[python] Sending mail from Python using SMTP

I'm using the following method to send mail from Python using SMTP. Is it the right method to use or are there gotchas I'm missing ?

from smtplib import SMTP
import datetime

debuglevel = 0

smtp = SMTP()
smtp.set_debuglevel(debuglevel)
smtp.connect('YOUR.MAIL.SERVER', 26)
smtp.login('USERNAME@DOMAIN', 'PASSWORD')

from_addr = "John Doe <[email protected]>"
to_addr = "[email protected]"

subj = "hello"
date = datetime.datetime.now().strftime( "%d/%m/%Y %H:%M" )

message_text = "Hello\nThis is a mail from your server\n\nBye\n"

msg = "From: %s\nTo: %s\nSubject: %s\nDate: %s\n\n%s" 
        % ( from_addr, to_addr, subj, date, message_text )

smtp.sendmail(from_addr, to_addr, msg)
smtp.quit()

This question is related to python smtp

The answer is


The main gotcha I see is that you're not handling any errors: .login() and .sendmail() both have documented exceptions that they can throw, and it seems like .connect() must have some way to indicate that it was unable to connect - probably an exception thrown by the underlying socket code.


See all those lenghty answers? Please allow me to self promote by doing it all in a couple of lines.

Import and Connect:

import yagmail
yag = yagmail.SMTP('[email protected]', host = 'YOUR.MAIL.SERVER', port = 26)

Then it is just a one-liner:

yag.send('[email protected]', 'hello', 'Hello\nThis is a mail from your server\n\nBye\n')

It will actually close when it goes out of scope (or can be closed manually). Furthermore, it will allow you to register your username in your keyring such that you do not have to write out your password in your script (it really bothered me prior to writing yagmail!)

For the package/installation, tips and tricks please look at git or pip, available for both Python 2 and 3.


You should make sure you format the date in the correct format - RFC2822.


Make sure you don't have any firewalls blocking SMTP. The first time I tried to send an email, it was blocked both by Windows Firewall and McAfee - took forever to find them both.


The example code which i did for send mail using SMTP.

import smtplib, ssl

smtp_server = "smtp.gmail.com"
port = 587  # For starttls
sender_email = "sender@email"
receiver_email = "receiver@email"
password = "<your password here>"
message = """ Subject: Hi there

This message is sent from Python."""


# Create a secure SSL context
context = ssl.create_default_context()

# Try to log in to server and send email
server = smtplib.SMTP(smtp_server,port)

try:
    server.ehlo() # Can be omitted
    server.starttls(context=context) # Secure the connection
    server.ehlo() # Can be omitted
    server.login(sender_email, password)
    server.sendmail(sender_email, receiver_email, message)
except Exception as e:
    # Print any error messages to stdout
    print(e)
finally:
    server.quit()

The main gotcha I see is that you're not handling any errors: .login() and .sendmail() both have documented exceptions that they can throw, and it seems like .connect() must have some way to indicate that it was unable to connect - probably an exception thrown by the underlying socket code.


The method I commonly use...not much different but a little bit

import smtplib
from email.MIMEMultipart import MIMEMultipart
from email.MIMEText import MIMEText

msg = MIMEMultipart()
msg['From'] = '[email protected]'
msg['To'] = '[email protected]'
msg['Subject'] = 'simple email in python'
message = 'here is the email'
msg.attach(MIMEText(message))

mailserver = smtplib.SMTP('smtp.gmail.com',587)
# identify ourselves to smtp gmail client
mailserver.ehlo()
# secure our email with tls encryption
mailserver.starttls()
# re-identify ourselves as an encrypted connection
mailserver.ehlo()
mailserver.login('[email protected]', 'mypassword')

mailserver.sendmail('[email protected]','[email protected]',msg.as_string())

mailserver.quit()

That's it


The main gotcha I see is that you're not handling any errors: .login() and .sendmail() both have documented exceptions that they can throw, and it seems like .connect() must have some way to indicate that it was unable to connect - probably an exception thrown by the underlying socket code.


What about this?

import smtplib

SERVER = "localhost"

FROM = "[email protected]"
TO = ["[email protected]"] # must be a list

SUBJECT = "Hello!"

TEXT = "This message was sent with Python's smtplib."

# Prepare actual message

message = """\
From: %s
To: %s
Subject: %s

%s
""" % (FROM, ", ".join(TO), SUBJECT, TEXT)

# Send the mail

server = smtplib.SMTP(SERVER)
server.sendmail(FROM, TO, message)
server.quit()

Make sure you don't have any firewalls blocking SMTP. The first time I tried to send an email, it was blocked both by Windows Firewall and McAfee - took forever to find them both.


Here's a working example for Python 3.x

#!/usr/bin/env python3

from email.message import EmailMessage
from getpass import getpass
from smtplib import SMTP_SSL
from sys import exit

smtp_server = 'smtp.gmail.com'
username = '[email protected]'
password = getpass('Enter Gmail password: ')

sender = '[email protected]'
destination = '[email protected]'
subject = 'Sent from Python 3.x'
content = 'Hello! This was sent to you via Python 3.x!'

# Create a text/plain message
msg = EmailMessage()
msg.set_content(content)

msg['Subject'] = subject
msg['From'] = sender
msg['To'] = destination

try:
    s = SMTP_SSL(smtp_server)
    s.login(username, password)
    try:
        s.send_message(msg)
    finally:
        s.quit()

except Exception as E:
    exit('Mail failed: {}'.format(str(E)))

Also if you want to do smtp auth with TLS as opposed to SSL then you just have to change the port (use 587) and do smtp.starttls(). This worked for me:

...
smtp.connect('YOUR.MAIL.SERVER', 587)
smtp.ehlo()
smtp.starttls()
smtp.ehlo()
smtp.login('USERNAME@DOMAIN', 'PASSWORD')
...

you can do like that

import smtplib
from email.mime.text import MIMEText
from email.header import Header


server = smtplib.SMTP('mail.servername.com', 25)
server.ehlo()
server.starttls()

server.login('username', 'password')
from = '[email protected]'
to = '[email protected]'
body = 'That A Message For My Girl Friend For tell Him If We will go to eat Something This Nigth'
subject = 'Invite to A Diner'
msg = MIMEText(body,'plain','utf-8')
msg['Subject'] = Header(subject, 'utf-8')
msg['From'] = Header(from, 'utf-8')
msg['To'] = Header(to, 'utf-8')
message = msg.as_string()
server.sendmail(from, to, message)

following code is working fine for me:

import smtplib

to = '[email protected]'
gmail_user = '[email protected]'
gmail_pwd = 'yourpassword'
smtpserver = smtplib.SMTP("smtp.gmail.com",587)
smtpserver.ehlo()
smtpserver.starttls()
smtpserver.ehlo() # extra characters to permit edit
smtpserver.login(gmail_user, gmail_pwd)
header = 'To:' + to + '\n' + 'From: ' + gmail_user + '\n' + 'Subject:testing \n'
print header
msg = header + '\n this is test msg from mkyong.com \n\n'
smtpserver.sendmail(gmail_user, to, msg)
print 'done!'
smtpserver.quit()

Ref: http://www.mkyong.com/python/how-do-send-email-in-python-via-smtplib/


Or

import smtplib
 
from email.message import EmailMessage
from getpass import getpass


password = getpass()

message = EmailMessage()
message.set_content('Message content here')
message['Subject'] = 'Your subject here'
message['From'] = "USERNAME@DOMAIN"
message['To'] = "[email protected]"

try:
    smtp_server = None
    smtp_server = smtplib.SMTP("YOUR.MAIL.SERVER", 587)
    smtp_server.ehlo()
    smtp_server.starttls()
    smtp_server.ehlo()
    smtp_server.login("USERNAME@DOMAIN", password)
    smtp_server.send_message(message)
except Exception as e:
    print("Error: ", str(e))
finally:
    if smtp_server is not None:
        smtp_server.quit()

If you want to use Port 465 you have to create an SMTP_SSL object.


You should make sure you format the date in the correct format - RFC2822.


What about this?

import smtplib

SERVER = "localhost"

FROM = "[email protected]"
TO = ["[email protected]"] # must be a list

SUBJECT = "Hello!"

TEXT = "This message was sent with Python's smtplib."

# Prepare actual message

message = """\
From: %s
To: %s
Subject: %s

%s
""" % (FROM, ", ".join(TO), SUBJECT, TEXT)

# Send the mail

server = smtplib.SMTP(SERVER)
server.sendmail(FROM, TO, message)
server.quit()

Here's a working example for Python 3.x

#!/usr/bin/env python3

from email.message import EmailMessage
from getpass import getpass
from smtplib import SMTP_SSL
from sys import exit

smtp_server = 'smtp.gmail.com'
username = '[email protected]'
password = getpass('Enter Gmail password: ')

sender = '[email protected]'
destination = '[email protected]'
subject = 'Sent from Python 3.x'
content = 'Hello! This was sent to you via Python 3.x!'

# Create a text/plain message
msg = EmailMessage()
msg.set_content(content)

msg['Subject'] = subject
msg['From'] = sender
msg['To'] = destination

try:
    s = SMTP_SSL(smtp_server)
    s.login(username, password)
    try:
        s.send_message(msg)
    finally:
        s.quit()

except Exception as E:
    exit('Mail failed: {}'.format(str(E)))

Based on this example I made following function:

import smtplib
from email.mime.multipart import MIMEMultipart
from email.mime.text import MIMEText

def send_email(host, port, user, pwd, recipients, subject, body, html=None, from_=None):
    """ copied and adapted from
        https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10147455/how-to-send-an-email-with-gmail-as-provider-using-python#12424439
    returns None if all ok, but if problem then returns exception object
    """

    PORT_LIST = (25, 587, 465)

    FROM = from_ if from_ else user 
    TO = recipients if isinstance(recipients, (list, tuple)) else [recipients]
    SUBJECT = subject
    TEXT = body.encode("utf8") if isinstance(body, unicode) else body
    HTML = html.encode("utf8") if isinstance(html, unicode) else html

    if not html:
        # Prepare actual message
        message = """From: %s\nTo: %s\nSubject: %s\n\n%s
        """ % (FROM, ", ".join(TO), SUBJECT, TEXT)
    else:
                # https://stackoverflow.com/questions/882712/sending-html-email-using-python#882770
        msg = MIMEMultipart('alternative')
        msg['Subject'] = SUBJECT
        msg['From'] = FROM
        msg['To'] = ", ".join(TO)

        # Record the MIME types of both parts - text/plain and text/html.
        # utf-8 -> https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5910104/python-how-to-send-utf-8-e-mail#5910530
        part1 = MIMEText(TEXT, 'plain', "utf-8")
        part2 = MIMEText(HTML, 'html', "utf-8")

        # Attach parts into message container.
        # According to RFC 2046, the last part of a multipart message, in this case
        # the HTML message, is best and preferred.
        msg.attach(part1)
        msg.attach(part2)

        message = msg.as_string()


    try:
        if port not in PORT_LIST: 
            raise Exception("Port %s not one of %s" % (port, PORT_LIST))

        if port in (465,):
            server = smtplib.SMTP_SSL(host, port)
        else:
            server = smtplib.SMTP(host, port)

        # optional
        server.ehlo()

        if port in (587,): 
            server.starttls()

        server.login(user, pwd)
        server.sendmail(FROM, TO, message)
        server.close()
        # logger.info("SENT_EMAIL to %s: %s" % (recipients, subject))
    except Exception, ex:
        return ex

    return None

if you pass only body then plain text mail will be sent, but if you pass html argument along with body argument, html email will be sent (with fallback to text content for email clients that don't support html/mime types).

Example usage:

ex = send_email(
      host        = 'smtp.gmail.com'
   #, port        = 465 # OK
    , port        = 587  #OK
    , user        = "[email protected]"
    , pwd         = "xxx"
    , from_       = '[email protected]'
    , recipients  = ['[email protected]']
    , subject     = "Test from python"
    , body        = "Test from python - body"
    )
if ex: 
    print("Mail sending failed: %s" % ex)
else:
    print("OK - mail sent"

Btw. If you want to use gmail as testing or production SMTP server, enable temp or permanent access to less secured apps:


following code is working fine for me:

import smtplib

to = '[email protected]'
gmail_user = '[email protected]'
gmail_pwd = 'yourpassword'
smtpserver = smtplib.SMTP("smtp.gmail.com",587)
smtpserver.ehlo()
smtpserver.starttls()
smtpserver.ehlo() # extra characters to permit edit
smtpserver.login(gmail_user, gmail_pwd)
header = 'To:' + to + '\n' + 'From: ' + gmail_user + '\n' + 'Subject:testing \n'
print header
msg = header + '\n this is test msg from mkyong.com \n\n'
smtpserver.sendmail(gmail_user, to, msg)
print 'done!'
smtpserver.quit()

Ref: http://www.mkyong.com/python/how-do-send-email-in-python-via-smtplib/


you can do like that

import smtplib
from email.mime.text import MIMEText
from email.header import Header


server = smtplib.SMTP('mail.servername.com', 25)
server.ehlo()
server.starttls()

server.login('username', 'password')
from = '[email protected]'
to = '[email protected]'
body = 'That A Message For My Girl Friend For tell Him If We will go to eat Something This Nigth'
subject = 'Invite to A Diner'
msg = MIMEText(body,'plain','utf-8')
msg['Subject'] = Header(subject, 'utf-8')
msg['From'] = Header(from, 'utf-8')
msg['To'] = Header(to, 'utf-8')
message = msg.as_string()
server.sendmail(from, to, message)

Make sure you don't have any firewalls blocking SMTP. The first time I tried to send an email, it was blocked both by Windows Firewall and McAfee - took forever to find them both.


The method I commonly use...not much different but a little bit

import smtplib
from email.MIMEMultipart import MIMEMultipart
from email.MIMEText import MIMEText

msg = MIMEMultipart()
msg['From'] = '[email protected]'
msg['To'] = '[email protected]'
msg['Subject'] = 'simple email in python'
message = 'here is the email'
msg.attach(MIMEText(message))

mailserver = smtplib.SMTP('smtp.gmail.com',587)
# identify ourselves to smtp gmail client
mailserver.ehlo()
# secure our email with tls encryption
mailserver.starttls()
# re-identify ourselves as an encrypted connection
mailserver.ehlo()
mailserver.login('[email protected]', 'mypassword')

mailserver.sendmail('[email protected]','[email protected]',msg.as_string())

mailserver.quit()

That's it


See all those lenghty answers? Please allow me to self promote by doing it all in a couple of lines.

Import and Connect:

import yagmail
yag = yagmail.SMTP('[email protected]', host = 'YOUR.MAIL.SERVER', port = 26)

Then it is just a one-liner:

yag.send('[email protected]', 'hello', 'Hello\nThis is a mail from your server\n\nBye\n')

It will actually close when it goes out of scope (or can be closed manually). Furthermore, it will allow you to register your username in your keyring such that you do not have to write out your password in your script (it really bothered me prior to writing yagmail!)

For the package/installation, tips and tricks please look at git or pip, available for both Python 2 and 3.


You should make sure you format the date in the correct format - RFC2822.


Make sure you don't have any firewalls blocking SMTP. The first time I tried to send an email, it was blocked both by Windows Firewall and McAfee - took forever to find them both.


Based on this example I made following function:

import smtplib
from email.mime.multipart import MIMEMultipart
from email.mime.text import MIMEText

def send_email(host, port, user, pwd, recipients, subject, body, html=None, from_=None):
    """ copied and adapted from
        https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10147455/how-to-send-an-email-with-gmail-as-provider-using-python#12424439
    returns None if all ok, but if problem then returns exception object
    """

    PORT_LIST = (25, 587, 465)

    FROM = from_ if from_ else user 
    TO = recipients if isinstance(recipients, (list, tuple)) else [recipients]
    SUBJECT = subject
    TEXT = body.encode("utf8") if isinstance(body, unicode) else body
    HTML = html.encode("utf8") if isinstance(html, unicode) else html

    if not html:
        # Prepare actual message
        message = """From: %s\nTo: %s\nSubject: %s\n\n%s
        """ % (FROM, ", ".join(TO), SUBJECT, TEXT)
    else:
                # https://stackoverflow.com/questions/882712/sending-html-email-using-python#882770
        msg = MIMEMultipart('alternative')
        msg['Subject'] = SUBJECT
        msg['From'] = FROM
        msg['To'] = ", ".join(TO)

        # Record the MIME types of both parts - text/plain and text/html.
        # utf-8 -> https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5910104/python-how-to-send-utf-8-e-mail#5910530
        part1 = MIMEText(TEXT, 'plain', "utf-8")
        part2 = MIMEText(HTML, 'html', "utf-8")

        # Attach parts into message container.
        # According to RFC 2046, the last part of a multipart message, in this case
        # the HTML message, is best and preferred.
        msg.attach(part1)
        msg.attach(part2)

        message = msg.as_string()


    try:
        if port not in PORT_LIST: 
            raise Exception("Port %s not one of %s" % (port, PORT_LIST))

        if port in (465,):
            server = smtplib.SMTP_SSL(host, port)
        else:
            server = smtplib.SMTP(host, port)

        # optional
        server.ehlo()

        if port in (587,): 
            server.starttls()

        server.login(user, pwd)
        server.sendmail(FROM, TO, message)
        server.close()
        # logger.info("SENT_EMAIL to %s: %s" % (recipients, subject))
    except Exception, ex:
        return ex

    return None

if you pass only body then plain text mail will be sent, but if you pass html argument along with body argument, html email will be sent (with fallback to text content for email clients that don't support html/mime types).

Example usage:

ex = send_email(
      host        = 'smtp.gmail.com'
   #, port        = 465 # OK
    , port        = 587  #OK
    , user        = "[email protected]"
    , pwd         = "xxx"
    , from_       = '[email protected]'
    , recipients  = ['[email protected]']
    , subject     = "Test from python"
    , body        = "Test from python - body"
    )
if ex: 
    print("Mail sending failed: %s" % ex)
else:
    print("OK - mail sent"

Btw. If you want to use gmail as testing or production SMTP server, enable temp or permanent access to less secured apps:


Also if you want to do smtp auth with TLS as opposed to SSL then you just have to change the port (use 587) and do smtp.starttls(). This worked for me:

...
smtp.connect('YOUR.MAIL.SERVER', 587)
smtp.ehlo()
smtp.starttls()
smtp.ehlo()
smtp.login('USERNAME@DOMAIN', 'PASSWORD')
...

Also if you want to do smtp auth with TLS as opposed to SSL then you just have to change the port (use 587) and do smtp.starttls(). This worked for me:

...
smtp.connect('YOUR.MAIL.SERVER', 587)
smtp.ehlo()
smtp.starttls()
smtp.ehlo()
smtp.login('USERNAME@DOMAIN', 'PASSWORD')
...

You should make sure you format the date in the correct format - RFC2822.


Or

import smtplib
 
from email.message import EmailMessage
from getpass import getpass


password = getpass()

message = EmailMessage()
message.set_content('Message content here')
message['Subject'] = 'Your subject here'
message['From'] = "USERNAME@DOMAIN"
message['To'] = "[email protected]"

try:
    smtp_server = None
    smtp_server = smtplib.SMTP("YOUR.MAIL.SERVER", 587)
    smtp_server.ehlo()
    smtp_server.starttls()
    smtp_server.ehlo()
    smtp_server.login("USERNAME@DOMAIN", password)
    smtp_server.send_message(message)
except Exception as e:
    print("Error: ", str(e))
finally:
    if smtp_server is not None:
        smtp_server.quit()

If you want to use Port 465 you have to create an SMTP_SSL object.


Also if you want to do smtp auth with TLS as opposed to SSL then you just have to change the port (use 587) and do smtp.starttls(). This worked for me:

...
smtp.connect('YOUR.MAIL.SERVER', 587)
smtp.ehlo()
smtp.starttls()
smtp.ehlo()
smtp.login('USERNAME@DOMAIN', 'PASSWORD')
...

Examples related to python

programming a servo thru a barometer Is there a way to view two blocks of code from the same file simultaneously in Sublime Text? python variable NameError Why my regexp for hyphenated words doesn't work? Comparing a variable with a string python not working when redirecting from bash script is it possible to add colors to python output? Get Public URL for File - Google Cloud Storage - App Engine (Python) Real time face detection OpenCV, Python xlrd.biffh.XLRDError: Excel xlsx file; not supported Could not load dynamic library 'cudart64_101.dll' on tensorflow CPU-only installation

Examples related to smtp

5.7.57 SMTP - Client was not authenticated to send anonymous mail during MAIL FROM error PHPMailer - SMTP ERROR: Password command failed when send mail from my server php function mail() isn't working Gmail Error :The SMTP server requires a secure connection or the client was not authenticated. The server response was: 5.5.1 Authentication Required "An attempt was made to access a socket in a way forbidden by its access permissions" while using SMTP Getting error while sending email through Gmail SMTP - "Please log in via your web browser and then try again. 534-5.7.14" SmtpException: Unable to read data from the transport connection: net_io_connectionclosed How to configure SMTP settings in web.config Send mail via CMD console Mail not sending with PHPMailer over SSL using SMTP