June 14, 2025 · Blog · Python Django

Django Tutorial Part 7: Create a Contact Form with Email Sending (2025 Beginner Guide)

Welcome to Part 7 of our Django beginner series! Today we’ll build a working contact form that sends messages to your email. This is ideal for feedback forms, contact pages, or customer inquiries.

What You’ll Learn

Create a contact form using Django forms
Send form data via email
Configure email backend for development
Display success messages

Step 1: Configure Email Settings

In your settings.py, add these for development (console backend):

EMAIL_BACKEND = 'django.core.mail.backends.console.EmailBackend'
EMAIL_HOST = 'smtp.example.com'
EMAIL_PORT = 587
EMAIL_USE_TLS = True
EMAIL_HOST_USER = 'your@email.com'
EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD = 'your-password'

Note: Use console backend for testing. For real email, use SMTP settings (like Gmail, SendGrid, etc).

Step 2: Create the Contact Form

In forms.py:

from django import forms

class ContactForm(forms.Form):
    name = forms.CharField(max_length=100)
    email = forms.EmailField()
    subject = forms.CharField(max_length=200)
    message = forms.CharField(widget=forms.Textarea)

Step 3: Create the Contact View

In views.py:

from django.core.mail import send_mail
from django.shortcuts import render, redirect
from django.contrib import messages
from .forms import ContactForm

def contact_view(request):
    form = ContactForm()
    if request.method == 'POST':
        form = ContactForm(request.POST)
        if form.is_valid():
            subject = form.cleaned_data['subject']
            message = f"From: {form.cleaned_data['name']} <{form.cleaned_data['email']}>\n\n{form.cleaned_data['message']}"
            from_email = form.cleaned_data['email']
            send_mail(subject, message, from_email, ['admin@yourdomain.com'])
            messages.success(request, 'Your message has been sent successfully.')
            return redirect('contact')
    return render(request, 'myapp/contact.html', {'form': form})

Step 4: Create the Template

In templates/myapp/contact.html:

<h2>Contact Us</h2>

{% if messages %}
  {% for message in messages %}
    <p style="color: green;">{{ message }}</p>
  {% endfor %}
{% endif %}

<form method="POST">
    {% csrf_token %}
    {{ form.as_p }}
    <button type="submit">Send Message</button>
</form>

Step 5: Add URL Pattern

In myapp/urls.py:

from . import views

urlpatterns = [
    # ... other urls
    path('contact/', views.contact_view, name='contact'),
]

Step 6: Test the Form

Start the development server:

python manage.py runserver

Go to http://127.0.0.1:8000/contact/ and test the form. If using the console backend, the message will appear in your terminal.

Optional: Use HTML Email

If you want to send HTML-formatted messages:

from django.core.mail import EmailMessage

email = EmailMessage(subject, message, from_email, ['admin@yourdomain.com'])
email.content_subtype = "html"
email.send()

Conclusion

You now have a working contact form with email functionality in Django! This feature is essential for communication and adds professionalism to your project. Coming Up in Part 8: We’ll implement pagination and search to organize large content lists efficiently!

django contact form django email tutorial django form email django contact form example django send email django tutorial part 7 django email setup django contact form backend django smtp email django email with form django email html message django beginner contact form django contact us page django email integration django mail settings django send mail html django feedback form django email testing django user contact form