What alternatives to the mail() function in PHP are recommended for sending emails?
The mail() function in PHP can be unreliable and may not work properly on all servers. To send emails more reliably, it is recommended to use alternative methods such as PHPMailer or the built-in mail sending functions provided by popular PHP frameworks like Laravel.
// Example using PHPMailer
use PHPMailer\PHPMailer\PHPMailer;
use PHPMailer\PHPMailer\Exception;
require 'vendor/autoload.php';
$mail = new PHPMailer(true);
try {
$mail->isSMTP();
$mail->Host = 'smtp.example.com';
$mail->SMTPAuth = true;
$mail->Username = 'your@example.com';
$mail->Password = 'your_password';
$mail->SMTPSecure = 'tls';
$mail->Port = 587;
$mail->setFrom('your@example.com', 'Your Name');
$mail->addAddress('recipient@example.com', 'Recipient Name');
$mail->isHTML(true);
$mail->Subject = 'Subject';
$mail->Body = 'Email body content';
$mail->send();
echo 'Email sent successfully';
} catch (Exception $e) {
echo 'Email could not be sent. Mailer Error: ' . $mail->ErrorInfo;
}