What are the potential drawbacks of using the mail() function in PHP for sending emails, especially to Gmail addresses?

One potential drawback of using the mail() function in PHP for sending emails, especially to Gmail addresses, is that the emails may be marked as spam or not delivered at all due to authentication issues. To solve this problem, it is recommended to use SMTP authentication to send emails from PHP. This ensures that the emails are sent securely and are less likely to be marked as spam by email providers like Gmail. 

// Set the SMTP settings for sending emails
ini_set('SMTP', 'smtp.gmail.com');
ini_set('smtp_port', 587);
ini_set('sendmail_from', 'your_email@gmail.com');
ini_set('sendmail_path', '/usr/sbin/sendmail -t -i');

// Send email using PHPMailer library
use PHPMailer\PHPMailer\PHPMailer;
use PHPMailer\PHPMailer\Exception;

require 'vendor/autoload.php';

$mail = new PHPMailer(true);

try {
    $mail->isSMTP();
    $mail->Host = 'smtp.gmail.com';
    $mail->SMTPAuth = true;
    $mail->Username = 'your_email@gmail.com';
    $mail->Password = 'your_password';
    $mail->SMTPSecure = 'tls';
    $mail->Port = 587;

    $mail->setFrom('your_email@gmail.com', 'Your Name');
    $mail->addAddress('recipient_email@gmail.com', 'Recipient Name');

    $mail->isHTML(true);
    $mail->Subject = 'Subject';
    $mail->Body = 'Email body';

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

Keywords

mail function PHP Gmail spam folder deliverability

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