PHP Mail() not working on remote server - php

Question

I am developing an application and have been testing the mail() function in PHP. The following works just fine on my local machine to send emails to myself, but as soon as I try to send it from the testing environment to my local machine, it silently fails.
I will still get the "Mail Sent" message, but no message is sent. I turned on the mail logging in the php.ini file, but even that doesn't seem to be populated after I refresh the page.
Again, the .php files and php.ini files are identical in both environments. Port 25 has been opened on the testing environment, and we are using a Microsoft Exchange server.
<?php
$to = "user#example.com";
$subject = "Test mail";
$message = "Hello! This is a simple email message.";
$from = "user#example.com";
$headers = "From:" . $from;
mail($to,$subject,$message,$headers);
echo "Mail Sent.";
?>
SMTP area of the php.ini file:
[mail function]
; For Win32 only.
; http://php.net/smtp
SMTP = exhange.server.org
; http://php.net/smtp-port
smtp_port = 25
; For Win32 only.
; http://php.net/sendmail-from
sendmail_from = user#example.com

Answer 1

First of all, even when mail fails, the echo "Mail Sent." will be shown. The php function mail() will return true on success and false on failure. Put it in an if and you can check if the mail has been sent:
if(mail($to,$subject,$message,$headers)) echo "Mail Sent.";
Should be working to check if the email was sent or not.
Regarding your problem that it is not working, I am not quite sure and I might be wrong, but some servers as of my experience want the \r\n behind each headerline.
$headers = "From:" . $from . "\r\n";
But as already said, I might be wrong and related to the examples on here, it is not necessary when using one headerline - http://php.net/manual/en/function.mail.php
When I am testing the mail function, I do not put any header information into the mail function, just $to, $subject, $message. You might give it a try. I really hate using the php mail function by myown, I always use a PHP mailer class.
Sorry if I couldn't answer to your real problem, that the email can not be sent. I hope you

Answer 2

Check in your PHP distro for PEAR and Mail.php. On the cmd line, "php -i" to find your resources. I believe PEAR and Mail.php is fairly common for distros over 5.2. I'm on a Mac and Linux server and prefer PEAR mail over the PHP mail function. Windows should be similar. Here is an example of sending multiple emails using PEAR Mail.
/** PEAR::MAIL
* PEAR::Mail only opens one mail socket for multiple emails sent
*/
require_once('/opt/local/lib/php/Mail.php');
$body = $_POST['message'];
//using sendmail on backend
$params['sendmail_path'] = '/usr/sbin/sendmail';
//using factory method
$mail_object =& Mail::factory('sendmail',$params);
//loop through selected users to send
for ($i=0;$i<count($recipients);$i++){
if (!empty($recipients[$i]['email'])&&($recipients[$i]['alt_email'])){
//concatinate email and alt_email
$address = $recipients[$i]['email'].",".$recipients[$i]['alt_email'];
}
else {
//only one user address
$address = $recipients[$i]['email'];
}
//send the mail instance
$mail_object->send($address,$headers,$body);
if (PEAR::isError($mail_object)) {print($mail_object->getMessage());}
} //close the for loop

Answer 3

Some time your hosting service providers are block outgoing SMTP Authentication. Please confirm with you hosting providers.