Troubleshooting

Anymail throwing errors? Not sending what you want? Here are some tips…

Figuring out what’s wrong

Check the error message

Look for an Anymail error message in your web browser or console (running Django in dev mode) or in your server error logs. If you see something like “invalid API key” or “invalid email address”, that’s probably 90% of what you’ll need to know to solve the problem.

Check your ESPs API logs

Most ESPs offer some sort of API activity log in their dashboards. Check the logs to see if the data you thought you were sending actually made it to your ESP, and if they recorded any errors there.

Double-check common issues

  • Did you add any required settings for your ESP to your settings.py? (E.g., ANYMAIL_SENDGRID_API_KEY for SendGrid.) See Supported ESPs.
  • Did you add 'anymail' to the list of INSTALLED_APPS in settings.py?
  • Are you using a valid from address? Django’s default is “webmaster@localhost”, which won’t cut it. Either specify the from_email explicitly on every message you send through Anymail, or add DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL to your settings.py.

Try it without Anymail

Try switching your EMAIL_BACKEND setting to Django’s File backend and then running your email-sending code again. If that causes errors, you’ll know the issue is somewhere other than Anymail. And you can look through the EMAIL_FILE_PATH file contents afterward to see if you’re generating the email you want.

Getting help

If you’ve gone through the suggestions above and still aren’t sure what’s wrong, the Anymail community is happy to help. Anymail is supported and maintained by the people who use it – like you! (We’re not employees of any ESP.)

For questions or problems with Anymail, you can open a GitHub issue. (And if you’ve found a bug, you’re welcome to contribute a fix!)

Whenever you open an issue, it’s always helpful to mention which ESP you’re using, include the relevant portions of your code and settings, the text of any error messages, and any exception stack traces.