How are you testing email workflows in your E2E tests?

I've spent the last few years helping engineering teams with test automation, and one thing I've noticed is that email workflows are still surprisingly difficult to test.

Most teams have mature E2E setups today:

• Playwright or Cypress
• CI/CD pipelines
• Parallel execution
• Cross-browser testing

But when it comes to flows like:

• Email verification
• OTP authentication
• Password resets
• Magic links
• Team invitations

there's usually some custom solution involved.

I've seen teams:

• Use shared inboxes
• Poll Gmail or Outlook APIs
• Run MailHog/Mailpit internally
• Mock email delivery completely
• Skip testing the email part of the journey

What's interesting is that these are often some of the most critical user flows in an application.

If a user can't verify their account or reset their password, the product is effectively broken.

So I'm curious:

*How does your team handle email workflows in E2E tests?
*
A few questions:

Do you test the actual email flow end-to-end?
Do you use a dedicated email testing tool or an internal solution?
What's the biggest pain point you face today?
If you use Playwright, how are you handling OTP and magic-link workflows?

Would love to hear how others are approaching this problem.