Email

phpvms sends transactional email (registration, PIREP receipts, password resets, etc). Use a third-party email provider — they handle SMTP, deliverability, logging, and analytics.

warning

On shared hosting, email is often locked down. A "naughty neighbor" can get your shared IP blacklisted in hours. Use a provider over SMTP — and prefer a provider's API integration over plain SMTP, since API calls are faster than blocking SMTP handshakes.

Supported providers

Laravel ships first-class drivers for these:

Provider	Free tier
Mailgun	Up to 10k messages/month
Postmark	First month free (mention referral)
Amazon SES	Very cheap, free from EC2

warning

After editing .env, clear the application cache. Otherwise your new mail settings won't load:

php artisan config:clear

SMTP

Generic SMTP — works with any provider that exposes SMTP credentials.

.env

MAIL_MAILER=smtp
MAIL_FROM_NAME='phpvms No-Reply'
MAIL_FROM_ADDRESS='no-reply@phpvms.net'
MAIL_HOST=
MAIL_PORT=
MAIL_ENCRYPTION=
MAIL_USERNAME=
MAIL_PASSWORD=

Host, port, and encryption values come from your hosting control panel or VPS provider — they vary per host, so there's no generic default.

Mailgun

.env

MAIL_MAILER=mailgun
MAILGUN_DOMAIN='your mailgun domain'
MAILGUN_SECRET='your mailgun secret'

Postmark

.env

MAIL_MAILER=postmark
POSTMARK_TOKEN='your postmark token'

Amazon SES

.env

MAIL_MAILER=ses
AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID='key id'
AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY='access key'
AWS_DEFAULT_REGION='the region if not us-east-1'

Debugging with Mailtrap

mailtrap.io catches all outgoing mail in a fake inbox so you can test registrations, password resets, and PIREP receipts without spamming real users. Mailtrap gives you Laravel-ready creds:

.env

MAIL_MAILER=smtp
MAIL_FROM_NAME='phpvms Admin'
MAIL_FROM_ADDRESS='no-reply@phpvms.net'
MAIL_HOST=smtp.mailtrap.io
MAIL_PORT=2525
MAIL_ENCRYPTION=tls
MAIL_USERNAME='as provided'
MAIL_PASSWORD='as provided'