What are potential pitfalls when using SMTP for email sending in PHP, especially with free hosting providers?

One potential pitfall when using SMTP for email sending in PHP, especially with free hosting providers, is that they may have strict limitations on the number of emails that can be sent per day or hour. To avoid hitting these limits, it's important to implement proper error handling and logging in your code. Additionally, make sure to optimize your email sending process by batching emails and using a reliable SMTP server. 

// Example PHP code snippet for sending emails with SMTP in a batched manner

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

require 'vendor/autoload.php'; // Include PHPMailer library

// Initialize PHPMailer
$mail = new PHPMailer(true);

// SMTP configuration
$mail->isSMTP();
$mail->Host = 'smtp.example.com';
$mail->SMTPAuth = true;
$mail->Username = 'your@example.com';
$mail->Password = 'yourpassword';
$mail->SMTPSecure = 'tls';
$mail->Port = 587;

// Batched email sending loop
$emails = ['recipient1@example.com', 'recipient2@example.com', 'recipient3@example.com'];

foreach ($emails as $email) {
    try {
        // Set email parameters
        $mail->setFrom('your@example.com', 'Your Name');
        $mail->addAddress($email);
        $mail->isHTML(true);
        $mail->Subject = 'Subject';
        $mail->Body = 'Email body';

        // Send email
        $mail->send();
        echo 'Email sent to ' . $email . '<br>';
    } catch (Exception $e) {
        echo 'Error sending email: ' . $mail->ErrorInfo;
    }

    // Clear recipients
    $mail->clearAddresses();
}

Keywords

SMTP email sending PHP free hosting providers pitfalls

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