What is the best Perl module for sending email?

Question

For years I've been piping out to sendmail in my Perl programs to send email, but I have the strong sense I ought to use a module. It would make me feel less dirty.

Care to recommend me one module over the others, with reasons why? Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Most of the time, I use Mail::Sendmail which is simple, easy, fast, and does what it's supposed to do. It has always served me well, wether there's one or a thousand recipients in the message.

Now, depending on needs, you might want to use some MIME modules like MIME::Lite which you would grok together with something like Net::SMTP.

Answer 2

I do still sometimes pipe to sendmail (when I'm just sending basic text and know I'll only ever need to run on a *nix box), but most of the time I go with MIME::Lite, because:

• It handles the grunt work of sending attachments
• Although it sends via local sendmail by default, it can also be set to send via SMTP for use on hosts without sendmail installed
• Even when using sendmail, it figures out the path to sendmail and what options to give it on its own, so that's one less configuration setting to keep track of
• It's quick and easy

Answer 3

I'd suggest the modules maintained by the Perl Email Project. Namely Email::MIME::Creator, Email::Simple::Creator and Email::Sender. Note that Email::Send is deprecated.

The interface is (mostly) consistent and simple and they try to Do The Right Thing.

Answer 4

It doesn't get much simpler than Mail::Mailer, but I'm not sure I would use it for processing user-generated content (it offers minimal protection against web-scripting attacks). I use it all the time for mailing output of programs/cron jobs etc, and it's great for that.

Mime::Lite looks pretty good, although I haven't used it.

Answer 5

I've been pretty attached to Mail::Sender for a while. It sends mail with minimal fuss and has pretty intelligent handling of attachments.

Answer 6

I have used Mail::SendEasy with good results.

Answer 7

Somebody recommended MIME::Lite to me a long time ago, and it has always worked great for everything I needed to do. It may be using sendmail on the backend, though. I'm not sure.

I used it to send plaintext emails for years before I ever needed to send a MIME attachment.

Answer 8

As the maintainer of a few of the modules named, let me urge you to use Email::Sender. It is easy to use, based on code that has sent billion of messages, and is likely going to get much more work over the next few years than Email::Send, MIME::Lite, or others.

Answer 9

sub happyQuickMail
{
use Mail::Sendmail;
%mail = (
To => '[email protected]',
From => '[email protected]',
Subject => 'amazing message',
Message => "good news
the server is working
someone used it
customer number $abc"
);
sendmail(%mail) or die $Mail::Sendmail::error;
}