Update of 2019-08-25:original post wrote:Now that spamgourmet will be shutting down, I'm looking into alternatives. Of course, a complete spamgourmet replacement doesn't exist, but I found a few services which seem to come close:
https://e4ward.com
https://trashmail.com
https://www.burnermail.io
All three can be used free of charge, but they require payment in order to use them at the scale that spamgourmet offers.
The privacy policy is short and seems decent enough in all three, especially E4ward and TrashMail.
All three forward emails to your real email address, including attachments (I think, not 100% sure about Burner Mail), and allow you to keep the disposable addresses indefinitely (if you pay).
All three can mask your real email address when you reply to a forwarded email.
TrashMail can let you send an email from a disposable address without requiring a reply. From the documentation, it seems that you can only do this by filling in a web form, not by using your regular email client. The E4ward documentation mentions sending email from a disposable address, but doesn't explain how it works. Burner Mail might not be able to initiate new email from a disposable address.
All three let you pick from multiple domains if you pay. In the case of E4ward, that's either *.e4ward.com or "bring your own domain".
All three require you to manually create a disposable address before using it. E4ward however has a "catch-all" option.
I found these alternatives in the following lists:
https://tempmailx.com (has a handy feature summary per option)
https://alternativeto.net/software/spamgourmet/ (very long list)
If anyone has other tips, please share them here!
Since I wrote the above, I've learned some things. I'm sorting the main options by my opinion, best on top.
1. spamgourmet
Is not actually shutting down, for the time being.
Is open source so you can run your own spamgourmet. Although I should add that this is quite complicated.
2. erine.email by forum member plops
There is currently one issue with erine.email which makes me think it is not completely ready to use. I already reported this to plops and I'm hopeful that he will fix it, or that he'll accept contributions to fix it.
Issue aside, this is actually a very close match to spamgourmet. It creates addresses automatically when first receiving email on them, like spamgourmet. It also lets you send emails through erine.email by using a special email address, without requiring an email from the recipient to reply to ("first-shot"). Contrary to spamgourmet, it does not limit the number of emails that can be received on an address. For this reason, it also doesn't let you set exclusive senders for specific addresses. You can manually disable addresses in case they get compromised. I think this actually fits my usage of spamgourmet better than spamgourmet itself; I would need to manage my addresses much less in this way.
It is open source as well, so you can install your own instance and use it with your own domain name. Installation is also relatively easy. The address manager web interface is not yet included with the open source, but plops agreed to work towards including it.
The rest of the options are closed source and require payment in order to come anywhere near spamgourmet's functionality.
3. TrashMail ($22 or €19 a year to make addresses last longer than 10 emails/1 month and to first-shot)
This one works pretty well. If you don't mind manually creating every address in advance, it can be a complete-ish replacement for spamgourmet. I was also able to email with the developer, although he wasn't interested in removing the need to manually create each address. A slight concern is that the password of my (free) testing account, which I saved to a password manager, somehow became invalid after a few days. I could regain access to the account through a password reset email, however.
4. Burner Mail ($30 a year to have more than 5 addresses and to be able to reply)
It works, but when I sent a GPG-signed email to a burner address, the GPG signature became invalid. This is, however, only relevant to people who want to use GPG with their disposable email service. Like in TrashMail, you have to create addresses manually before using them. On the plus side, the developers are very approachable. The site also has a section (only visible to users) where you can submit feature requests and see the feature requests that other people already submitted, with a status (such as "planned"). Through this section, I learned that first-shot emailing from a Burner address (i.e., sending before you've received an email to reply to) is a planned feature. The developers also confirmed this by email and seemed to be planning to start on it very soon.
5. 33mail ($12 a year in order to be able to reply)
I didn't actually test this one, but it is mentioned often in this thread so I decided to study their FAQ and their pricing table.
Like spamgourmet and erine.email, it automatically creates addresses when you first receive email on them. I have the impression, however, that you cannot send email from your 33mail address unless you already received an email to reply to.
6. E4ward ($12 a year to enable the catch-all)
When sending some emails to myself and replying to them, I found that my real address was exposed in the headers of the reply email. I wanted to contact the creator about it, but the only way to do so that I could find was an online support ticket system. The ticket system required that I'd enter my name and an email address. It was not clear to me whether my email address would be published. I decided not to try it.
