summary: Send HTML and plain text email from your SilverStripe application. # Email Creating and sending email in SilverStripe is done through the [api:Email] and [api:Mailer] classes. This document covers how to create an `Email` instance, customise it with a HTML template, then send it through a custom `Mailer`. ## Configuration Out of the box, SilverStripe will use the built-in PHP `mail()` command. If you are not running an SMTP server, you will need to either configure PHP's SMTP settings (see [PHP documentation](http://php.net/mail) to include your mail server configuration or use one of the third party SMTP services like [Mandrill](https://github.com/lekoala/silverstripe-mandrill) and [Postmark](https://github.com/fullscreeninteractive/silverstripe-postmarkmailer). ## Usage ### Sending plain text only :::php $email = new Email($from, $to, $subject, $body); $email->sendPlain(); ### Sending combined HTML and plain text By default, emails are sent in both HTML and Plaintext format. A plaintext representation is automatically generated from the system by stripping HTML markup, or transforming it where possible (e.g. `text` is converted to `*text*`). :::php $email = new Email($from, $to, $subject, $body); $email->send();
The default HTML template for emails is named `GenericEmail` and is located in `framework/templates/email/`. To customise this template, copy it to the `mysite/templates/Email/` folder or use `setTemplate` when you create the `Email` instance.
### Templates HTML emails can use custom templates using the same template language as your website template. You can also pass the email object additional information using the `populateTemplate` method. **mysite/templates/Email/MyCustomEmail.ss** :::ss

Hi $Member.FirstName

You can go to $Link.

The PHP Logic.. :::php $email = new Email(); $email ->setFrom($from) ->setTo($to) ->setSubject($subject) ->setTemplate('MyCustomEmail') ->populateTemplate(new ArrayData(array( 'Member' => Member::currentUser(), 'Link' => $link ))); $email->send();
As we've added a new template file (`MyCustomEmail`) make sure you clear the SilverStripe cache for your changes to take affect.
## Sub classing To keep your application code clean and your internal API clear, a better approach to generating an email is to create a new subclass of `Email` which takes the required dependencies and handles setting the properties itself. **mysite/code/MyCustomEmail.php** :::php Email; $subject = "Welcome to our site."; $link = Director::absoluteBaseUrl(); parent::__construct($from, $to, $subject); $this->populateTemplate(new ArrayData(array( 'Member' => $member->Email, 'Link' => $link ))); } } Then within your application, usage of the email is much clearer to follow. :::php send(); ## Administrator Emails You can set the default sender address of emails through the `Email.admin_email` [configuration setting](/developer_guides/configuration). **mysite/_config/app.yml** :::yaml Email: admin_email: support@silverstripe.org
Remember, setting a `from` address that doesn't come from your domain (such as the users email) will likely see your email marked as spam. If you want to send from another address think about using the `setReplyTo` method.
## Redirecting Emails There are several other [configuration settings](/developer_guides/configuration) to manipulate the email server. * `Email.send_all_emails_to` will redirect all emails sent to the given address. This is useful for testing and staging servers where you do not wish to send emails out. * `Email.cc_all_emails_to` and `Email.bcc_all_emails_to` will add an additional recipient in the BCC / CC header. These are good for monitoring system-generated correspondence on the live systems. Configuration of those properties looks like the following: **mysite/_config.php** :::php if(Director::isLive()) { Config::inst()->update('Email', 'bcc_all_emails_to', "client@example.com"); } else { Config::inst()->update('Email', 'send_all_emails_to', "developer@example.com"); } ### Setting custom "Reply To" email address. For email messages that should have an email address which is replied to that actually differs from the original "from" email, do the following. This is encouraged especially when the domain responsible for sending the message isn't necessarily the same which should be used for return correspondence and should help prevent your message from being marked as spam. :::php $email = new Email(..); $email->setReplyTo('me@address.com'); ### Setting Custom Headers For email headers which do not have getters or setters (like setTo(), setFrom()) you can use **addCustomHeader($header, $value)** :::php $email = new Email(...); $email->addCustomHeader('HeaderName', 'HeaderValue'); ..
See this [Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-mail#Message_header) entry for a list of header names.
## Newsletters The [newsletter module](http://silverstripe.org/newsletter-module) provides a UI and logic to send batch emails. ## Custom Mailers SilverStripe supports changing out the underlying web server SMTP mailer service through the `Email::set_mailer()` function. A `Mailer` subclass will commonly override the `sendPlain` and `sendHTML` methods to send emails through curl or some other process that isn't the built in `mail()` command.
There are a number of custom mailer add-ons available like [Mandrill](https://github.com/lekoala/silverstripe-mandrill) and [Postmark](https://github.com/fullscreeninteractive/silverstripe-postmarkmailer).
In this example, `LocalMailer` will take any email's going while the site is in Development mode and save it to the assets folder instead. **mysite/code/LocalMailer.php** :::php setBounceEmail('bounce@mycompany.com');` ## API Documentation * [api:Email]