How to send email via Django?

Question

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 = '[email protected]'
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

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.

1. Create a project: django-admin.py startproject gmail

2. Edit settings.py with code below:

   EMAIL_BACKEND = 'django.core.mail.backends.smtp.EmailBackend'
   EMAIL_USE_TLS = True
   EMAIL_HOST = 'smtp.gmail.com'
   EMAIL_HOST_USER = '[email protected]'
   EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD = 'email_password'
   EMAIL_PORT = 587
   

3. Run interactive mode: python manage.py shell

4. Import the EmailMessage module:

   from django.core.mail import EmailMessage
   

5. Send the email:

   email = EmailMessage('Subject', 'Body', to=['[email protected]'])
   email.send()
   

For more informations, check send_mail and EmailMessage features in documents.

UPDATE for Gmail

Also if you have problems sending email via gmail remember to check this guides from google.

In your Google account settings, go to Security > Account permissions > Access for less secure apps and enable this option.

Also create an App specific password for your gmail after you've turned on 2-step-verification for it.

Then you should use app specific password in settings. So change the following line:

    EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD = 'your_email_app_specific_password'

Also if you're interested to send HTML email, check this out.

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 = '[email protected]'

#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

My site is hosted on Godaddy and I have a 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 = '[email protected]'
EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD = 'abcdef'
DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL = '[email protected]'
SERVER_EMAIL = '[email protected]'
EMAIL_PORT = 25
EMAIL_USE_TLS = False

In shell:

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

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

• What is the meaning of domain.com?