How do I send emails from a Laravel app?

To send emails from a Laravel app, you typically use Laravel’s built-in Mail system, which sits on top of Symfony Mailer.

1) Configure your mail driver

Set your mail settings in .env:

MAIL_MAILER=smtp
MAIL_HOST=smtp.mailtrap.io
MAIL_PORT=2525
MAIL_USERNAME=your_username
MAIL_PASSWORD=your_password
MAIL_ENCRYPTION=tls
MAIL_FROM_ADDRESS=no-reply@example.com
MAIL_FROM_NAME="${APP_NAME}"

Common options:

• smtp — most common
• mailgun, postmark, ses — for email services
• log — writes emails to logs instead of sending
• array — stores emails in memory for testing

2) Create a Mailable

Generate a mailable class:

php artisan make:mail WelcomeMail

This creates a class in app/Mail/WelcomeMail.php.

Example:

use Illuminate\Mail\Mailable;

class WelcomeMail extends Mailable
{
    public function build()
    {
        return $this->subject('Welcome!')
                    ->view('emails.welcome');
    }
}

3) Create the email view

Create a Blade template:

resources/views/emails/welcome.blade.php

<h1>Welcome, {{ $name }}!</h1>
<p>Thanks for joining us.</p>

If you pass data to the mailable, you can display it in the view.

Example mailable with data:

class WelcomeMail extends Mailable
{
    public function __construct(public $name) {}

    public function build()
    {
        return $this->subject('Welcome!')
                    ->view('emails.welcome');
    }
}

4) Send the email

In a controller, route, or job:

use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Mail;
use App\Mail\WelcomeMail;

Mail::to('user@example.com')->send(new WelcomeMail('John'));

5) Queue emails if needed

For better performance, you can queue emails:

Mail::to('user@example.com')->queue(new WelcomeMail('John'));

Your mailable should implement ShouldQueue if you want it queued automatically:

use Illuminate\Contracts\Queue\ShouldQueue;
use Illuminate\Mail\Mailable;

class WelcomeMail extends Mailable implements ShouldQueue
{
    // ...
}

Then make sure your queue is configured and a worker is running.

6) Test email sending

For local development, a tool like:

• Mailtrap
• Mailpit
• Mailhog

is useful so you can inspect messages without sending real emails.

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If you want, I can also show you:

1. a complete Laravel 11 example,
2. how to send HTML emails, or
3. how to use queue jobs for email sending.