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 , a better way
Abderrahmane Mustapha
Abderrahmane Mustapha

Posted on • Updated on

Send emails with Django and Gmail , a better way

In this post I want to talk about how can we send emails using Django and Gmail, I read a lot of articles about this but none of them is working for me, this is my way of doing this

Setup Django πŸ’š

first let's install django



 pip install django


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start a django project



django-admin startproject send_gmail


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start a django app



cd send_gmail
python manage.py  startapp send


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add the app to settings.py installed app



# send_gmail/settings.py
INSTALLED_APPS = [
...
send,
]


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migrate and create a super user



python manage.py  migrate
python manage.py createsuperuser


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check this post if you want to know more about how to create a virtual environment , or how to install Django and start your project

The Gmail part βœ‰

now you need to create a Gmail account and then click on Manage your google account
manage account screen shot

now click on the Security tab

image account security

make sure to enable two steps verification

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now click on App passwords

enter image description here

you have to type your password again

Confirm your password

click on select app choose *** other (Custome Name) *** and give a name to you app

Create a new app

the last step click on generate and Gmail will generate a key or an app password make sure to copy this key or save it in a text file

Create a new app

Edit your settings.py file



#gmail_send/settings.py
EMAIL_BACKEND = 'django.core.mail.backends.smtp.EmailBackend'
EMAIL_HOST = 'smtp.gmail.com'
EMAIL_HOST_USER = 'yoorusername@gmail.com'
EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD = 'key' #past the key or password app here
EMAIL_PORT = 587
EMAIL_USE_TLS = True
DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL = 'default from email'


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πŸŽ‰πŸŽ‰ now you are ready to send emails with Django and Gmail in productionπŸŽ‰πŸŽ‰

For further exploration

you can use SendGrid, Mailgun, Sendinblue... for your apps too
don't forget to put your key in a .env file

Top comments (25)

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jeroen1205 profile image
Jeroen Jacobs

I do it a bit differently: I run PostFix on my servers, which is configured to use an external SMTP server as forwarder (can be GMail, SES, ...). Then I let my app deliver to my local SMTP server.

This has a few advantages:

  • App is no longer coupled to GMail settings
  • The most important one: mails will be queued on local server, in case remote SMTP goes down or is not available. Most SMTP servers already handle automatic retries, and dead mail queues out of the box.

If you do it within the Django app, I would suggest to add some message queue stuff (Celery) so SMTP calls don't block your app, or retry in case of failure.

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abderahmane profile image
Abderrahmane Mustapha

that's great thank you will try to implement this

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jordanahaines profile image
Jordan Haines

Great post! Adding on to your note RE further exploration. For projects that outgrow sending email via a single Gmail account, check out github.com/anymail/django-anymail. After playing with a few packages to interact with Mandrill/Sendgrid/SES, I've found Anymail to be the most flexible.

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abderahmane profile image
Abderrahmane Mustapha

thank you I didn't know about django-anymail i think that I will use it with my next project

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andemusgbj profile image
Albert Gubanja • Edited

Hello,
I want to send email contact with django,
But after all config in settings.py, I am facing this issue:

SMTPSenderRefused at /contacts
(530, b'5.7.0 Must issue a STARTTLS command first. m42-20020a05600c3b2a00b003cf47556f21sm7462655wms.2 - gsmtp', 'webmaster@localhost')

Can anyone help me?
Here is my settings.py

EMAIL_BACKEND = 'django.core.mail.backends.smtp.EmailBackend'
EMAIL_HOST = 'smtp.gmail.com'
EMAIL_HOST_USER = 'albertandemsj@gmail.com'
EMAIL_PASSWORD = 'key'
EMAIL_PORT = 587
EMAIL_USE_TSL = True
EMAIL_USE_SSL = False
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And my sending email view.py

if request.method == 'POST':
        name = request.POST.get('name')
        email = request.POST.get('email')
        subject = request.POST.get('subject')
        message = request.POST.get('comments')

        data = {
            'name':name,
            'email': email,
            'subject': subject,
            'message': message
        }

        message = ''' 
        New Message : {}

        From : {}
        '''.format(data['message'], data['email'])

        send_mail(data['subject'], message,'' ,['qweaverinfo@gmail.com'])
        return render(request, 'layouts/auth-signup-success.html', locals())

    return render(request, 'layouts/contact.html', locals())
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maen profile image
Ruheza, NS

why it doesn't work for me?

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abderahmane profile image
Abderrahmane Mustapha

can you tell me what is the problem that your facing exactly so maybe I can help you

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namibnat profile image
Vernon Swanepoel

Much appreciated, thank you.

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abderahmane profile image
Abderrahmane Mustapha

thank you ? πŸ€—

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Sloan, the sloth mascot
Comment deleted
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abderahmane profile image
Abderrahmane Mustapha

thanks, bro

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oussama_he profile image
Oussama Heloulou

Should this work properly and don't cause any problems if I send 30 emails per day?

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giftedstan profile image
giftedstan

yes, you can send up to 2000 mails per day

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oussama_he profile image
Oussama Heloulou

Thank you for your reply.
I used it to send emails from the website to users, but it stopped working, (it works if I try to send from my PC, but doesn't work from the server)

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josejaviercb profile image
Javier Contreras

Hello, thanks for sharing your knowledge, I have a question, I have a contact form, I am using a gmail account to send, but I want the email of the person who writes to appear as the sender and not my gmail account, it is can you do this?

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maen profile image
Ruheza, NS

why it doesnt work for me?

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iliyahajjar profile image
iliya-hajjar

I did all the steps however when using send_mail() it returns 1 but I get no email in my inbox.

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