VB.NET - Send email using MX DNS lookup - smart host¶

Installation¶

Before you can use the following codes, please download EASendMail SMTP Component and install it on your machine at first. Full sample proejcts are included in this installer.

Install from NuGet

You can also install the run-time assembly by NuGet. Run the following command in the NuGet Package Manager Console:

Install-Package EASendMail

Add reference¶

To use EASendMail SMTP Component in your project, the first step is Add reference of EASendMail to your project. Please create or open your project with Visual Studio, then go to menu -> Project -> Add Reference -> .NET -> Browse..., and select Installation Path\Lib\net[version]\EASendMail.dll from your disk, click Open -> OK, the reference of EASendMail will be added to your project, and you can start to use it to send email in your project.

.NET assembly¶

Because EASendMail has separate builds for .Net Framework, please refer to the following table and choose the correct dll.

Separate builds of run-time assembly for .NET Framework 2.0, 3.5, 4.0, 4.5, 4.6.1, 4.7.2, 4.8.1, .NET 5.0, .NET 6.0, .NET 7.0, .NET 8.0, .NET Standard 2.0 and .NET Compact Framework 2.0, 3.5.

VB.NET - Send email using MX DNS lookup - smart host - example¶

The following example codes demonstrate sending email message using MX DNS lookup. In order to run it correctly, please change SMTP server, user, password, sender, recipient value to yours.

' Add EASendMail namespace
Imports EASendMail

Module Module1

    Sub Main()

        Try
            Dim oMail As New SmtpMail("TryIt")

            ' Set sender email address, please change it to yours
            oMail.From = "test@emailarchitect.net"

            ' Set recipient email address, please change it to yours
            oMail.To = "support@emailarchitect.net"

            ' Set email subject
            oMail.Subject = "test email from VB.NET project"

            ' Set email body
            oMail.TextBody = "this is a test email sent from VB.NET project, do not reply"

            ' Do not set SMTP server address
            Dim oServer As New SmtpServer("")

            Console.WriteLine("start to send email ...")

            Dim oSmtp As New SmtpClient()
            oSmtp.SendMail(oServer, oMail)

            Console.WriteLine("email was sent successfully!")

        Catch ep As Exception

            Console.WriteLine("failed to send email with the following error:")
            Console.WriteLine(ep.Message)
        End Try

    End Sub

End Module

With above code, if you get error like “5xx IP address rejected”, that means your IP address is blocked by the recipient’s SMTP server. You have to specify a SMTP server with user authentication to relay your email.

Important notice¶

If your machine doesn’t have a static IP address, then I don’t suggest that you send email directly.

• If your IP address is dynamic, most SMTP servers reject your connection due to anti-spam policy. We always suggest that your send email by a SMTP server that has a static internet IP address. When you relay email by your SMTP server, because you do user authentication at first before you send email to your SMTP server, so your SMTP server doesn’t reject your connection even your IP address is dynamic. Finally your SMTP server sends email to remote SMTP server. Because your SMTP server has a static IP, the email won’t be rejected by remote SMTP server.

• If you encountered a temporal SMTP error (4xx), you should retry to send email later. That means you have to write the code to handle retry. So if you have a static IP address, I suggest that you use EASendMail Component + EASendMail Service, EASendMail service can send email directly or send email with specified SMTP server in background and handle delivery retry automatically.

To learn more detail about EASendMail Serivce, please have a look at Work with EASendMail Service (Email Queuing).