Sending email through Gmail SMTP server with C#

Question

CVertex, make sure to review your code, and, if that doesn't reveal anything, post it. I was just enabling this on a test ASP.NET site I was working on, and it works.

Actually, at some point I had an issue on my code. I didn't spot it until I had a simpler version on a console program and saw it was working (no change on the Gmail side as you were worried about). The below code works just like the samples you referred to:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Net.Mail;
using System.Net;

namespace ConsoleApplication2
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            var client = new SmtpClient("smtp.gmail.com", 587)
            {
                Credentials = new NetworkCredential("[email protected]", "mypwd"),
                EnableSsl = true
            };
            client.Send("[email protected]", "[email protected]", "test", "testbody");
            Console.WriteLine("Sent");
            Console.ReadLine();
        }
    }
}

I also got it working using a combination of web.config, http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/w355a94k.aspx and code (because there is no matching EnableSsl in the configuration file :( ).

2021 Update

By default you will also need to enable access for "less secure apps" in your gmail settings page: google.com/settings/security/lesssecureapps. This is necessary if you are getting the exception "`The server response was: 5.5.1 Authentication Required. – thanks to @Ravendarksky

THE FOLLOWING WILL ALMOST CERTAINLY BE THE ANSWER TO YOUR QUESTION IF ALL ELSE HAS FAILED:

I got the exact same error, it turns out Google's new password strength measuring algorithm has changed deeming my current password as too weak, and not telling me a thing about it (not even a message or warning)... How did I discover this? Well, I chose to change my password to see if it would help (tried everything else to no avail) and when I changed my password, it worked!

Then, for an experiment, I tried changing my password back to my previous password to see what would happen, and Gmail didn't actually allow me to do this, citing the reason "sorry we cannot allow you to save this change as your chosen password is too weak" and wouldn't let me go back to my old password. I figured from this that it was erroring out because either a) you need to change your password once every x amount of months or b). As I said before, their password strength algorithms changed and therefore the weak password I had was not accepted, even though they did not say anything about this when trying to login ANYWHERE! This (number 2) is the most likely scenario, as my weak password was about 4 months old, and it let me use it in Gmail.

It's pretty bad that they said nothing about this, but it makes sense. Because most hijacked emails are logged into using software outside of gmail, and I'm guessing you are required to have a stronger password if you want to use Gmail outside of the Gmail environment.

In addition to the other troubleshooting steps above, I would also like to add that if you have enabled two-factor authentication (also known as two-step verification) on your GMail account, you must generate an application-specific password and use that newly generated password to authenticate via SMTP.

To create one, visit: https://www.google.com/settings/ and choose Authorizing applications & sites to generate the password.

Turn On Access For Less Secure Apps and it will work for all no need to change password.

Link to Gmail Setting

I've had some problems sending emails from my gmail account too, which were due to several of the aforementioned situations. Here's a summary of how I got it working, and keeping it flexible at the same time:

• First of all setup your GMail account:
  • Enable IMAP and assert the right maximum number of messages (you can do so here)
  • Make sure your password is at least 7 characters and is strong (according to Google)
  • Make sure you don't have to enter a captcha code first. You can do so by sending a test email from your browser.
• Make changes in web.config (or app.config, I haven't tried that yet but I assume it's just as easy to make it work in a windows application):

<configuration>
    <appSettings>
        <add key="EnableSSLOnMail" value="True"/>   
    </appSettings>

    <!-- other settings --> 

    ...

    <!-- system.net settings -->
    <system.net>
        <mailSettings>
            <smtp from="[email protected]" deliveryMethod="Network">
                <network 
                    defaultCredentials="false" 
                    host="smtp.gmail.com" 
                    port="587" 
                    password="stR0ngPassW0rd" 
                    userName="[email protected]"
                    />
                <!-- When using .Net 4.0 (or later) add attribute: enableSsl="true" and you're all set-->
            </smtp>
        </mailSettings>
    </system.net>
</configuration>

Add a Class to your project:

Imports System.Net.Mail

Public Class SSLMail

    Public Shared Sub SendMail(ByVal e As System.Web.UI.WebControls.MailMessageEventArgs)

        GetSmtpClient.Send(e.Message)

        'Since the message is sent here, set cancel=true so the original SmtpClient will not try to send the message too:
        e.Cancel = True

    End Sub

    Public Shared Sub SendMail(ByVal Msg As MailMessage)
        GetSmtpClient.Send(Msg)
    End Sub

    Public Shared Function GetSmtpClient() As SmtpClient

        Dim smtp As New Net.Mail.SmtpClient
        'Read EnableSSL setting from web.config
        smtp.EnableSsl = CBool(ConfigurationManager.AppSettings("EnableSSLOnMail"))
        Return smtp
    End Function

End Class

And now whenever you want to send emails all you need to do is call SSLMail.SendMail:

e.g. in a Page with a PasswordRecovery control:

Partial Class RecoverPassword
Inherits System.Web.UI.Page

Protected Sub RecoverPwd_SendingMail(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.Web.UI.WebControls.MailMessageEventArgs) Handles RecoverPwd.SendingMail
    e.Message.Bcc.Add("[email protected]")
    SSLMail.SendMail(e)
End Sub

End Class

Or anywhere in your code you can call:

SSLMail.SendMail(New system.Net.Mail.MailMessage("[email protected]","[email protected]", "Subject", "Body"})

I hope this helps anyone who runs into this post! (I used VB.NET but I think it's trivial to convert it to any .NET language.)

Oh...It's amazing... First I Couldn't send an email for any reasons. But after I changed the sequence of these two lines as below, it works perfectly.

//(1)
client.UseDefaultCredentials = true;
//(2)
client.Credentials = new System.Net.NetworkCredential("[email protected]", "password");

Dim SMTPClientObj As New Net.Mail.SmtpClient
SMTPClientObj.UseDefaultCredentials = False
SMTPClientObj.Credentials = New System.Net.NetworkCredential("[email protected]", "mypwd")
SMTPClientObj.Host = "smtp.gmail.com"
SMTPClientObj.Port = 587
SMTPClientObj.EnableSsl = True
SMTPClientObj.Send("[email protected]","[email protected]","test","testbody")

If you get an error like "The SMTP server requires a secure connection or the client was not authenticated. The server response was: 5.5.1 Authentication Required. Learn more at" as I get before this, make sure the line SMTPClientObj.UseDefaultCredentials = False included and this line should before the SMTPClientObj.Credentials.

I did try to switch these 2 lines the opposite way and the 5.5.1 Authentication Required error returned.