mail (temporary email, disposable email, throwaway email — same thing) gives you a working email address that you can use for signups, then forget about forever.

No registration. No password. Just an inbox that exists for as long as you need it.

I use m2u.io these days. Clean interface, emails don't disappear in 30 seconds like some services, and it actually works with most verification systems. But there are others out there — find what works for you.

My Actual Workflow Now

Evaluating a new project management tool:

Go to temp mail, grab an address
Sign up for the tool
Click verification link
Poke around for 20-30 minutes
Make notes on what I liked/didn't like
Close the tab, never think about it again

Result: Tool evaluated. Main inbox untouched. No follow-up emails for the next 6 months asking if I want to "continue my journey."

Downloading a competitor's whitepaper:

Temp mail address
Download PDF
Done

No: "Thanks for downloading! Here's a 12-part email course you didn't ask for."

Signing up for a webinar I'm 50% sure I'll actually attend:

Temp mail
Register
If I go, great. If not, no guilt-trip emails.

The Numbers Don't Lie

I tracked this for a month:

Before temp mail (reconstructed from email search):

Average tool signup = 14 follow-up emails over 30 days
That's 2,800 unwanted emails per year from testing alone
Time spent unsubscribing/deleting: ~3 hours/month

After temp mail:

Unwanted emails from testing: 0
Time spent managing this: 0
Tools evaluated: same or more (no friction = more testing)

Three hours a month might not sound like much. But that's 36 hours a year I got back just by using a throwaway email for throwaway signups.

"But What About Legitimate Follow-ups?"

This is the concern I hear most often. "What if I need to recover my account later?"

Here's my rule: If I think there's any chance I'll use this tool seriously, I use my real email.

Temp mail is for:

First impressions and tire-kicking
Downloading gated content
Signing up for things I'm 90% sure I won't use
Any form that asks for email but doesn't really need it
Webinars and events I'm unsure about

Real email is for:

Tools I'm actually implementing
Professional networking
Anything involving money or contracts
Platforms where I want a relationship with the company

It's not complicated once you internalize the distinction.

Some Things I've Learned

Most "premium content" isn't.

Half the whitepapers and guides behind email gates are just blog posts in PDF form. Temp mail lets you preview before committing your contact info to yet another marketing database.

Free trials are designed to extract maximum information.

They don't need your company size, revenue, and use case just to let you test their product. They want it for lead scoring. Use temp mail, see if the product is even relevant first.

Re-engagement campaigns never stop.

I signed up for a note-taking app in 2019. Used it for one day. I STILL get emails from them. With temp mail, that 5-year relationship would've ended after 5 minutes.

Not all temp mail services are equal.

Some auto-delete emails in 10 minutes (too fast for some verification flows). Some don't refresh properly. Some look so sketchy that sophisticated signup forms block them. m2u.io has been reliable for me, but test a few and find your preference.

The Bigger Picture

We've normalized handing over personal information for everything.

Want to read an article? Email. Download a template? Email, name, company, phone. Watch a demo video? Full contact info plus three qualifying questions.

I get why companies do it. I work in product — I understand lead generation and funnel metrics. But as a user, I also get to choose what information I give up and when.

Temp mail isn't about being paranoid or antisocial. It's about having a buffer between "I'm curious about this" and "I want a sales relationship with this company."

That buffer didn't used to exist. Now it does.

FAQ (Things People Actually Ask Me)

Q: Isn't this lying?

A: I'm not fabricating credentials or misrepresenting myself. I'm just not giving my permanent contact info to every form on the internet. There's no social contract requiring me to be maximally reachable.

Q: What if the service blocks temp mail domains?

A: Some do. Usually the aggressive ones that really want your real email for marketing purposes. I take that as a signal about what kind of company they are.

Q: Do you ever lose access to something important?

A: Once. A tool I tested turned out to be exactly what we needed, and I'd used temp mail. Solution: signed up again with my real email. Took 2 minutes. Still worth it for the 199 other signups that went nowhere.

Q: Any temp mail services you'd avoid?

A: The ones that plaster your screen with ads or pop-ups. If a free service is that desperate to monetize, I don't trust them with even temporary inbox data.

TL;DR

If your job involves evaluating lots of tools, downloading industry content, or generally staying current in a fast-moving space, temp mail is basically required for sanity.

I spent years polluting my work inbox with marketing emails from products I tested for 5 minutes. Now I don't.

Small change. Big impact.

What's your system for managing the signup overload? Always curious how other PMs handle this.