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How to Send Emails in Django (2026)

Anymail is the canonical bridge. Most providers ship Anymail backends; pick a provider with a maintained backend rather than a raw SDK.

Anymail standardizes Django EmailBackend across providers, with first-class webhook handling. Async sends require Celery or a worker.

patterns

Send patterns

  • Anymail EmailBackend in settings.py.
  • Celery tasks for async sends.
  • Webhook views via Anymail signal handlers.
  • Django templates rendered to HTML before send.
pitfalls

Common mistakes

  • Synchronous send blocks the request without a worker.
  • Anymail backend mismatch between dev and prod.
  • EMAIL_BACKEND env override forgotten in CI.

provider picks for Django

  1. 01

    Postmark

    Transactional

    First-class Anymail backend; webhook signature helpers built in.

    100/mo developer plan · $15/mo for 10,000 emails
  2. 02

    Mailgun

    Transactional

    Anymail backend; queue-friendly.

    100/day permanent free plan · $15/mo for 10,000 emails (Basic)
  3. 03

    Amazon SES

    Transactional

    Anymail SES backend; pairs naturally with AWS-hosted Django.

    Up to $200 in AWS Free Tier credits for new accounts · $0.10 per 1,000 emails
  4. 04

    SendGrid

    Transactional Marketing

    Anymail backend; mature.

    60-day free trial only (permanent free tier was removed May 2025) · $19.95/mo for 50,000 emails
Want a language-level SDK comparison instead? See the SDK hub.

reading this as teams choosing a transactional API

Judged purely as an API. What the request contract guarantees on retry, how complete the webhook event coverage is, whether suppressions are readable and writable programmatically, and how much the message log retains when something needs debugging in production.

Applied to how to send emails in django (2026), that means weighing idempotency keys, webhook coverage, event stream, and operating track record ahead of the rest, against high-frequency programmatic sends where a missed delivery is a product failure.