What are the benefits of using a Mailer class like Swift or PHPMailer for sending emails in PHP?

Using a Mailer class like Swift or PHPMailer in PHP provides a more robust and secure way to send emails compared to using the built-in mail() function. These classes offer features such as SMTP authentication, HTML email support, attachment handling, and better error handling. They also make it easier to manage email templates and send bulk emails efficiently.

// Example using PHPMailer to send an email
use PHPMailer\PHPMailer\PHPMailer;
use PHPMailer\PHPMailer\Exception;

// Load Composer's autoloader
require 'vendor/autoload.php';

// Instantiation and passing `true` enables exceptions
$mail = new PHPMailer(true);

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

    //Recipients
    $mail->setFrom('from@example.com', 'Your Name');
    $mail->addAddress('recipient@example.com', 'Recipient Name');

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

    $mail->send();
    echo 'Message has been sent';
} catch (Exception $e) {
    echo "Message could not be sent. Mailer Error: {$mail->ErrorInfo}";
}