How to send email via Django?

Question

In my settings.py, I have the following:

EMAIL_BACKEND = 'django.core.mail.backends.smtp.EmailBackend'

# Host for sending e-mail.
EMAIL_HOST = 'localhost'

# Port for sending e-mail.
EMAIL_PORT = 1025

# Optional SMTP authentication information for EMAIL_HOST.
EMAIL_HOST_USER = ''
EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD = ''
EMAIL_USE_TLS = False

My email code:

from django.core.mail import EmailMessage
email = EmailMessage('Hello', 'World', to=['[e-mail]'])
email.send()

Of course, if I setup a debugging server via python -m smtpd -n -c DebuggingServer localhost:1025, I can see the email in my terminal.

However, how do I actually send the email not to the debugging server but to [e-mail]?

After reading your answers, let me get something straight:

1. Can't you use localhost(simple ubuntu pc) to send e-mails?

2. I thought in django 1.3 send_mail() is somewhat deprecated and EmailMessage.send() is used instead?

Answer 1

You need to use smtp as backend in settings.py

EMAIL_BACKEND = 'django.core.mail.backends.smtp.EmailBackend'

If you use backend as console, you will receive output in console

EMAIL_BACKEND = 'django.core.mail.backends.console.EmailBackend'

And also below settings in addition

EMAIL_USE_TLS = True
EMAIL_HOST = 'smtp.gmail.com'
EMAIL_PORT = 587
EMAIL_HOST_USER = '[e-mail]'
EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD = 'password'

If you are using gmail for this, setup 2-step verification and Application specific password and copy and paste that password in above EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD value.

Answer 2

I use Gmail as my SMTP server for Django. Much easier than dealing with postfix or whatever other server. I'm not in the business of managing email servers.

In settings.py:

EMAIL_USE_TLS = True
EMAIL_HOST = 'smtp.gmail.com'
EMAIL_PORT = 587
EMAIL_HOST_USER = '[e-mail]'
EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD = 'password'

NOTE: In 2016 Gmail is not allowing this anymore by default. You can either use an external service like Sendgrid, or you can follow this tutorial from Google to reduce security but allow this option: https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/6010255

Answer 3

I had actually done this from Django a while back. Open up a legitimate GMail account & enter the credentials here. Here's my code -

from email import Encoders
from email.MIMEBase import MIMEBase
from email.MIMEText import MIMEText
from email.MIMEMultipart import MIMEMultipart

def sendmail(to, subject, text, attach=[], mtype='html'):
    ok = True
    gmail_user = settings.EMAIL_HOST_USER
    gmail_pwd  = settings.EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD

    msg = MIMEMultipart('alternative')

    msg['From']    = gmail_user
    msg['To']      = to
    msg['Cc']      = '[e-mail]'
    msg['Subject'] = subject

    msg.attach(MIMEText(text, mtype))

    for a in attach:
        part = MIMEBase('application', 'octet-stream')
        part.set_payload(open(attach, 'rb').read())
        Encoders.encode_base64(part)
        part.add_header('Content-Disposition','attachment; filename="%s"' % os.path.basename(a))
        msg.attach(part)

    try:
        mailServer = smtplib.SMTP("smtp.gmail.com", 687)
        mailServer.ehlo()
        mailServer.starttls()
        mailServer.ehlo()
        mailServer.login(gmail_user, gmail_pwd)
        mailServer.sendmail(gmail_user, [to,msg['Cc']], msg.as_string())
        mailServer.close()
    except:
        ok = False
    return ok

Answer 4

My site is hosted on Godaddy and I have private email registered on the same. These are the settings which worked for me:

In settings.py:

EMAIL_HOST = 'mail.domain.com'
EMAIL_HOST_USER = '[e-mail]'
EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD = 'abcdef'
DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL = '[e-mail]'
SERVER_EMAIL = '[e-mail]'
EMAIL_PORT = 25
EMAIL_USE_TLS = False

In shell:

from django.core.mail import EmailMessage
email = EmailMessage('Subject', 'Body', to=['[e-mail]'])
email.send()

Then I got "1" as the O/P i.e. Success. And I recieved the mail too. :)

Answer 5

Send the email to a real SMTP server. If you don't want to set up your own then you can find companies that will run one for you, such as Google themselves.

Answer 6

For Django version 1.7, if above solutions dont work then try the following

in settings.py add

#For email
EMAIL_BACKEND = 'django.core.mail.backends.smtp.EmailBackend'

EMAIL_USE_TLS = True

EMAIL_HOST = 'smtp.gmail.com'

EMAIL_HOST_USER = '[e-mail]'

#Must generate specific password for your app in [gmail settings][1]
EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD = 'app_specific_password'

EMAIL_PORT = 587

#This did the trick
DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL = EMAIL_HOST_USER

The last line did the trick for django 1.7