How to send free emails using Sendinblue

This post was originally published on my blog.

Many web applications send emails, for example when someone is registered you want to send them a welcome email. Although you can do it for free using the Gmail SMTP server, it is more solid to use a service like Sendinblue.

Besides, using Sendinblue you can send 300 emails/day, and using Gmail you're limited to only 100 emails/day. Unfortunately, I couldn't find good documentation on how to use Sendinblue with Laravel, but I finally got it working so that's why I'm sharing it with you.

Create a Sendinblue email account

Head over to Sendinblue and create an account. Next, go to your account section and in the left sidebar click SMTP & API. Afterwards click at the SMTP tab and finally copy your secret SMTP key value.

Configuring Laravel

After you grabbed your secret key, go to your .env file in your Laravel application. Next, add these values:

MAIL_MAILER=smtp
MAIL_HOST=smtp-relay.sendinblue.com
MAIL_PORT=587
MAIL_USERNAME=[e-mail]
MAIL_PASSWORD=VAO929swI6sRIoaI
MAIL_ENCRYPTION=tls
MAIL_FROM_ADDRESS=[e-mail]
MAIL_FROM_NAME="${APP_NAME}"

Be sure to add the email from your Sendinblue account in the MAIL_USERNAME and MAIL_FROM_ADDRESS sections, and your secret SMTP key in the MAIL_PASSWORD section.

That's it! Using Sendinblue you're limited to 300 emails/day on the free plan, and that's more than every other mailing service. If you need to send more emails, their plans start at €19/month or $25/month for 10 000 emails/month.