How do I send emails programmatically?

You usually send emails programmatically in one of these ways:

1) Use an email-sending service or SMTP server

Common options:

• SMTP with providers like Gmail, Outlook, your company mail server
• Transactional email APIs like SendGrid, Mailgun, Amazon SES, Postmark

2) Basic SMTP flow

At a high level:

1. Connect to the SMTP server
2. Authenticate
3. Set sender, recipient(s), subject, and body
4. Send the message

3) Example in Python using SMTP

import smtplib
from email.message import EmailMessage

msg = EmailMessage()
msg["Subject"] = "Test Email"
msg["From"] = "you@example.com"
msg["To"] = "recipient@example.com"
msg.set_content("Hello from Python!")

with smtplib.SMTP("smtp.example.com", 587) as smtp:
    smtp.starttls()
    smtp.login("you@example.com", "your_password")
    smtp.send_message(msg)

4) Example in Node.js using Nodemailer

const nodemailer = require("nodemailer");

async function main() {
  let transporter = nodemailer.createTransport({
    host: "smtp.example.com",
    port: 587,
    secure: false,
    auth: {
      user: "you@example.com",
      pass: "your_password"
    }
  });

  await transporter.sendMail({
    from: "you@example.com",
    to: "recipient@example.com",
    subject: "Test Email",
    text: "Hello from Node.js!"
  });
}

main().catch(console.error);

5) Best practices

• Use app passwords or OAuth when available instead of your main password
• Prefer TLS/STARTTLS
• For production, use a transactional email service
• Handle bounce/errors and rate limits
• Don’t send spam; make sure recipients opted in

6) If you want a quick recommendation

• Small scripts / testing: SMTP
• Production apps: SendGrid / Mailgun / SES / Postmark

If you tell me your language (Python, JavaScript, Java, etc.) and which email provider you want to use, I can give you a working example.