Django mail_admins vs send_mail

Question

I can get my django application to properly report server errors by email using the obvious settings :

DEBUG = False

ADMINS = (('name','email'),)
MANAGERS = (('name','email'),)

EMAIL_HOST = 'ip address'
EMAIL_HOST_USER = 'user'
EMAIL_PORT = 25
EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD = 'pwd'
SERVER_EMAIL = 'server-email'

Yet for some reason, when I try to use send_email() it returns either Authentication errors if I try without TLS, or "You don't have permission to send as this sender" if I do use TLS. I can't understand why error reporting works, and send_email doesn't... it uses the same settings by default.

Any suggestions ?

Answer 1

There are two settings which affect the 'from' email address for different types of emails.

• SERVER_EMAIL - used for sending error emails to ADMINS and MANAGERS.
• DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL - used for sending regular emails

It looks as if you have already set SERVER_EMAIL, so make sure you have set DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL as well.