Mailgun integration with Laravel - email content issue

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1

I’m having trouble with email functionality in my Laravel app. When someone fills out the contact form on my website, instead of getting just the message they typed, I receive the entire webpage content in the email. I’ve looked at the Laravel docs and tried different solutions but still can’t get it right.

I can set the subject line, sender name and email address without problems. The issue is creating a proper email template that shows only the actual message text. Here’s my current setup:

Route::resource('contact', 'ContactController', ['names' => [
    'store' => 'contact.store'
]]);

public function store(Request $request) {
    $title = $request->title;
    $message = $request->message;
    $senderEmail = $request->sender_email;
    $senderName = $request->sender_name;

    Mail::send('contact', ['sender_email' => $senderEmail, 'sender_name' => $senderName], function ($mail) use ($senderEmail, $senderName) {
        $mail->from($senderEmail, $senderName);
        $mail->to('[email protected]', 'Admin')->subject('Contact Form Submission');
    });
}

And here’s my contact form:

{!! Form::open(['method' => 'POST', 'action' => 'ContactController@store']) !!}
    <div class="form-group">
        <label>Subject</label>
        <input type="text" name="title" class="form-control">
    </div>
    
    <div class="form-group">
        <label>Your Name</label>
        <input type="text" name="sender_name" class="form-control">
    </div>
    
    <div class="form-group">
        <label>Email Address</label>
        <input type="email" name="sender_email" class="form-control" required>
    </div>
    
    <div class="form-group">
        {!! Form::label('message', 'Your Message:') !!}
        {!! Form::textarea('message', null, ['class' => 'form-control', 'rows' => 4]) !!}
    </div>
    
    <div class="form-group">
        {!! Form::submit('Send Message', ['class' => 'btn btn-success']) !!}
    </div>
{!! Form::close() !!}

How do I fix this so the email only contains the actual message content?

2

Had this exact issue 6 months ago and wasted way too much time debugging it. Your view reference is definitely the problem, but there’s another gotcha - Laravel’s Mail::send has quirks with variable passing that the docs don’t mention.

I switched to Mailable classes instead of raw Mail::send. Just run php artisan make:mail ContactFormMail and handle template rendering there. Way cleaner than debugging why Mail::send grabs your contact page instead of the email template.

Mailables give you better control over email structure and make testing easier. You can preview emails in your browser before sending, which would’ve saved me hours of email testing back and forth.

3

Your email template is the problem. When you call Mail::send(‘contact’, …), Laravel’s trying to use your contact page as the email template instead of a proper email file. Create a dedicated email template at resources/views/emails/contact.blade.php:

<h3>New Contact Form Submission</h3>
<p><strong>From:</strong> {{ $sender_name }} ({{ $sender_email }})</p>
<p><strong>Message:</strong></p>
<p>{{ $message }}</p>

Then change your Mail::send call to use ‘emails.contact’ instead of ‘contact’. Also make sure you’re passing $message and $title to the template so all the data shows up in the email.

4

Skip the Laravel mail template nightmare. Use a no-code solution instead.

Set up a Latenode webhook to catch your form submissions. Build a flow that formats and sends your emails however you want. No blade templates, no variable passing headaches.

I’ve used this for tons of contact forms - works every time. You get better control over formatting and can easily add stuff like database saves, auto-replies, or spam filtering.

Takes 10 minutes vs hours debugging Laravel mail. Just point your form to the webhook URL instead of your Laravel route.

5

You’re not passing all the form data to Mail::send. Right now you’ve got sender_email and sender_name, but you’re missing the actual message and title variables. Here’s the fix:

Mail::send('emails.contact', [
    'sender_email' => $senderEmail,
    'sender_name' => $senderName,
    'message' => $message,
    'title' => $title
], function ($mail) use ($senderEmail, $senderName, $title) {
    $mail->from($senderEmail, $senderName);
    $mail->to('[email protected]', 'Admin')->subject($title);
});

I ran into this exact same thing when I first started using Laravel’s mail stuff. That ‘contact’ view name is pointing to your contact form page - you need a proper email template and make sure you pass all the variables you want to show in the email.

6

dude your blade template probly doesnt exist in the right folder. check if you actually have a contact.blade.php file in resources/views/emails/ or wherever ur pointing to. also make sure the variables are echoed properly with {{ }} syntax inside the template

7

You’ve got template path confusion plus missing data. Your Mail::send(‘contact’, …) is grabbing your main contact form view instead of an email template. I hit this exact same issue last year - kept getting form HTML in my emails. Here’s the fix: Create resources/views/emails/contact-form.blade.php with just your email content. Then update your controller: Mail::send(‘emails.contact-form’, [‘title’ => $title, ‘message’ => $message, ‘sender_name’ => $senderName, ‘sender_email’ => $senderEmail], function ($mail) use ($senderEmail, $senderName, $title) { $mail->from($senderEmail, $senderName); $mail->to(‘[email protected]’)->subject($title ?: ‘Contact Form Submission’); }); The view path has to be explicit - Laravel’s grabbing your contact page because it finds that first. Also, you weren’t passing $message or $title to the template originally, so those variables wouldn’t show up anyway.

8

looks like ur passing the wrong view name to Mail::send(). using ‘contact’ probably points to ur contact page. try making a new email template like ‘emails.contact’ that just shows the message variable u sent.