sending mail in Laravel 5.4 using Mailgun get error code “ 401 UNAUTHORIZED` response: Forbidden ”

Question

I'm trying to send mail in Laravel 5.4 project with Mailgun. I think I set the configuration correctly. But, I got this error message such as

ClientException in RequestException.php line 111: Client error: POST https://api.mailgun.net/v3/sandboxfeb88d58f18841738b2fc81d7cbc7631.mailgun.org/messages.mime >resulted in a 401 UNAUTHORIZED response: Forbidden

Here is my configuration:

in .env file

MAIL_DRIVER=mailgun
MAILGUN_DOMAIN=sandboxfeb88d58f18841738b2fc81d7cbc7631.mailgun.org
MAILGUN_SECRET=pubkey-1767e**********

in mail.php file

'driver' => env('MAIL_DRIVER', 'smtp'),
'host' => env('MAIL_HOST', 'smtp.mailgun.org'),
'port' => env('MAIL_PORT', 587),
'from' => [
    'address' => env('MAIL_FROM_ADDRESS', '[email protected]'),
    'name' => env('MAIL_FROM_NAME', 'Richi Htoo'),
],

in services.php file

'mailgun' => [
    'domain' => env('MAILGUN_DOMAIN'),
    'secret' => env('MAILGUN_SECRET'),
],

and I wrote mail sending code in default route such as

Route::get('/', function () {
//return view('welcome');

    $data = [
        'title' => 'Hi student I hope you like the course',
        'content' => 'This laravel course was created with a lot of love and dedication for you'
    ];

    Mail::send('emails.test', $data, function($message){
        $message->to('[email protected]', 'White Nuzzle')->subject('Hello student how are you?');
    });
});

And I also installed Laravel Package "guzzlehttp/guzzle" version 6.2 to send mail.

But when I call that default home route, I got an error message as I mention above.

I can't find any solution for my error in any where including this forum "stackoverflow.com".

Can anyone help me please?

Its a very very late. But You are using wrong key MAILGUN_SECRET= Must be Secret Key not public key. I was facing same problem and figured it out. :p — Husnain
If you are not using the United States as your region, that may be the problem. — Darren Murphy

Mohammed Atif Sami Mohammed Atif Sami · Accepted Answer · 2017-12-21T10:39:32

Frankly it was quite an ordeal, I made the sandbox worked as following

Added authorized recipient - Apparently sandbox can't send email to anyone, you need to add them as authorized recipient.
Use proper credentials in .env File added MAILGUN_DOMAIN and MAILGUN_SECRET too as services.php uses them. Remember MAILGUN_SECRET is the private key and starts with key-, don't use public key here
Put MAIL_DRIVER=mailgun MAIL_HOST=smtp.mailgun.org MAIL_PORT=587 MAIL_USERNAME=postmaster@sandboxcc*****************.mailgun.org MAIL_PASSWORD=****************** MAIL_ENCRYPTION=tls
!!!MOST IMPORTANT!!!! RESTART YOUR SERVER to load the new .env file.

sending mail in Laravel 5.4 using Mailgun get error code “ 401 UNAUTHORIZED` response: Forbidden ”

7 Answers