Friday, 13 July 2018

How to set up E-mail server for local development

Many developers look for a solution to test mail functionality for their local development work in order to test if the email functionality working fine or not, before they can proceed with deployment on actual production server. To ease up this task we are here with an easy to use and configurable solution for running your SMTP server on local development environment.

Local Mail Setup

*. Download hMailServer from https://www.hmailserver.com

*. After completing the download open hMailServer Administrator.

*. To connect hMailServer click on Add in admin panel and provide Host name as “localhost”. Keep other fields as it is.

hMailServer administrator

*. Now click on just added localhost and click on Connect, when prompted . This will open hMailserver Administrator panel.

*. To start using hMailserver you need to add domain, under Domains section. To do so click on Add domain to add the domain, provide your local domain name and click on save.

local domain name

*. Next step is to setup an account. Click on Domains -> (Your domain) -> Accounts -> Add and provide any name for your account e.g. ‘techantic’ and click save. You can also provide password but this is not mandatory. Keep rest of the fields as it is.

domain account setup

*. Now mail server is ready to use. Next step is to configure your local e-mail.

Configuring Local Mail

*. Download Mozilla thunderbird Mail client from here https://www.thunderbird.net

*. After download and install open Thunderbird client and click on “Skip this and use my existing email”

skip setup


*. This will prompt you to enter your e-mail address. Enter your e-mail account that you just set up on hMailServer and the password of hMailServer admin and click on Continue.

*. Now you need to update server host name as 127.0.0.1 for both IMAP and POP3. Also select port as 143 for IMAP and 25 for SMTP and click on Re-test. Finally click on Done.

mailserver settings


*. Now your local e-mail setup is complete, you can use the local mail server for your local application development.

To configure settings in your config file of your development application under mailSettings -> smtp in from attribute put your local e-mail id and under mailSettings -> network in host attribute put your local application address and make sure value of port is 25.

mail config settings


That’s it! You can test your mails on your local development machine J

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