This the minimal telnet session to test sending to email server. $ telnet localhost 25 Trying 127.0.0.1... Connected to localhost. Escape character is '^]'. 220 example.com ESMTP helo 250 example.com mail from:me@gmail.com 250 ok rcpt to:x9tayay@example.com 250 ok data 354 go ahead Subject: OTA ota ajaj. . 250 ok 1326364891 qp 1790 quit 221 example.com The mail server in this case running qmail. If the email is bounced, the returned email may end up in your spam folder as the sender domain does not match, we send this from localhost instead of from gmail.com.