php mail function not sending emails / taking too long to send emails

Question

I have a rackspace cloud where I want to set up LAMP. the server has CentOS.

I have sendmail installed and the php mail function use this, but it takes too long to send an email using the php mail function

<?php

ini_set('display_errors', true);
error_reporting(E_ALL);

  $to = "email@somedomain.com"
  $subject = "activation code";
  $message = "Activation code: 10";
  $from = "activate@mywebsite.com ";
  $headers = "From: $from";
  if(mail($to, $subject, $message, $headers)) { 
      echo 'success'; 
  }
  else { echo 'deny'; }

but this takes a lot of time, and when I ask rackspace about this they said the mail function might be using a public mailserver to send emails and as the queue is too long it takes time. but I have another email server too.

is there anyway I can get this to work fast? and can I make the send mail installation to use that email server I have ?

Answer 1

Try using the PHP Pear Mail package it allows you to send via sendmail, pop, smtp, or imap http://pear.php.net/packages.php?catpid=14&catname=Mail theres also the ability to easily add attachments and queue messages.

I had the same issue on my rackspace cloud and this resolved it.