Laravel Mailtrap Setup

Introduction

How will this email look? Will it look nice on mobile? Is the email data correct? You can test all that and more with Mailtrap.

Step 1: Mailtrap Account

Go to https://mailtrap.io/ and sign up.
Once you are logged in you will see a menu with 3 options; Inboxes, API, and Billing. Go to Inboxes.

On the Inboxes page you will see a list of your inboxes and you will also have the option of creating a new project or creating a new inbox. We will use the default inbox for this setup.
Click on the inbox and on SMTP Settings select Integrations -> Laravel.

Here you will see the .env variables you need to copy.

Step 2: Laravel Configuration

Add (or replace) mail environment variables from Mailtrap to your application .env file.

MAIL_MAILER=smtp
MAIL_HOST=smtp.mailtrap.io
MAIL_PORT=2525
MAIL_USERNAME=YOUR_INBOX_USERNAME
MAIL_PASSWORD=YOUR_INBOX_PASSWORD
MAIL_ENCRYPTION=tls

# Also
[email protected]
MAIL_FROM_NAME="Mailtrap Test App"

Step 3: Test

Create simple test mailable with markdown.
php artisan make:mail MailtrapTest --markdown=emails.test

App\Mail\MailtrapTest.php

<?php

namespace App\Mail;

use Illuminate\Bus\Queueable;
use Illuminate\Contracts\Queue\ShouldQueue;
use Illuminate\Mail\Mailable;
use Illuminate\Queue\SerializesModels;

class MailtrapTest extends Mailable
{
    use Queueable, SerializesModels;

    /**
     * Create a new message instance.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public function __construct()
    {
        //
    }

    /**
     * Build the message.
     *
     * @return $this
     */
    public function build()
    {
        return $this->markdown('emails.test');
    }
}

resources\views\emails\test.blade.php (Markdown file)

@component('mail::message')
# TEST EMAIL

The cake is a lie

Thanks,<br>
{{ config('app.name') }}
@endcomponent

Add test route

...
...

Route::get('/mailtrap/test', function () {
    // Using a temp email. 
    // This way we can test that emails are really trapped.
    $testEmail = '[email protected]';

    return Mail::to($testEmail)->send(new MailtrapTest());
});

...
...

Now hit test URL. You should have a new email on your Mailtrap inbox and you should not have any email from your application on the test email inbox.

Conclusion

Mailtrap is a very useful tool for development and it's super easy to setup with Laravel. You can find more information at https://mailtrap.io/blog/send-email-in-laravel/

I hope this article was helpful.

If you have any feedback or found mistakes, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me.