How to Send Emails in PHP Using PHPMailer (Beginner-Friendly Guide)

Sending emails is a common feature in most PHP applications—whether it’s for user registration, order updates, or contact forms. While PHP’s built-in mail() function offers a simple way to send emails, it has limited support for HTML formatting, attachments, and reliable SMTP delivery.

PHPMailer provides a more flexible and robust alternative. In this guide, you’ll learn how to install and configure PHPMailer, connect it with Gmail’s SMTP, and send well-formatted emails with attachments using just a few lines of code.

Let’s get started…

Why Use PHPMailer Instead of PHP’s mail() Function?

PHPMailer is a third-party PHP library that provides a simple way to send emails in PHP. It offers a range of features that make it a popular alternative to PHP’s built-in mail() function, such as support for HTML emails, attachments, and SMTP authentication.

PHPMailer is easy to set up and use and provides a high level of customization and flexibility, making it a popular choice for developers who need to send emails from their PHP applications. It is also actively maintained and updated, making it a reliable and secure email option.

Here is a quick comparison between PHPMailer and PHP mail:

You might also like: How To Add SSL Certificates To Custom PHP Sites

Advantages of Using PHPMailer

There are several advantages to using PHPMailer over the native mail() function when sending emails in PHP:

1. Cleaner Code and Automatic Header Management

When using the mail() function, developers often need to manually create complex headers—like MIME types, content boundaries, and character encodings—which can clutter the code and introduce formatting errors. PHPMailer handles all of this behind the scenes, letting you focus on the email content instead of wrestling with syntax.

2. SMTP Support Without Server Dependency

The mail() function relies on the server’s built-in mail transfer agent (like Sendmail), which isn’t always configured or reliable. PHPMailer supports SMTP out of the box and lets you configure everything—host, port, encryption method, credentials—directly inside your PHP script. No need for server-wide changes.

3. Multilingual Error Messages

PHPMailer provides error messages in over 40 languages, making it a strong fit for applications with international users. You can easily set the language for error handling, offering a more localized and user-friendly experience.

4. SSL/TLS Encryption for Secure Delivery

Security is critical when sending emails. PHPMailer supports both SSL and TLS encryption for SMTP connections, helping protect your messages from interception during transmission.

5. HTML Emails and Plain Text Alternatives

While the mail() function can technically send HTML emails or attachments, doing so requires manually crafting multipart MIME messages. PHPMailer makes this effortless—it can send both an HTML version and a fallback plain text version with minimal setup, ensuring better compatibility across devices and email clients.

Sending Emails in PHP Using PHPMailer

Now, I’ll show you exactly how to set up and use the PHPMailer library. We’ll cover everything from getting started to sending emails with attachments via a reliable service like Gmail’s SMTP.

Prerequisites

Before we dive in, let’s get a few things in place. You’ll need:

1. A Local Server like XAMPP or MAMP installed. This allows PHP to run on your machine.
2. PHP 7.4 or higher (PHPMailer works with 5.5+, but newer versions are more secure and reliable).
3. Composer installed (used to manage PHP libraries): Get Composer
4. A text editor like VS Code or Sublime.
5. (Optional but recommended) A Gmail account for testing SMTP email sending.

Step 1: Install PHPMailer via Composer

Alright, let’s get PHPMailer into your project.

Open your terminal (Command Prompt, PowerShell, or Terminal app), go to your project folder. For example, if you want a folder called email-tutorial on your desktop, you’d do something like:

cd Desktop

mkdir email-tutorial

cd email-tutorial

Great! You have successfully created your workspace folder and are now ready to start installing PHPMailer within it.

Now to install PHPMailer, once you’re inside your project folder, type (or copy and paste) this command and press Enter:

composer require phpmailer/phpmailer

This downloads PHPMailer and sets it up for you. You’ll see a new folder called vendor/ in your project — that’s where Composer keeps your libraries.

Step 2: Setting Up Your Files (Organizing Your Workspace)

Now that PHPMailer is in your project, let’s get our files organized. Your email-project folder should now look something like this:

Project Folder Structure:

• email-project (main folder)
• index.php – We’ll create this file for our email code
• vendor – Contains PHPMailer (automatically created by Composer)
• composer.json – Configuration file (automatically created by Composer)

Go ahead and create a new file named index.php inside your email-project folder. This is where we’ll write all our PHP code for sending emails.

Step 3: Send a Basic Email (No SMTP Yet)

Let’s start with a simple test. We’ll send an email without using a special email server (SMTP). This is just to see if PHPMailer is working correctly within your project.

Open your index.php file in your text editor and paste this code:

<?php

use PHPMailer\PHPMailer\PHPMailer;

use PHPMailer\PHPMailer\Exception;

require 'vendor/autoload.php';

$mail = new PHPMailer(true); // true enables exceptions

try {

// Email headers and body

$mail->setFrom('[email protected]', 'Your Name');

$mail->addAddress('[email protected]', 'Receiver Name');

$mail->addReplyTo('[email protected]', 'Reply Name');

$mail->isHTML(true);

$mail->Subject = 'Test Email using PHPMailer';

$mail->Body = '<b>This is a test email sent from localhost using PHPMailer!</b>';

$mail->AltBody = 'This is a plain text version for non-HTML clients.';

$mail->send();

echo '✅ Email has been sent successfully!';

} catch (Exception $e) {

echo \"❌ Email could not be sent. Error: {$mail->ErrorInfo}\";

}

Save your index.php file.

Step 4: Run PHP’s Built-in Web Server

In CMD (inside your project folder), start PHP’s web server:

php -S localhost:8000

You’ll see:

PHP 8.x.x Development Server (http://localhost:8000) started

Step 5: Open Browser & Test

Go to: http://localhost:8000/index.php

What Should Happen

If everything’s wired up, you’ll either see:

• ✅ “Email has been sent successfully!” (if email transport works)
• ❌ Or: Email could not be sent. Error: … (likely if SMTP isn’t set up yet)

In my case, I’m seeing this:

Why?

By default, this setup doesn’t use SMTP — and my local PHP setup probably doesn’t have a mail server configured. That’s normal. This is why most developers use SMTP to send real emails.

We’ll now address this issue by adding SMTP next. But for now, this confirms your local server works, PHP is running, and PHPMailer is loaded.

Send Email Using SMTP (Gmail Example)

SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) is the standard way emails are sent across the internet. Think of an SMTP server as the actual post office that picks up your letter and delivers it to the recipient’s mailbox.

Using one ensures your emails get where they need to go.

We’ll use Gmail’s SMTP server because it’s widely available and a reliable choice for sending emails.

Open your index.php file again, delete the previous code, and paste this new code:

<?php

use PHPMailer\PHPMailer\PHPMailer;

use PHPMailer\PHPMailer\Exception;

require 'vendor/autoload.php';

$mail = new PHPMailer(true);

try {

// Server settings

$mail->isSMTP();

$mail->Host = 'smtp.gmail.com';

$mail->SMTPAuth = true;

// 1. Your Gmail Address

$mail->Username = '[email protected]';

// 2. Your App Password

$mail->Password = 'your_app_password';

$mail->SMTPSecure = PHPMailer::ENCRYPTION_STARTTLS;

$mail->Port = 587;

// 4. Name Labels (Optional)

$mail->setFrom('[email protected]', 'Your Name');

$mail->addReplyTo('[email protected]', 'Your Name');

// 3. Recipient Email Address

$mail->addAddress('[email protected]', 'Friend Name');

// 5. Email Content

$mail->isHTML(true);

$mail->Subject = 'Hello from Gmail SMTP!';

$mail->Body = 'This message was sent using Gmail SMTP and PHPMailer!';

$mail->AltBody = 'Gmail SMTP version of the message.';

$mail->send();

echo '✅ Message sent using SMTP!';

} catch (Exception $e) {

echo "❌ Failed to send email. Error: {$mail->ErrorInfo}";

}

Important: App Password Setup for Gmail

If you have 2-step verification (2FA) enabled on your Gmail (and you should), you cannot use your regular Gmail password. You need to use an App Password.

Here’s how to get it:

1. Visit: https://myaccount.google.com/apppasswords.
2. Sign in and verify yourself.
3. In the App name box, type something like: PHPMailer (or anything meaningful to you, like “My PHP Contact Form”).
4. Click Create.
5. Google will give you a 16-character password.

6. Save it somewhere. We’ll need it when we modify our index.php file.

Customize These Fields Before Using the Code

To successfully send an email using Gmail SMTP and PHPMailer, make sure to update the following fields:

1. Your Gmail Address

Replace all instances of [email protected] with your actual Gmail address (the same one you used to generate the app password).

You’ll find this in:

$mail->Username = '[email protected]';

$mail->setFrom('[email protected]', 'Your Name');

$mail->addReplyTo('[email protected]', 'Your Name');

2. Your App Password

Now, the App Password we saved earlier, replace ‘your_app_password’ with the password you got:

$mail->Password = ‘your_app_password’;

Don’t use your actual Gmail login password here—only use the 16-character app password provided by Google.

3. Recipient Email Address

Change [email protected] to the email address where you want to send the message:

$mail->addAddress(‘[email protected]‘, ‘Friend Name’);

You can add more recipients by duplicating this line with different addresses if needed.

4. Name Labels (Optional)

Update the “Your Name” and “Friend Name” labels with whatever sender/recipient names you’d like to display in the email client.

5. Email Content

Feel free to change the subject and body text to match your own message:

$mail->Subject = 'Hello from Gmail SMTP!';

$mail->Body = 'This message was sent using Gmail SMTP and PHPMailer!';

$mail->AltBody = 'Gmail SMTP version of the message.';

Once all these fields are updated with your actual details, save the file.

Test It All

Now let’s test everything.

Open CMD and navigate to your project folder:

cd path\to\your\email-tutorial

Next, run the script:

php index.php

Success! You can confirm everything worked by checking both the sender and receiver inboxes to see if the email was delivered via Google SMTP.

Sender Inbox:

Receiver Inbox:

Send Email Attachments Using Gmail SMTP and PHPMailer

Once you’ve got your basic email script working, sending attachments is just one more line away — but let’s walk through the full setup to make sure it’s airtight.

1. Choose Your File

Place the file you want to attach in your project folder to keep paths simple.

For example, say you want to attach a PDF named sample.pdf, place it here:

C:\Users\abdulrehman\Desktop\email-tutorial\sample.pdf

Note: Your file name can be anything…doesn’t have to sample.pdf. I’ve attached a PDF guide we wrote as you can see in the screenshot below.

2. Update Your Code

In your index.php file, scroll down to where you configure the $mail object. Just after you’ve added the recipient but before sending the email, include this line:

$mail->addAttachment('sample.pdf');

This will attach the file named sample.pdf located in the same folder as your script.

3. Verify File Path (Important!)

Make sure:

• The file is not open in any program.
• The name matches exactly (case-sensitive).
• If it’s in a subfolder, include the path:

$mail->addAttachment('docs/report2024.pdf');

4. Run Your Script Again

Use CMD to navigate to the project folder:

cd C:\Users\abdulrehman\Desktop\email-tutorial

The run:

php index.php

If everything is correct, you’ll see:

✅ Message sent using SMTP!

5. Check Your Email

Open the recipient inbox and verify if you’ve received the attachment. As you can see in the screenshot below, our recipient has received the PDF file we attached in our script.

Final Thoughts

By now, you’ve seen how PHPMailer can take the pain out of sending emails in PHP. From setting up a basic script to configuring Gmail SMTP and even sending attachments, you’ve got a solid foundation to build reliable email features into your projects.

Instead of struggling with PHP’s native mail() function or dealing with server-side limitations, PHPMailer gives you a cleaner, more secure, and more flexible way to handle emails — without extra complexity.

As your applications grow, running them on a hosting platform that supports SMTP configurations and PHP libraries like PHPMailer can save you hours of troubleshooting.

With Cloudways PHP hosting, you get pre-configured PHP environments, built-in SMTP support via services like SendGrid or Mailgun, and a performance stack optimized for fast execution. That means less time on server setup — and more time writing clean, efficient code.

$mail->isSMTP();

$mail->Host = 'smtp.office365.com';

$mail->SMTPAuth = true;

$mail->Username = '[email protected]';

$mail->Password = 'your-password';

$mail->SMTPSecure = PHPMailer::ENCRYPTION_STARTTLS;

$mail->Port = 587;

Abdul Rehman

Abdul is a tech-savvy, coffee-fueled, and creatively driven marketer who loves keeping up with the latest software updates and tech gadgets. He's also a skilled technical writer who can explain complex concepts simply for a broad audience. Abdul enjoys sharing his knowledge of the Cloud industry through user manuals, documentation, and blog posts.

Get Connected on: Twitter Community Forum