Mail not sent from CiviCRM via SMTP or mail()

Question

I am trying to send email using SMTP settings in the outbound email settings. I have set all the fields according to this post which would be

SMTP server address : ssl://smtp.gmail.com  
SMTP server port: 465  
SMTP username: [username@gmail.com/username@yourtlddomain.com]  
SMTP password: [yourpassword]  

I have also commented out CIVICRM_MAIL_LOG in the civicrm.settings.php hence my emails are not sent to a file, for sure. In both mail() and SMTP, the test mail is sent OK according to the popup window (view attached file). But it does not get delivered so it isn't really sent.

I have checked all the related questions. The closest was this CiviCRM not sending mails but the outputs don't match.

[Edit] The mails work now. I have implemented the changes suggested by @Siddharth Gupta, below. Also to allow your gmail to send mails you need to change its security to allow access for less secure apps from here

Answer 1

I think I found the issue. If your CiviCRM is installed via buildkit there is a file ~/buildkit/app/civicrm.settings.d/100-mail.php which sets the CIVICRM_MAIL_LOG to /dev/null. This doesn't allow Civi to communicate to MTA (Mail Transfer Agent).

The first solution is to comment out

//if (!defined('CIVICRM_MAIL_LOG')) {
//  define('CIVICRM_MAIL_LOG', '/dev/null');
//}

Further, because this is a dev/testing environment, you may want to log your emails while you send them. In your civicrm.settings.php add the following lines.

if (!defined('CIVICRM_MAIL_LOG')) {
define( 'CIVICRM_MAIL_LOG', 'log_path/mail.log');
}
define('CIVICRM_MAIL_LOG_AND SEND', true);

CIVICRM_MAIL_LOG_AND SEND allows CiviCRM to log as well as send the emails.

Answer 2

so using google smtp is fine for tests, but as bgm mentioned, it won't scale for production, as google doesn't allow you to send a lot of emails that way.

if you have the popup, it means that civi could talk to the mail server successfully, so it's probably working and your set up is correct. What might be the issue is between gmail servers and your university final account. Can you try sending the test to a gmail address, eg the one you use as the sender too?

And double check what email account you set as the sender, it might be as well that the sender email address is not your gmail address, so the anti-spams kills the test email somewhere on the way.

Answer 3

In addition to queuing up the mail, you need to ensure that the cron job for sending them is executing. Look under Admin > System Settings > Scheduled Jobs, then check when the last time Send Scheduled Mailings ran. You may want to click on View Job Log to see if there are any issues it is having. Note that when debugging it can be convenient to click more > Execute Now, and then check the job log again.