How do we solve error 554 5.5.1 (no valid recipients) when using PHP Swiftmailer?

Question

When testing out our mail server we stumbled accross an error that prevents us from sending mails via PHP, though regular sending/receiving per Mail-in-a-box works without any problems. We are running a separate Ubuntu 18.04 server that only has Mail-in-a-box with all its needed components running.

Output in the error.log text file

PHP Fatal error: Uncaught Swift_TransportException: Expected response code 354 but got code "554", with message "554 5.5.1 Error: no valid recipients\r\n"

PHP file

$request_email = $_POST['request-email'];
$request_name = $_POST['request-name'];
$request_text = $_POST['request-text'];

$transport = (new Swift_SmtpTransport('data.abc.xy', 587, 'tls'))
    ->setUsername('contact@abc.xy')
    ->setPassword('*******')
    ->setStreamOptions(array('ssl' => array('allow_self_signed' => true, 'verify_peer' => false)));

$mailer = (new Swift_Mailer($transport));

$message = (new Swift_Message('Name: '. $request_name))
    ->setFrom(['' . $request_email => '' . $request_name])
    ->setTo(['contact@abc.xy'])
    ->setBody('E-Mail: ' . $request_email . $request_text)
    ->setContentType("text/html");

$result = $mailer->send($message);

What we have tried is to reinstall all of Mail-in-a-box and all of the components and checking everything for spelling mistakes. The ricipient does exist on our mail server and can receive and send mails manually via the client.

Answer 1

I have solved this error (554) just adding to laravel (.env file) these 2 lines:

MAIL_FROM_ADDRESS=you@email.com
MAIL_FROM_NAME="you@email.com"

Finally, run this command to flush mail cache config:

php artisan config:cache

Answer 2

The 554 5.5.1 error is the SMTP error "no valid recipients". It can occur if you've misspelled the recipient addresses but it can also occur if you are not properly authenticating to the outgoing server.

So the problem is that abc.xy is not a registered domain so you can't send an email to this address. I think it's not something related to your code.

You can catch the Swift_TransportException error and handle it in your own codebase like :

try {
    $result = $mailer->send($message);
} 
catch (Swift_TransportException $e) {
    echo $e->getMessage();
}

Answer 3

I had the same problem in Laravel and fixed it by changing "from" to "replyTo". I believe the problem is when sender's and app server's domains differs.

// in Laravel
// ...
namespace App\Notifications;
// ...
    public function __construct(User $from, string $body)
    {
        $this->from = $from;
        $this->body = $body;
    }
// ...
    public function toMail($notifiable)
    {
        $message = new MailMessage;
        $message->subject('some subject');

        // "no valid recipients" error:
        // $message->from($this->from->email, $this->from->name_full);
        
        // works:
        // sender globally set in .env (MAIL_FROM_NAME, MAIL_FROM_ADDRESS)
        $message->replyTo($this->from->email, $this->from->name_full);
        
        $message->line(new HtmlString(nl2br($this->body)));

        return $message;
    }

// Swiftmailer respectively
// ...
$message = (new Swift_Message('Name: '. $request_name))
    ->setFrom(['contact@abc.xy' => 'contact'])
    ->setReplyTo([$request_email => $request_name])
// ...

Answer 4

I solved this issue by ensuring that the email address set in env file

MAIL_USERNAME=example@example.com

is the same as the "from" address in my custom notification mail class' toMail function

->from('example@example.com','My app name')

It seems as though some email services find it odd that the app is sending an email using one credential (env credentials) but a different email address is being masked as the sender.

A better solution would probably be to never set a "from" address in your notification classes.

Answer 5

One more thing is that it might be everything OK with your code, but the receiver address simply doesn't exist. We have a lot of customers from other companies and with time people simply change their job and the email address they used is deleted

"receiver email address doesn't exist anymore"

so if you try to send an email to non existing email address you will get that same error.

Answer 6

in my case, the MAIL_FROM_NAME value in the .env file is different from 'name' in my laravel code. Ex:

• in .env MAIL_FROM_NAME=mymail@dot.com

• in my Laravel code

  $m->from('mymail@dot.com', 'myOther@mail.com');

when i type 'mymail@dot.com' or text (ex: 'MAIL SENDER NAME' ) instead of 'myOther@mail.com', it work fine!

Answer 7

In my case, I got this error because I had forgotten to set the MX record on the recipient's domain, so the app didn't know where to deliver the email.

Another reason can be the domain being blacklisted, check spamhaus