Send Email With PHPMailer and CodeIgniter

CodeIgniter email class is built for handling double-byte characters which may not be the best shot for you, it sometimes break up characters, probably, due to improper UTF-8 encoding.

Instead of using CodIgniter Email class, we could instead integrate PHPMailer which you could download from here. In this way we could specify how our body is to be decoded.

Step 1. Download PHPMailer

Github page

Step 2. Paste PHPMailer to CodeIgniter

Go ahead and extract the zip file then copy it to "application/libraries".

Step 3. Create a Controller

Create a controller and name it with "Email.php".

<?php if ( ! defined('BASEPATH')) exit('No direct script access allowed');
    class Email extends CI_Controller {
        function __construct(){
            parent::__construct();
            $this->load->library('phpmailer');
        }
        function send_email() {
            $response = false;
            $mail = new PHPMailer();
            $subject = 'Test subject';
            $body = 'Hi there, <strong>Carl</strong> here.<br/> This is our email body.';
            $email = 'reciever@example.com';


            $mail->CharSet = 'UTF-8';
            $mail->SetFrom('kodingmadesimple@gmail.com','Carl');

            //You could either add recepient name or just the email address.
            $mail->AddAddress($email,"Recepient Name");
            $mail->AddAddress($email);

            //Address to which recipient will reply
            $mail->addReplyTo("reply@yourdomain.com","Reply");
            $mail->addCC("cc@example.com");
            $mail->addBCC("bcc@example.com");

            //Add a file attachment
            $mail->addAttachment("file.txt", "File.txt");        
            $mail->addAttachment("images/profile.png"); //Filename is optional

            //You could send the body as an HTML or a plain text
            $mail->IsHTML(true);

            $mail->Subject = $subject;
            $mail->Body = $body;

            //Send email via SMTP
            $mail->IsSMTP();
            $mail->SMTPAuth   = true; 
            $mail->SMTPSecure = "ssl";  //tls
            $mail->Host       = "smtp.googlemail.com";
            $mail->Port       = 465; //you could use port 25, 587, 465 for googlemail
            $mail->Username   = "yourlessenabledaccount@gmail.com";
            $mail->Password   = "yourpassword";

            if(!$mail->send()){
                $response['message'] = 'Email has been sent successfully';
            }
            else{
                $response['message'] = 'Oops! Something went wrong while trying to send your email.';
            }
            echo json_encode($response);
        }
    }

Using gmail requires encryption "tls/ssl". Before you send via gmail, you need to allow less secure app to access your email account. You could make use of your gmail account or just create a new one. To do that, click here to turn it on.
That's basically it, you simply need to access your controller from your browser or extend it to your view.