How to Send Mail Using PHP

How can I send an email using PHP?

It's possible using PHP's mail() function. Remember the mail function will not work on a local server.

<?php
    $to      = 'nobody@example.com';
    $subject = 'the subject';
    $message = 'hello';
    $headers = 'From: webmaster@example.com'       . "\r\n" .
                 'Reply-To: webmaster@example.com' . "\r\n" .
                 'X-Mailer: PHP/' . phpversion();

    mail($to, $subject, $message, $headers);
?>

Reference:

mail

Send mail reliably with PHP?

From my experience, PHPMailer is the way to go - https://github.com/PHPMailer/PHPMailer

You need to get access to a SMTP server you will use to send your mail. This could either be the Google SMTP server (a @gmail.com email address) or your company's email server.

A quick example to do this using Google SMTP server is:

1) Install PHPMailer using composer from a terminal / shell:

composer require phpmailer/phpmailer

2) Include the composer generated autoload file and PHPMailer in your php script:

// Load Composer's autoloader
require 'vendor/autoload.php';
use PHPMailer\PHPMailer\PHPMailer;
use PHPMailer\PHPMailer\SMTP;
use PHPMailer\PHPMailer\Exception;

3) Send email using:

$mail = new PHPMailer(true);
//Server settings
$mail->SMTPDebug = SMTP::DEBUG_SERVER;                      // Enable verbose debug output
$mail->isSMTP();                                            // Send using SMTP
$mail->Host       = 'smtp.gmail.com';                    // Set the SMTP server to send through
$mail->SMTPAuth   = true;                                   // Enable SMTP authentication
$mail->Username   = 'YOUREMAIL@gmail.com';                     // SMTP username
$mail->Password   = 'YOUREMAILPASSWORD';                               // SMTP password
$mail->SMTPSecure = PHPMailer::ENCRYPTION_STARTTLS;         // Enable TLS encryption; `PHPMailer::ENCRYPTION_SMTPS` also accepted
$mail->Port       = 587;                                    // TCP port to connect to

//Recipients
$mail->setFrom('YOUREMAIL@gmail.com', 'Mailer');
$mail->addAddress('TOADDRESS');     // Add a recipient

// Content
$mail->isHTML(true);                                  // Set email format to HTML
$mail->Subject = 'Here is the subject';
$mail->Body    = 'This is the HTML message body <b>in bold!</b>';

$mail->send();

Read the PHPMailer documentation at: https://github.com/PHPMailer/PHPMailer

How to send email with SMTP in php

Take a look at PHP Mailer:

https://github.com/PHPMailer/PHPMailer

Example from that page:

<?php
require 'PHPMailerAutoload.php';

$mail = new PHPMailer;

//$mail->SMTPDebug = 3;                               // Enable verbose debug output

$mail->isSMTP();                                      // Set mailer to use SMTP
$mail->Host = 'smtp1.example.com;smtp2.example.com';  // Specify main and backup SMTP servers
$mail->SMTPAuth = true;                               // Enable SMTP authentication
$mail->Username = 'user@example.com';                 // SMTP username
$mail->Password = 'secret';                           // SMTP password
$mail->SMTPSecure = 'tls';                            // Enable TLS encryption, `ssl` also accepted
$mail->Port = 587;                                    // TCP port to connect to

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

$mail->WordWrap = 50;                                 // Set word wrap to 50 characters
$mail->addAttachment('/var/tmp/file.tar.gz');         // Add attachments
$mail->addAttachment('/tmp/image.jpg', 'new.jpg');    // Optional name
$mail->isHTML(true);                                  // Set email format to HTML

$mail->Subject = 'Here is the subject';
$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';

if(!$mail->send()) {
    echo 'Message could not be sent.';
    echo 'Mailer Error: ' . $mail->ErrorInfo;
} else {
    echo 'Message has been sent';
}

Send email with PHP from html form on submit with the same script

EDIT (#1)

If I understand correctly, you wish to have everything in one page and execute it from the same page.

You can use the following code to send mail from a single page, for example index.php or contact.php

The only difference between this one and my original answer is the <form action="" method="post"> where the action has been left blank.

It is better to use header('Location: thank_you.php'); instead of echo in the PHP handler to redirect the user to another page afterwards.

Copy the entire code below into one file.

<?php 
if(isset($_POST['submit'])){
    $to = "email@example.com"; // this is your Email address
    $from = $_POST['email']; // this is the sender's Email address
    $first_name = $_POST['first_name'];
    $last_name = $_POST['last_name'];
    $subject = "Form submission";
    $subject2 = "Copy of your form submission";
    $message = $first_name . " " . $last_name . " wrote the following:" . "\n\n" . $_POST['message'];
    $message2 = "Here is a copy of your message " . $first_name . "\n\n" . $_POST['message'];

    $headers = "From:" . $from;
    $headers2 = "From:" . $to;
    mail($to,$subject,$message,$headers);
    mail($from,$subject2,$message2,$headers2); // sends a copy of the message to the sender
    echo "Mail Sent. Thank you " . $first_name . ", we will contact you shortly.";
    // You can also use header('Location: thank_you.php'); to redirect to another page.
    }
?>

<!DOCTYPE html>
<head>
<title>Form submission</title>
</head>
<body>

<form action="" method="post">
First Name: <input type="text" name="first_name"><br>
Last Name: <input type="text" name="last_name"><br>
Email: <input type="text" name="email"><br>
Message:<br><textarea rows="5" name="message" cols="30"></textarea><br>
<input type="submit" name="submit" value="Submit">
</form>

</body>
</html>

Original answer

I wasn't quite sure as to what the question was, but am under the impression that a copy of the message is to be sent to the person who filled in the form.

Here is a tested/working copy of an HTML form and PHP handler. This uses the PHP mail() function.

The PHP handler will also send a copy of the message to the person who filled in the form.

You can use two forward slashes // in front of a line of code if you're not going to use it.

For example: // $subject2 = "Copy of your form submission"; will not execute.

HTML FORM:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<head>
<title>Form submission</title>
</head>
<body>

<form action="mail_handler.php" method="post">
First Name: <input type="text" name="first_name"><br>
Last Name: <input type="text" name="last_name"><br>
Email: <input type="text" name="email"><br>
Message:<br><textarea rows="5" name="message" cols="30"></textarea><br>
<input type="submit" name="submit" value="Submit">
</form>

</body>
</html>

PHP handler (mail_handler.php)

(Uses info from HTML form and sends the Email)

<?php 
if(isset($_POST['submit'])){
    $to = "email@example.com"; // this is your Email address
    $from = $_POST['email']; // this is the sender's Email address
    $first_name = $_POST['first_name'];
    $last_name = $_POST['last_name'];
    $subject = "Form submission";
    $subject2 = "Copy of your form submission";
    $message = $first_name . " " . $last_name . " wrote the following:" . "\n\n" . $_POST['message'];
    $message2 = "Here is a copy of your message " . $first_name . "\n\n" . $_POST['message'];

    $headers = "From:" . $from;
    $headers2 = "From:" . $to;
    mail($to,$subject,$message,$headers);
    mail($from,$subject2,$message2,$headers2); // sends a copy of the message to the sender
    echo "Mail Sent. Thank you " . $first_name . ", we will contact you shortly.";
    // You can also use header('Location: thank_you.php'); to redirect to another page.
    // You cannot use header and echo together. It's one or the other.
    }
?>

To send as HTML:

If you wish to send mail as HTML and for both instances, then you will need to create two separate sets of HTML headers with different variable names.

Read the manual on mail() to learn how to send emails as HTML:

http://php.net/manual/en/function.mail.php

Footnotes:

In regards to HTML5

You have to specify the URL of the service that will handle the submitted data, using the action attribute.

As outlined at https://www.w3.org/TR/html5/forms.html under 4.10.1.3 Configuring a form to communicate with a server. For complete information, consult the page.

Therefore, action="" will not work in HTML5.

The proper syntax would be:

action="handler.xxx" or
action="http://www.example.com/handler.xxx".

Note that xxx will be the extension of the type of file used to handle the process. This could be a .php, .cgi, .pl, .jsp file extension etc.

Consult the following Q&A on Stack if sending mail fails:

PHP mail form doesn't complete sending e-mail

Send attachments with PHP Mail()?

I agree with @MihaiIorga in the comments – use the PHPMailer script. You sound like you're rejecting it because you want the easier option. Trust me, PHPMailer is the easier option by a very large margin compared to trying to do it yourself with PHP's built-in mail() function. PHP's mail() function really isn't very good.

To use PHPMailer:

Download the PHPMailer script from here: http://github.com/PHPMailer/PHPMailer
Extract the archive and copy the script's folder to a convenient place in your project.
Include the main script file -- require_once('path/to/file/class.phpmailer.php');

Now, sending emails with attachments goes from being insanely difficult to incredibly easy:

use PHPMailer\PHPMailer\PHPMailer;
use PHPMailer\PHPMailer\Exception;

$email = new PHPMailer();
$email->SetFrom('you@example.com', 'Your Name'); //Name is optional
$email->Subject   = 'Message Subject';
$email->Body      = $bodytext;
$email->AddAddress( 'destinationaddress@example.com' );

$file_to_attach = 'PATH_OF_YOUR_FILE_HERE';

$email->AddAttachment( $file_to_attach , 'NameOfFile.pdf' );

return $email->Send();

It's just that one line $email->AddAttachment(); -- you couldn't ask for any easier.

If you do it with PHP's mail() function, you'll be writing stacks of code, and you'll probably have lots of really difficult to find bugs.

sending mail using php with a proper format

try this: change $solvation and $message as below

$solvation = $_POST['solvation'];    
 $message   = '<!DOCTYPE HTML><html>
                                <head>
                                <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html">
                                <title>Email notification</title>
                                </head>
                                <body>
                                <div id="outer" style="width: 80%;margin: 0 auto;margin-top: 10px;">
                                <div id="inner" style="width: 78%;margin: 0 auto;background-color: #fff;font-family: Open Sans,Arial,sans-serif;font-size: 13px;font-weight: normal;line-height: 1.4em;color: #444;margin-top: 10px;">
                                <p> Solvation      :'.$solvation.'</p> 
                                <p> Name           :'.$name.'</p>
                                <p> Email          :'.$email.'</p>
                                <p> Message        :'.$msg.'</p>
                                </div>  
                                </div>
                                <div id="footer" style="width: 80%;height: 40px;margin: 0 auto;text-align: center;padding: 10px;font-family: Verdena;background-color: #E2E2E2;">
                               </div>
                                </body> 
                                </html>';

EDIT: try by changing

this

$headers .= "MIME-Version: 1.0\r\n";
$headers .= "Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1\r\n";

$headers = 'MIME-Version: 1.0' . "\r\n";
$headers .= 'Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1' . "\r\n";

also check whether you have defined $email in your PHP code