Sending mail from Python using SMTP

Question

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()

Make sure you get the Date/Time correct. I found the following function quite useful, that gives you a perfectly formatted value for the Date-Header: docs.python.org/py3k/library/… — BastiBen
– BastiBen, Commented Jul 30, 2010 at 6:11
here's a code example that allows to send email with Unicode text in subject and/or in body — jfs
– jfs, Commented Dec 26, 2013 at 18:10
here's a code example that demonstrate how to send images inline (plus email with both html and plain text parts). It also shows how to configure ssl parameters on old Python versions. — jfs
– jfs, Commented Dec 26, 2013 at 18:11
Note that there are wrapper libraries available that make it a lot less code to send emails (such as yagmail) — PascalVKooten
– PascalVKooten, Commented Apr 17, 2015 at 23:57
Does this answer your question? How to send an email with Python? — Serge Stroobandt
– Serge Stroobandt, Commented Aug 20, 2021 at 9:32

Benjamin Loison · Accepted Answer · 2024-11-12 20:45:34Z

The script I use is quite similar; I post it here as an example of how to use the email.* modules to generate MIME messages; so this script can be easily modified to attach pictures, etc.

I rely on my ISP to add the date time header.

My ISP requires me to use a secure smtp connection to send mail, I rely on the smtplib module (downloadable at http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/~db2501/ssmtplib.py)

As in your script, the username and password, (given dummy values below), used to authenticate on the SMTP server, are in plain text in the source. This is a security weakness; but the best alternative depends on how careful you need (want?) to be about protecting these.

=======================================

#! /usr/local/bin/python


SMTPserver = 'smtp.att.yahoo.com'
sender =     'me@my_email_domain.net'
destination = ['recipient@her_email_domain.com']

USERNAME = "USER_NAME_FOR_INTERNET_SERVICE_PROVIDER"
PASSWORD = "PASSWORD_INTERNET_SERVICE_PROVIDER"

# typical values for text_subtype are plain, html, xml
text_subtype = 'plain'


content="""\
Test message
"""

subject="Sent from Python"

import sys

from smtplib import SMTP_SSL as SMTP       # this invokes the secure SMTP protocol (port 465, uses SSL)
# from smtplib import SMTP                  # use this for standard SMTP protocol   (port 25, no encryption)

# old version
# from email.MIMEText import MIMEText
from email.mime.text import MIMEText

try:
    msg = MIMEText(content, text_subtype)
    msg['Subject']=       subject
    msg['From']   = sender # some SMTP servers will do this automatically, not all
    
    conn = SMTP(SMTPserver)
    conn.set_debuglevel(False)
    conn.login(USERNAME, PASSWORD)
    try:
        conn.sendmail(sender, destination, msg.as_string())
    finally:
        conn.quit()
        
except:
    sys.exit( "mail failed; %s" % "CUSTOM_ERROR" ) # give an error message

@Vincent: mail failed; 'module' object has no attribute 'SSLFakeSocket' - using Gmail :(
This sounds like a version or import problem, to help track it down: What version Python are you running? -- Do you need to connect to your SMTP server over SSL (and if so are you importing ssmtplib, as above)? Can you import smtplib directly from python interactive, if so, is there a smtplib.SSLFakeSocket class defined? Hope I can help
Use smtplib.SMTP_SSL (standard in latest versions of Python) to create the connection instead of ssmtplib.STMP_SSL (third party module hinted above). Notice the standard module begins with a single 's'. That worked for me.
replace from ssmtplib import SMTP_SSL as SMTP with from smtplib import SMTP_SSL as SMTP, and this example would work from the standard Python library.
Add msg['To'] = ','.join(destination), Otherwise destination is not viewed in gmail

madman2890 · Accepted Answer · 2013-08-05 22:21:30Z

117

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

edited Aug 5, 2013 at 22:21

answered Jul 11, 2013 at 14:59

madman2890

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3 Comments

Suzana Over a year ago

If you use 2 Step Verification, you have to create an App specific password first and replace your normal password with it. See Sign in using App Passwords

SmallChess Over a year ago

I agree, this is the best answer and should be accepted. The one which is actually accepted is inferior.

art Over a year ago

For python3, use: from email.mime.multipart import MIMEMultipart from email.mime.text import MIMEText

mandric · Accepted Answer · 2008-11-08 20:12:26Z

24

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')
...

answered Nov 8, 2008 at 20:12

mandric

Comments

Satish · Accepted Answer · 2012-06-27 14:31:09Z

8

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()

answered Jun 27, 2012 at 14:31

Satish

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Comments

Community · Accepted Answer · 2022-06-23 21:03:33Z

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()
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/

Mark Ransom · Accepted Answer · 2008-09-15 16:55:57Z

6

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.

answered Sep 15, 2008 at 16:55

Mark Ransom

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Comments

Robert Lujo · Accepted Answer · 2020-03-03 16:04:37Z

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:

login to google mail/account
go to: https://myaccount.google.com/lesssecureapps
enable
send email using this function or similar
(recommended) go to: https://myaccount.google.com/lesssecureapps
(recommended) disable

Note that from May 30, 2022 you must use two-step auth to connect to your google account. Allowing access to less secured apps is not a thing anymore :)

moo · Accepted Answer · 2021-10-22 22:23:31Z

6

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.

edited Oct 22, 2021 at 22:23

moo

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answered Sep 15, 2008 at 16:43

pjz

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Comments

Milovan Tomašević · Accepted Answer · 2021-01-22 22:01:45Z

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.

Hariharan AR · Accepted Answer · 2019-04-02 10:55:20Z

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()

Douglas Leeder · Accepted Answer · 2008-09-15 16:46:00Z

3

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

answered Sep 15, 2008 at 16:46

Douglas Leeder

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Comments

foodog123 · Accepted Answer · 2022-11-11 14:29:00Z

Based on madman2890, updated a few things as well as removed the need for mailserver.quit()

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

with smtplib.SMTP('smtp-mail.outlook.com',587) as mail_server:
    # identify ourselves to smtp gmail client
    mail_server.ehlo()
    # secure our email with tls encryption
    mail_server.starttls()
    # re-identify ourselves as an encrypted connection
    mail_server.ehlo()
    mail_server.login('[email protected]', 'mypassword')
    mail_server.sendmail('[email protected]','[email protected]',msg.as_string())

PascalVKooten · Accepted Answer · 2015-06-19 19:40:57Z

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.

@PascalvKoolen I installed yagmail, and tried connecting by giving my email id and password. but it gave me an authentication error
keyring missing: NameError: name 'keyring' is not defined. Use: pip install keyring.

Skiller Dz · Accepted Answer · 2018-05-08 09:38:03Z

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)

Mark · Accepted Answer · 2018-08-03 22:39:23Z

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)))

miksus · Accepted Answer · 2022-06-25 09:30:11Z

What about Red Mail?

Install it:

pip install redmail

Then just:

from redmail import EmailSender

# Configure the sender
email = EmailSender(
    host="YOUR.MAIL.SERVER", 
    port=26,
    username='[email protected]',
    password='<PASSWORD>'
)

# Send an email:
email.send(
    subject="An example email",
    sender="[email protected]",
    receivers=['[email protected]'],
    text="Hello!",
    html="<h1>Hello!</h1>"
)

It has quite a lot of features:

Links:

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