Sending E-mail

Each Platform.sh project is provisioned as a SendGrid sub-account. These SendGrid sub-accounts are capped at 12k emails per month. You can use /usr/sbin/sendmail on your application container to send emails with the assigned SendGrid sub-account. Alternatively, you can use the PLATFORM_SMTP_HOST environment variable to use in your SMTP configuration.”

We do not guarantee the deliverability of emails, and we do not support white-labeling them. Our SMTP proxy is intended as a zero-configuration, best effort service. If needed, you can instead use your own SMTP server or email delivery service provider. In that case, please bear in mind that TCP port 25 is blocked for security reasons; use TCP port 465 or 587 instead.

Note:

You may follow SendGrid’s SPF setup guidelines to improve email deliverability with our SMTP proxy, by including the following TXT record to the domain’s DNS records:

>v=spf1 include:sendgrid.net -all

However, as we do not support white-labeling of emails, DKIM is not provided for our standard email handling (meaning that DMARC can’t be set up either). Thus, for maximum deliverability you should use your own mail service.

SendGrid’s current SPF setup guidelines specify that your TXT record includes your subuser account ID:

>v=spf1 include:u17504801.wl.sendgrid.net -all

This ID is only available on Dedicated projects. Use the previous format above when configuring for Grid projects.

Enabling/disabling email

Email support can be enabled/disabled per-environment. By default, it is enabled on the master environment and disabled elsewhere. That can be toggled in through the management console or via the command line, like so:

platform environment:info enable_smtp true

platform environment:info enable_smtp false

When SMTP support is enabled the environment variable PLATFORM_SMTP_HOST will be populated with the address of the SMTP host that should be used. When SMTP support is disabled that environment variable will be empty.

Note:

Changing the SMTP status will not take effect immediately. You will need to issue a new build, not just a new deploy, for the changes to take effect.

Sending email in PHP

When you send email, you can simply use the built-in mail() function in PHP. The PHP runtime is configured to send email automatically via the assigned SendGrid sub-account. Note that the From header is required; email will not send if that header is missing.

Beware of the potential security problems when using the mail() function, which arise when using user-supplied input in the fifth ($additional_parameters) argument. See the PHP mail() documentation for more information.

SwiftMailer

In Symfony, if you use the default SwiftMailer service, we recommend the following settings in your app/config/parameters.yaml:

parameters:
  mailer_transport: smtp
  mailer_host: "%env(PLATFORM_SMTP_HOST)%"
  mailer_user: null
  mailer_password: null

If you are using a file spool facility, you will probably need to setup a read/write mount for it in .platform.app.yaml, for example:

mounts:
    'app/spool':
        source: local
        source_path: spool

Sending email in Java

JavaMail is a Java API used to send and receive email via SMTP, POP3 and IMAP. JavaMail is built into the Jakarta EE platform, but also provides an optional package for use in Java SE.

Jakarta Mail defines a platform-independent and protocol-independent framework to build mail and messaging applications.

Below the sample code that uses Jakarta Mail:

import sh.platform.config.Config;

import javax.mail.Message;
import javax.mail.MessagingException;
import javax.mail.Session;
import javax.mail.Transport;
import javax.mail.internet.InternetAddress;
import javax.mail.internet.MimeMessage;
import java.util.Properties;
import java.util.logging.Level;
import java.util.logging.Logger;

public class JavaEmailSender {

    private static final Logger LOGGER = Logger.getLogger(JavaEmailSender.class.getName());

    public void send() {
        Config config = new Config();
        String to = "";//change accordingly
        String from = "";//change accordingly
        String host = config.getSmtpHost();
        //or IP address
        //Get the session object
        Properties properties = System.getProperties();
        properties.setProperty("mail.smtp.host", host);
        Session session = Session.getDefaultInstance(properties);

        //compose the message
        try {
            MimeMessage message = new MimeMessage(session);
            message.setFrom(new InternetAddress(from));
            message.addRecipient(Message.RecipientType.TO, new InternetAddress(to));
            message.setSubject("Ping");
            message.setText("Hello, this is example of sending email  ");

            // Send message
            Transport.send(message);
            System.out.println("message sent successfully....");

        } catch (MessagingException exp) {
            exp.printStackTrace();
            LOGGER.log(Level.SEVERE, "there is an error to send an message", exp);
        }
    }
}

There is plenty of additional documentation about using JavaMail, like this one, that shows how to send email with HTML formatting and attachments.

References

Ports

Port 465 and 587 should be used to send email to your own external email server.
Port 25 should be used to send through PLATFORM_SMTP_HOST. (this is the default in most mailers).

We proxy your emails through our own smtp host, and encrypt them over port 465 before sending them through to the outside world.