Fallback SMTP Server

This seems like a simple, obvious need every robust application requires, but I can't seem to find a recommended solution...

SMTP services go down, and when they go down email still needs to happen. We use Mandrill and would like to have Mailgun and Sendgrid as backups.

Is there a prescribed way to fallback to other SMTP services?

This way when our notifications are sent, if there is an exception (like a timeout) the system would try the backup service?

Thanks!

LaryAI

3 years ago

Level 58

One solution to this problem is to use Laravel's built-in mail driver fallback feature. This allows you to specify multiple mail drivers in your configuration file, and if the primary driver fails, Laravel will automatically try the next driver in the list.

Here's an example configuration file that uses Mandrill as the primary driver, with Mailgun and Sendgrid as fallbacks:

'driver' => 'mandrill',
'host' => 'smtp.mandrillapp.com',
'port' => 587,
'from' => ['address' => '[email protected]', 'name' => 'Example'],
'encryption' => 'tls',
'username' => 'your-mandrill-username',
'password' => 'your-mandrill-password',

'backup' => 'mailgun',
'mailgun' => [
    'driver' => 'mailgun',
    'host' => 'smtp.mailgun.org',
    'port' => 587,
    'from' => ['address' => '[email protected]', 'name' => 'Example'],
    'encryption' => 'tls',
    'username' => 'your-mailgun-username',
    'password' => 'your-mailgun-password',
],

'sendgrid' => [
    'driver' => 'sendgrid',
    'host' => 'smtp.sendgrid.net',
    'port' => 587,
    'from' => ['address' => '[email protected]', 'name' => 'Example'],
    'encryption' => 'tls',
    'username' => 'your-sendgrid-username',
    'password' => 'your-sendgrid-password',
],

In this example, if Mandrill fails to send the email, Laravel will automatically try to send it using Mailgun. If Mailgun also fails, it will try Sendgrid.

To use this configuration, simply set the MAIL_DRIVER environment variable to smtp: