How to send emails with PHPMailer

You can implement SendPulse's transactional emails with SMTP settings into your project using PHPMailer. PHPMailer is compatible with many PHP libraries and allows you to create a personalized email with an attachment and send it to your subscribers.

In the article, we will look at how to install PHPMailer, where to find the SMTP parameters in your SendPulse account, and how to set up a file to send an email.

Install PHPMailer

You can install PHPMailer via Composer or download the file and install it in your project.

If you are using Composer, add the following line to your composer.json file:

"phpmailer/phpmailer": "^6.5"

Or run the following command:

composer require phpmailer/phpmailer

If you are not using Composer, download the PHPMailer files, and add them via additional classes:

<?php
use PHPMailer\PHPMailer\PHPMailer;
use PHPMailer\PHPMailer\Exception;

require 'path/to/PHPMailer/src/Exception.php';
require 'path/to/PHPMailer/src/PHPMailer.php';
require 'path/to/PHPMailer/src/SMTP.php';

Check out the installation details and a code example in the official PHPMailer documentation.

Copy Your SMTP Login Credentials

Go to the SMTP Settings > General tab in your SendPulse account. Copy the authorization values ​in SMTP: server address, port, login, and password.

You can access the SMTP settings after your profile gets activated. The “Your profile is being moderated” message will disappear from the page, and you will receive an email notifying you that your account has been approved and activated.

Configure the Object to Use SMTP

If you used Composer to install PHPMailer, add the autoload.php file:

require 'path/to/composer/vendor/autoload.php';

If you installed PHPMailer manually, initialize it like this:

require path/to/PHPMailer/src/PHPMailer.php';
require path/to/PHPMailer/src/SMTP.php';
require path/to/PHPMailer/src/Exception.php';

Create a PHPMailer class and a new object:

<?php
use PHPMailer\PHPMailer\PHPMailer;

Create a new PHPMailer object:

$mail = new PHPMailer(true);

Next, add the SMTP parameters, the data about your sender and recipients, and your email content.

Add SMTP Settings

In the “Server settings” section, you need to add the data from your SMTP settings to your SendPulse account.

//Server settings
    $mail->SMTPDebug = SMTP::DEBUG_SERVER;                      //Enable verbose debug output
    $mail->isSMTP();                                            //Send using SMTP
    $mail->Host = 'smtp-pulse.com';                     //Set the SMTP server to send through
    $mail->SMTPAuth = true;                                   //Enable SMTP authentication
    $mail->Username = 'user@example.com';                     //SMTP username
    $mail->Password = 'secret';                               //SMTP password
    $mail->SMTPSecure = 'ssl';            //Enable implicit TLS encryption
    $mail->Port = 465;                                    //TCP port to connect to; use 587 if you have set `SMTPSecure = PHPMailer::ENCRYPTION_STARTTLS`

Where:

Add the Sender and Recipients

Specify the sender and recipients in the Recipients section.

//Recipients
    $mail->setFrom('from@example.com', 'Mailer');
    $mail->addAddress('joe@example.net', 'Joe User');     //Add a recipient
    $mail->addAddress('ellen@example.com');               //Name is optional
    $mail->addCC('cc@example.com');
    $mail->addBCC('bcc@example.com');

Where:

Add Your Email Content

Specify the email parameters in the Content section.

To personalize the message in the parameter value, you can use your project variables.

 //Content
    $mail->isHTML(true);                                  //Set email format to HTML
    $mail->Subject = 'Here is the subject';
    $mail->Encoding = 'base64';

    $mail->Body = 'This is the HTML message body <b>in bold!</b>';
    $mail->AltBody = 'This is the body in plain text for non-HTML mail clients';
   $mail->msgHTML(file_get_contents('contents.html'), __DIR__);

Where:

Additionally, you can attach files to the message. Specify the file path and file name in the addAttachment parameter

//Attachments
    $mail->addAttachment('/var/tmp/file.tar.gz');         //Add attachments
    $mail->addAttachment('/tmp/image.jpg', 'new.jpg');    //Optional name

Set the Send Attributes

At the end of the document, the send function is specified. In echo command, you can specify which message to display if the sendout is successful or when receiving a send error:

$mail->send();
    echo 'Message has been sent';
} catch (Exception $e) {
    echo "Message could not be sent. Mailer Error: {$mail->ErrorInfo}";
}

Then, you will need to run a file according to your project settings on each event in order to send a transactional email.

Last Updated: 03.01.2024