.NET Best Method to Send Email (System.Net.Mail has issues)

Question

This seems to be pretty straight forward. I need to send email from some ASP.NET applications. I need to do this consistently without strange errors and without CPU utilizat

Answer 1

We have used hMailserver with great success. The configuration can take a while to get used to but it has been a great -- and free -- mail server product.

If you want to roll your own (which I did years ago when I was having a bear of a time with CDONTS), you can start with the code below and customize to your heart's content. It uses the TcpClient to create a TCP connection directly to the mailserver. Not that I'd recommend this when there are so many established and debugged solutions, but I found this very useful for debugging and determining where the problem was with the prefab MS mail components.

    private void Send_Email() 
    {
        #region Email Sending Function
        string strMail = "";

        try 
        {
            // See RFC821 http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc821.html for more specs
            // TcpClient is an abstraction of a TCP Socket connection
            TcpClient myTCP = new TcpClient();

            // Connect to the mail server's port 25
            myTCP.Connect(mailserver, 25);

            // Open a network stream which sends data to/from the TcpClient's socket
            System.Net.Sockets.NetworkStream ns = myTCP.GetStream();

            // The data to send to the mail server, basically a raw SMTP mail message
            strMail = "HELO\n";
            strMail += "MAIL FROM:from@address.com\n";
            strMail += "RCPT TO:" + recipient + "\n";
            strMail += "DATA\n";
            strMail += "Subject: mySubject\n";
            strMail += "To:" + recipient + "\n";
            strMail += "From: \"From Real Name\" \n";
            strMail += "\n";
            strMail += " ---------------------------------------\n";
            strMail += "Name:     " + txtName.Text + "\n";
            strMail += "Address1: " + txtAddress1.Text + "\n";
            strMail += "Address2: " + txtAddress2.Text + "\n";
            strMail += "City:     " + txtCity.Text + "\n";
            strMail += "State:    " + txtState.Text + "\n";
            strMail += "Zip:      " + txtZip.Text + "\n";
            strMail += "Email:    " + txtEmail.Text + "\n";
            strMail += "Dealer:   " + txtDealer.Text + "\n";
            strMail += " ---------------------------------------\n";
            strMail += "THIS IS AN AUTOMATED EMAIL SYSTEM. DO NOT REPLY TO THIS ADDRESS.\n";
            strMail += "\n.\n";

            // Defines encoding of string into Bytes (network stream needs
            // an array of bytes to send -- can't send strings)
            ASCIIEncoding AE = new ASCIIEncoding();
            byte[] ByteArray = AE.GetBytes(strMail);

            // send the byte-encoded string to the networkstream -> mail server:25
            ns.Write(ByteArray, 0, ByteArray.Length);

            //ns.Read(ByteArray, 0, ByteArray.Length);
            //lblStatus.Text = ByteArray.ToString();

            // close the network stream
            ns.Close();

            // close the TCP connection
            myTCP.Close();
        }
        catch(Exception ex) 
        {
            throw new Exception("Couldn't send email: 
" + ex.Message);
        }

        #endregion

    }