How can I test outgoing e-mail?

I use this online tool to test outgoing email from my CI applications. Works very well.

https://www.mail-tester.com

Just go to the site and it will generate an email address for you to send to. Then configure your CI application to send to that address and after it's sent, click the button on the website that says 'Then Check Your Score'. It should reveal all of the information you need to have your application reliably send emails. Follow the steps it suggests, correct the problems and repeat until you have a good score.

For the problem with equal signs in emails, from my experience this is a problem when sending to some Microsoft mail servers. I don't have this problem with my GMail account. To fix it, try adding this before sending the email:

Code:

$this->email->set_crlf("\r\n");

Note: This fix above only worked for me for some reason when I used it in the controller. If I added it to an email config file, it didn't work.