plain.email

Send emails from your Plain application using SMTP, console output, or the development preview backend.

• Overview
  • Sending a simple email
  • Sending HTML emails
  • Template-based emails
  • Attachments
• Settings
• Email backends
  • SMTP backend
  • Console backend
  • Preview backend
  • In-memory backend
• Testing
• FAQs
• Installation

Overview

You can send emails using the send_mail function for simple cases, or use the EmailMessage and EmailMultiAlternatives classes for more control. For template-based emails, the TemplateEmail class renders HTML templates automatically.

Sending a simple email

The send_mail function is the easiest way to send an email.

from plain.email import send_mail

send_mail(
    subject="Welcome!",
    message="Thanks for signing up.",
    from_email="hello@example.com",
    recipient_list=["user@example.com"],
)

To include an HTML version along with the plain text:

send_mail(
    subject="Welcome!",
    message="Thanks for signing up.",
    from_email="hello@example.com",
    recipient_list=["user@example.com"],
    html_message="<h1>Thanks for signing up!</h1>",
)

Sending HTML emails

For more control over multipart emails, use EmailMultiAlternatives.

from plain.email import EmailMultiAlternatives

email = EmailMultiAlternatives(
    subject="Your order confirmation",
    body="Your order #123 has been confirmed.",
    from_email="orders@example.com",
    to=["customer@example.com"],
)
email.attach_alternative("<h1>Order #123 Confirmed</h1>", "text/html")
email.send()

Template-based emails

The TemplateEmail class renders emails from template files. You provide a template name, and it looks for corresponding files in your templates/email/ directory:

• email/{template}.html - HTML content (required)
• email/{template}.txt - Plain text content (optional, falls back to stripping HTML tags)
• email/{template}.subject.txt - Subject line (optional)

from plain.email import TemplateEmail

email = TemplateEmail(
    template="welcome",
    context={"user_name": "Alice"},
    to=["alice@example.com"],
)
email.send()

With these template files:

<!-- templates/email/welcome.html -->
<h1>Welcome, {{ user_name }}!</h1>
<p>We're glad you're here.</p>

{# templates/email/welcome.subject.txt #}
Welcome to our app, {{ user_name }}!

You can subclass TemplateEmail to customize the template context by overriding get_template_context().

Attachments

You can attach files to any email message.

from plain.email import EmailMessage

email = EmailMessage(
    subject="Your report",
    body="Please find your report attached.",
    to=["user@example.com"],
)

# Attach content directly
email.attach("report.csv", csv_content, "text/csv")

# Or attach a file from disk
email.attach_file("/path/to/report.pdf")

email.send()

Settings

See default_settings.py for more details.

Email backends

The EMAIL_BACKEND setting controls how emails are sent. Plain includes four backends.

SMTP backend

The default backend sends emails via SMTP.

EMAIL_BACKEND = "plain.email.backends.smtp.EmailBackend"

Console backend

Prints emails to the console instead of sending them. Useful during development.

EMAIL_BACKEND = "plain.email.backends.console.EmailBackend"

Preview backend

Captures each sent message as a .eml file in .plain/emails/ for inspection during development. Nothing is delivered to an SMTP server.

EMAIL_BACKEND = "plain.email.backends.preview.EmailBackend"

Or via env var: PLAIN_EMAIL_BACKEND=plain.email.backends.preview.EmailBackend.

When plain.toolbar is installed, the toolbar gains an Email panel that lists recent captured messages and renders their HTML bodies inline. You can also open any .eml file directly in Mail.app.

In-memory backend

Captures sent messages in a list instead of delivering them — intended for tests. See Testing for the mailoutbox fixture built on it.

EMAIL_BACKEND = "plain.email.backends.locmem.EmailBackend"

Testing

plain.email ships a mailoutbox pytest fixture. It routes email to the in-memory backend for the duration of a test and yields the captured messages:

from plain.email import send_mail


def test_sends_email(mailoutbox):
    send_mail("Subject", "Body", "from@example.com", ["person@example.com"])

    assert len(mailoutbox) == 1
    assert mailoutbox[0].to == ["person@example.com"]

The fixture clears the outbox around each test (so messages never leak between tests) and restores the original EMAIL_BACKEND afterward. It registers automatically — no pytest plugin configuration needed.

FAQs

How do I send to multiple recipients efficiently?

Use send_mass_mail to send multiple messages over a single connection:

from plain.email import send_mass_mail

messages = (
    ("Subject 1", "Body 1", "from@example.com", ["to1@example.com"]),
    ("Subject 2", "Body 2", "from@example.com", ["to2@example.com"]),
)
send_mass_mail(messages)

How do I reuse a connection for multiple emails?

Use the backend as a context manager:

from plain.email import get_connection, EmailMessage

with get_connection() as connection:
    for user in users:
        email = EmailMessage(
            subject="Hello",
            body="Hi there!",
            to=[user.email],
            connection=connection,
        )
        email.send()

How do I add custom headers?

Pass a headers dict to any email class:

email = EmailMessage(
    subject="Hello",
    body="Content",
    to=["user@example.com"],
    headers={"X-Custom-Header": "value", "Reply-To": "reply@example.com"},
)

How do I create a custom email backend?

Subclass BaseEmailBackend and implement the send_messages method:

from plain.email.backends.base import BaseEmailBackend

class MyBackend(BaseEmailBackend):
    def send_messages(self, email_messages):
        # Your sending logic here
        return len(email_messages)

Installation

Install the plain.email package from PyPI:

uv add plain.email

Add plain.email to your INSTALLED_PACKAGES and configure the required settings:

# settings.py
INSTALLED_PACKAGES = [
    # ...
    "plain.email",
]

EMAIL_BACKEND = "plain.email.backends.smtp.EmailBackend"
EMAIL_DEFAULT_FROM = "noreply@example.com"

# For SMTP (adjust for your mail provider)
EMAIL_HOST = "smtp.example.com"
EMAIL_PORT = 587
EMAIL_HOST_USER = "your-username"
EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD = "your-password"
EMAIL_USE_TLS = True

For local development, use the console backend to see emails in your terminal:

EMAIL_BACKEND = "plain.email.backends.console.EmailBackend"