3 Sample PHP Scripts for Sending Emails

PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) is an easier programming language used for faster development. The PHP mail() function allows sending emails directly from a script. This function returns true for the successful delivery of email, otherwise returns false.

PHP mail() function uses sendmail_path value from ini file. For Unix systems the default value is used as /usr/sbin/sendmail or /usr/lib/sendmail. Systems not running with Sendmail should set this directive to other mail replacements like /var/qmail/bin/sendmail for Qmail.

In this article, you will learn 3 methods of sending emails using sample PHP scripts.

1. Simple PHP script for sending emails
2. Send email using PHP with HTML format
3. Sending emails using PHP via remote SMTP server

1. Simple PHP Script for Sending Emails

Lets create a PHP file sendEmail.php in your web document root with following content. Change the $to_email with your recipient email address, $subject, and $body as per your need, Keep as it is for testing purposes, $from_email with a sender email address.

nano sendEmail.php 

Add the following sample PHP code for sending emails:

Now we can test it by access in a web browser or simply execute it from the command line like below.

php sendEmail.php 

Output:
Email successfully sent to [email protected]

2. Send Email using PHP in HTML Format

In the previous example, we executed the PHP script via the command line. Let’s try another example to create a web form and send an email with a PHP script.

Assuming you already have a website hosted on a server enabled with PHP. Create a PHP script sendEmail.php under the website document root of your domain with following content. This will show a simple form in the browser, using that we can also send an email for testing purposes.

Now access sendEmail.php in the web browser

 http://localhost/sendEmail.php

A form will be displayed with input fields. Fill in all the fields and hit the Send Email button to submit the form. On submission, the PHP script added in the form will send the email.

3. Sending Emails using PHP via Remote SMTP Server

You can also use a remote SMTP server for sending emails using PHP applications. In order to use these options, you must have remote SMTP server access like Gmail, Amazon SES, Sendgrid, etc. We will use the PHPMailer module in PHP script for sending emails via a remote SMTP server.

First of all, You need to Install the phpmailer module using composer under your application.

composer require phpmailer/phpmailer 

Conclusion

In this tutorial, You have learned 3 methods of sending emails via PHP scripts. You can get more information about PHP mail() function from its official website.