How to Send Emails with Python: Step‑by‑Step SMTP Tutorial

Overview

In many practical scenarios you may need to verify that the results of a Python script are delivered via email. This article demonstrates how to send emails using Python.

Required Libraries

smtplib

email.mime.text (MIMEText)

email.header (Header)

If any of these libraries are missing, install them with pip install.

Code

import smtplib
from email.mime.text import MIMEText
from email.header import Header

subject = "Python E-Mail Test"
sender = "<the email address of the sender>"
to_receiver = ["<the email address of the receiver>"]
cc_receiver = ["<the email address of the CC receiver>"]
receiver = to_receiver + cc_receiver

message = MIMEText("Hi,

This is Python Challenge test email, please ignore it. 

Regards,
Aaron", "plain", "UTF-8")
message["Subject"] = Header(subject, "UTF-8")
message["From"] = sender
message["To"] = ";".join(to_receiver)
message["Cc"] = ";".join(cc_receiver)

try:
    smtpObj = smtplib.SMTP("<smtp server address>")
    smtpObj.sendmail(sender, receiver, message.as_string())
    print("Email sent successfully")
except smtplib.SMTPException:
    print("Error")

Explanation

The import and from … import … statements load the required third‑party modules.

Variables subject, sender, to_receiver, and cc_receiver define the email's subject, sender address, and recipient lists. The receiver list combines direct and CC recipients. MIMEText creates the email body; the second argument specifies the format ( plain for plain text, can be changed to html), and the third argument sets the encoding ( UTF-8).

The Header object adds the subject header, while the From, To, and Cc fields are populated with the corresponding addresses, joining multiple addresses with a semicolon.

The try … except block handles potential SMTP errors; on success it prints a confirmation message, otherwise it prints "Error".

Result

Running the script prints "Email sent successfully" and the email appears in the recipient's inbox.

Additional Notes

If you do not have your own SMTP server, you can use third‑party services such as QQ mail. In that case you need to provide authentication credentials:

mail_user = "[email protected]"  # username
mail_password = "xxxxxxxxxxx"   # password or authorization code

QQ mail requires SSL, so use SMTP_SSL on port 465 instead of the default SMTP on port 25.

try:
    smtpObj = smtplib.SMTP_SSL("<smtp server address>", 465)
    smtpObj.login(mail_user, mail_password)
    smtpObj.sendmail(sender, receiver, message.as_string())
    print("Email sent successfully")
except smtplib.SMTPException:
    print("Error")