Phpmailer error "Could not instantiate mail function"

user_158756 0
Viewed 231223

I'm using the mail() basic example modified slightly for my user id and I'm getting the error "Mailer Error: Could not instantiate mail function"

if I use the mail function -

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

it works fine, though I'm having trouble sending HTML, which is why I'm trying PHPMailer.

this is the code:

<?php
require_once('../class.phpmailer.php');

    $mail             = new PHPMailer(); // defaults to using php "mail()"
    $body             = file_get_contents('contents.html');
    $body             = eregi_replace("[\]",'',$body);
        print ($body ); // to verify that I got the html
    $mail->AddReplyTo("reply@example.com","my name");
    $mail->SetFrom('from@example.com', 'my name');
    $address = "to@example.com";
    $mail->AddAddress($address, "her name");
    $mail->Subject    = "PHPMailer Test Subject via mail(), basic";
    $mail->AltBody    = "To view the message, please use an HTML compatible email viewer!";
    $mail->MsgHTML($body);
    $mail->AddAttachment("images/phpmailer.gif");      // attachment
    $mail->AddAttachment("images/phpmailer_mini.gif"); // attachment

    if(!$mail->Send()) {
        echo "Mailer Error: " . $mail->ErrorInfo;
    } else {
        echo "Message sent!";
    }
?>
phpmailer email php
18 Answers

Your code looks good, did you forget to install PostFix on your server?

sudo apt-get install postfix

It worked for me ;)

Cheers

user_11305390

In my case, it was the attachment size limit that causes the issue. Check and increase the size limit of mail worked for me.

user_105874480

Check if sendmail is enabled, mostly if your server is provided by another company.

user_57573280

For what it's worth I had this issue and had to go into cPanel where I saw the error message

"Attention! Please register your email IDs used in non-smtp mails through cpanel plugin. Unregistered email IDs will not be allowed in non-smtp emails sent through scripts. Go to Mail section and find "Registered Mail IDs" plugin in paper_lantern theme."

Registering the emails in cPanel (Register Mail IDs) and waiting 10 mins got mine to work.

Hope that helps someone.

user_24956190

My config: IIS + php7.4

I had the same issue as @Salman-A, where small attachments were emailed but large were causing the page to error out. I have increased file and attachments limits in php.ini, but this has made no difference.

Then I found a configuration in IIS(6.0), and increased file limits in there. iis config image

Also here is my mail.php:

use PHPMailer\PHPMailer\PHPMailer;
use PHPMailer\PHPMailer\Exception;
require '../_PHPMailer-master/src/Exception.php';
require '../_PHPMailer-master/src/PHPMailer.php';

try{
    $email = new PHPMailer(true);
    $email->SetFrom('internal@example.com', 'optional name');
    $email->isHTML(true);
    $email->Subject   = 'my subject';
    $email->Body      = $emailContent;
    $email->AddAddress( $eml_to );
    $email->AddAttachment( $file_to_attach );
    $email->Send();
  }catch(phpmailerException $e){echo $e->errorMessage();}

future.

user_57942190

A lot of people often overlook the best/right way to call phpmailer and to put these:

require_once('../class.phpmailer.php');

or, something like this from the composer installation:

use PHPMailer\PHPMailer\PHPMailer;
use PHPMailer\PHPMailer\Exception;
require_once "../../vendor/autoload.php";

on TOP of the page before calling or including anything else. That causes the "Could not instantiate mail function"-error by most folks.

Best solution: put all mail handling in a different file to have it as clean as possible. And always use SMTP. If that is not working, check your DNS if your allowed to send mail.

user_9106540
Related