In my settings.py, I have the following:

EMAIL_BACKEND = 'django.core.mail.backends.smtp.EmailBackend'

# Host for sending e-mail.
EMAIL_HOST = 'localhost'

# Port for sending e-mail.
EMAIL_PORT = 1025

# Optional SMTP authentication information for EMAIL_HOST.
EMAIL_HOST_USER = ''
EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD = ''
EMAIL_USE_TLS = False

My email code:

from django.core.mail import EmailMessage
email = EmailMessage('Hello', 'World', to=['user@gmail.com'])
email.send()

Of course, if I setup a debugging server via python -m smtpd -n -c DebuggingServer localhost:1025, I can see the email in my terminal.

However, how do I actually send the email not to the debugging server but to user@gmail.com?

After reading your answers, let me get something straight:

1. Can’t you use localhost(simple ubuntu pc) to send e-mails?

2. I thought in django 1.3 send_mail() is somewhat deprecated and EmailMessage.send() is used instead?

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.

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 = 'me@gmail.com'
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

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 = 'youremail@gmail.com'
   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=['your@email.com'])
   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.

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 = 'abc@domain.com'
EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD = 'abcdef'
DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL = 'abc@domain.com'
SERVER_EMAIL = 'abc@domain.com'
EMAIL_PORT = 25
EMAIL_USE_TLS = False

In shell:

from django.core.mail import EmailMessage
email = EmailMessage('Subject', 'Body', to=['def@domain.com'])
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?

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 = 'sender@gmail.com'

#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

You need to use smtp as backend in settings.py

EMAIL_BACKEND = 'django.core.mail.backends.smtp.EmailBackend'

If you use backend as console, you will receive output in console

EMAIL_BACKEND = 'django.core.mail.backends.console.EmailBackend'

And also below settings in addition

EMAIL_USE_TLS = True
EMAIL_HOST = 'smtp.gmail.com'
EMAIL_PORT = 587
EMAIL_HOST_USER = 'urusername@gmail.com'
EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD = 'password'

If you are using gmail for this, setup 2-step verification and Application specific password and copy and paste that password in above EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD value.

I found using SendGrid to be the easiest way to set up sending email with Django. Here’s how it works:

1. Create a SendGrid account (and verify your email)
2. Add the following to your settings.py: EMAIL_HOST = 'smtp.sendgrid.net' EMAIL_HOST_USER = '<your sendgrid username>' EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD = '<your sendgrid password>' EMAIL_PORT = 587 EMAIL_USE_TLS = True

And you’re all set!

To send email:

from django.core.mail import send_mail
send_mail('<Your subject>', '<Your message>', 'from@example.com', ['to@example.com'])

If you want Django to email you whenever there’s a 500 internal server error, add the following to your settings.py:

DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL = 'your.email@example.com'
ADMINS = [('<Your name>', 'your.email@example.com')]

Sending email with SendGrid is free up to 12k emails per month.

I had actually done this from Django a while back. Open up a legitimate GMail account & enter the credentials here. Here’s my code –

from email import Encoders
from email.MIMEBase import MIMEBase
from email.MIMEText import MIMEText
from email.MIMEMultipart import MIMEMultipart

def sendmail(to, subject, text, attach=[], mtype='html'):
    ok = True
    gmail_user = settings.EMAIL_HOST_USER
    gmail_pwd  = settings.EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD

    msg = MIMEMultipart('alternative')

    msg['From']    = gmail_user
    msg['To']      = to
    msg['Cc']      = 'you@gmail.com'
    msg['Subject'] = subject

    msg.attach(MIMEText(text, mtype))

    for a in attach:
        part = MIMEBase('application', 'octet-stream')
        part.set_payload(open(attach, 'rb').read())
        Encoders.encode_base64(part)
        part.add_header('Content-Disposition','attachment; filename="%s"' % os.path.basename(a))
        msg.attach(part)

    try:
        mailServer = smtplib.SMTP("smtp.gmail.com", 687)
        mailServer.ehlo()
        mailServer.starttls()
        mailServer.ehlo()
        mailServer.login(gmail_user, gmail_pwd)
        mailServer.sendmail(gmail_user, [to,msg['Cc']], msg.as_string())
        mailServer.close()
    except:
        ok = False
    return ok

Late, but:

In addition to the DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL fix others have mentioned, and allowing less-secure apps to access the account, I had to navigate to https://accounts.google.com/DisplayUnlockCaptcha while signed in as the account in question to get Django to finally authenticate.

I went to that URL through a SSH tunnel to the web server to make sure the IP address was the same; I’m not totally sure if that’s necessary but it can’t hurt. You can do that like so: ssh -D 8080 -fN <username>@<host>, then set your web browser to use localhost:8080 as a SOCKS proxy.

You could use “Test Mail Server Tool” to test email sending on your machine or localhost. Google and Download “Test Mail Server Tool” and set it up.

Then in your settings.py:

EMAIL_BACKEND= 'django.core.mail.backends.smtp.EmailBackend'
EMAIL_HOST = 'localhost'
EMAIL_PORT = 25

From shell:

from django.core.mail import send_mail
send_mail('subject','message','sender email',['receipient email'],    fail_silently=False)

For SendGrid – Django Specifically:

SendGrid Django Docs here

Set these variables in

settings.py

EMAIL_HOST = 'smtp.sendgrid.net'
EMAIL_HOST_USER = 'sendgrid_username'
EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD = 'sendgrid_password'
EMAIL_PORT = 587
EMAIL_USE_TLS = True

in views.py

from django.core.mail import send_mail
send_mail('Subject here', 'Here is the message.', 'from@example.com', ['to@example.com'], fail_silently=False)