Help

Troubleshooting

If Anymail’s not behaving like you expect, these troubleshooting tips can often help you pinpoint the problem…

Check the error message

Look for an Anymail error message in your 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 often a big first step toward being able to solve the problem.

Check your ESPs API logs

Most ESPs offer some sort of API activity log in their dashboards. Check their 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 the ANYMAIL dict in your settings.py? (E.g., "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 most ESPs reject. Either specify the from_email explicitly on every message you send, or add DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL to your settings.py.

Try it without Anymail

If you think Anymail might be causing the problem, 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.

Examine the raw API communication

Sometimes you just want to see exactly what Anymail is telling your ESP to do and how your ESP is responding. In a dev environment, enable the Anymail setting DEBUG_API_REQUESTS to show the raw HTTP requests and responses from (most) ESP APIs. (This is not recommended in production, as it can leak sensitive data into your logs.)

Support

If you’ve gone through the troubleshooting 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! (The vast majority of Anymail contributors volunteer their time, and are not employees of any ESP.)

Here’s how to contact the Anymail community:

“How do I…?”

If the Search docs box on the left doesn’t find an answer, ask a question on Stack Overflow and tag it “django-anymail”.

“I’m getting an error or unexpected behavior…”

Either ask a question on Stack Overflow tagged “django-anymail” or open a GitHub issue. (But please don’t raise the same issue in both places.)

Be sure to include:

  • which ESP you’re using (Mailgun, SendGrid, etc.)
  • what versions of Anymail, Django, and Python you’re running
  • the relevant portions of your code and settings
  • the text of any error messages
  • any exception stack traces

and any other info you obtained from troubleshooting, such as what you found in your ESP’s activity log.

“I found a bug…”

Open a GitHub issue. Be sure to include the information listed above. (And if you know what the problem is, we always welcome contributions with a fix!)

“I found a security issue!”

Contact the Anymail maintainers by emailing security<AT>anymail<DOT>info. (Please don’t open a GitHub issue or post publicly about potential security problems.)

“Could Anymail support this ESP or feature…?”

If there’s already a GitHub issue open, express your support using GitHub’s thumbs up reaction. If not, open a new issue. Either way, be sure to add a comment if you’re able to help with development or testing.