using PHP mail command

I have a form on a web page that uses the PHP MAILl command to send info back to me. I have started to notice this is not working all of the time. I am using 2 different hosted servers (entanet / vivaciti) and both exhibit the same issue where not all emails are sent. (about 6-7 in 10 are sent, the others are dropped).

The data collected from the user is very simple

Is this a common issue?

I had some problems a while back at some web sites I do, hosted by streamline.net.

I included the line

ini_set("sendmail_from", "[email protected]"); // Needed at Streamline host

to get it to work reliably. I've just done some quick tests to check and 3 out 3 got through ok.

We always recommend using SMTP mail over mail().

The latter seems to be blocked more by the likes of Hotmail and Yahoo.

Matt

I second the vote for smtp mail. The mail function in php I found to be hit and miss.

The likes of hotmail just used to either reject or class as spam any message I used to send. The main reason being when their mail servers see the message they see it coming from localhost so cant do a lookup on the server to see if it was anywhere near legit.

I think I ended up using php mailer but in order to use smtp you must have an smtp server your script can connect to.

Thank you both for the information. I have found the issue is with my Web site ISP sending emails into my email provider that is the issue. Looks like the Email provider is a bit slow some times.


PHP send (ok) -> Web site email -> (not ok) -> My email provider -> Me (pc)

Ian.