Quick Reference on how to send an email using .NET

[Frinavale]

Introduction
Many .NET applications will require an email be sent out for various reasons. This article will give a quick examples on how to send an email using VB.NET. The examples given can easily be translated into C#.NET.

Storing Email Credentials
If you are developing a web application the best place to store your email credentials is in your web.config file's <appSettings>. This will allow you to secure your email credentials using encryption and also provide a single location for all of your code to access the credentials.

<configuration>
     <appSettings>
        <add key="EmailUserName" value="userName"/>
        <add key="EmailPassword" value="password"/>
    </appSettings>
</configuration>
 

If you are using .NET Framework version 1.1
You will have to import System.Web.Mail
This Framework will not easily allow you to supply email credentials that allow you to connect to your mail server. I will not cover how to do this in this article.

Dim mailMsg As Mail.MailMessage
Dim body As new String = "This will be the body of my email message"
 
mailMsg= New MailMessage
mailMsg.To= "[e-mail]"
mailMsg.From= "[e-mail]"
mailMsg.Subject = "The subject of the email"
mailMsg.BodyFormat = MailFormat.Html
mailMsg.Body = body
 
SmtpMail.SmtpServer="localhost"
 
Try
    SmtpMail.Send(mailMsg)
Catch ex As Exception
 
End Try
 
 

If you are not using the using .NET Framework version 1.1
You will have to import System.Net.Mail.MailMessage and if you need to provide email credentials in order to connect to your mail server System.Net.NetworkCredentials

Please note that the following code snippet shows how to retrieve your user credentials from the web.config file. If you are not storing your credentials in this file you can simply add strings for the user name and password instead of using ConfigureationManager.AppSettings(...) to supply your credentials.

Also if you do not have to supply user credentials in order to connect to your mail provider you can ignore anything that has to do with credentials in this example

Try
    Dim emailTitle As String ="My Email Title"
 
    Dim emailMessage As Net.Mail.MailMessage
 
    Dim body As String = "This will appear in the body of my email"
 
    emailMessage = New Net.Mail.MailMessage("[e-mail]", "[e-mail]", emailTitle, body)
 
    Dim mailClient As New Net.Mail.SmtpClient("urlOfEmailService.com", 25)
    '25 is the port on which the mail server is listening.  If your mail server
    'runs on the default port this number does not need to be provided
 
 
    'If you do not need to provide credentials to connect to the mail server you can ignore the next 3 lines
    Dim myCredentials As New System.Net.NetworkCredential(System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager.AppSettings("EmailUserName"), System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager.AppSettings("EmailPassword"))
    mailClient.UseDefaultCredentials = False
    mailClient.Credentials = myCredentials
 
    mailClient.Send(emailMessage)
 
Catch ex As Exception
 
End Try
 
 

I hope this has helped you!

-Frinny

[Plater]

As a side note:
Be aware that sending emails through .NETs built in mailer, for whatever reason, does not send message immediatly. (I have had to wait up to 3hours for an email to myself to arrive)
If the wait time is not an issue it's great, if you want immediate results, you will have to look elsewhere.

[Frinavale]

As a side note:
Be aware that sending emails through .NETs built in mailer, for whatever reason, does not send message immediatly. (I have had to wait up to 3hours for an email to myself to arrive)
If the wait time is not an issue it's great, if you want immediate results, you will have to look elsewhere.

Wow, I've never experienced that before.
I guess it depends on your provider.

[Plater]

Well, I wrote my own mailer using sockets and every email went instantaniously. I did head-to-heads with the .NET implementation and my own and mine won out every time.

[Frinavale]

Just thought that I would post a code snippet here that sends email using GMail.

I used Gmail's reference to find information about ports etc. here: Configuring Gmail for Other Mail Clients


First you need to include a reference to System.Net.Mail and System.NET at the top of your VB.NET or C# code file.

Like this:
(VB.NET)

Imports System.Net.Mail
Imports System.Net

(C#)

using System.Net.Mail;
using System.Net;

Then you can send the email using the following:
(VB.NET)

Try
  Dim emailMessage As New MailMessage("[e-mail]", "[e-mail]", "test email", "testing email")
  Dim mailClient As New SmtpClient("smtp.gmail.com", 587)
  mailClient.EnableSsl = True
  mailClient.UseDefaultCredentials = False
  mailClient.DeliveryMethod = SmtpDeliveryMethod.Network
  Dim myCredentials As New System.Net.NetworkCredential("[e-mail]", "theGmailAccountPassword")
  mailClient.Credentials = myCredentials
  mailClient.Send(emailMessage)
  MessageBox.Show("Sent")
Catch ex As Exception
  MessageBox.Show(ex.Message)
End Try

(C#)

try {
  MailMessage emailMessage = new MailMessage("[e-mail]", "[e-mail]", "test email", "testing email");
  SmtpClient mailClient = new SmtpClient("smtp.gmail.com", 587);
  mailClient.EnableSsl = true;
  mailClient.UseDefaultCredentials = false;
  mailClient.DeliveryMethod = SmtpDeliveryMethod.Network;
  System.Net.NetworkCredential myCredentials = new System.Net.NetworkCredential("[e-mail]", "theGmailAccountPassword");
  mailClient.Credentials = myCredentials;
  mailClient.Send(emailMessage);
  MessageBox.Show("Sent");
} catch (Exception ex) {
  MessageBox.Show(ex.Message);
}

-Frinny