Send email with Twilio SendGrid

The CLI features a built-in integration with Twilio SendGrid, allowing you to send emails directly from your terminal.

Set your SendGrid API Key

The first prerequisite to send an email with the Twilio CLI is to have a SendGrid API Key set as the SENDGRID_API_KEY environment variable.

Create and copy a new SendGrid API Key, or copy an existing one, then run:

export SENDGRID_API_KEY=the_key_you_copied_from_SendGrid

Set Defaults

Run twilio email:set to set defaults for the sender's email address and subject line.

$ twilio email:set
? Default email address of the sender: your.email@example.com
? Default subject line for all emails: Ahoy, there!
Default sending email address has been set to: your.email@example.com
Default subject line has been set to: Ahoy, there!
twilio-cli configuration saved to "/Users/example/.twilio-cli/config.json"

After you set these defaults, twilio email:send will automatically apply them to any sent emails.

Send emails

To send emails with an interactive prompt, run:

twilio email:send

You will be prompted for details such as the recipient's email address, email text, and if you want to provide an attachment.

If you'd like to skip the prompt, provide details as flags instead:

twilio email:send \
  --to="me@example.com" \
  --text="Look at this fluff: https://unsplash.com/photos/uhnZZUaTIOs"

Override defaults

To change the sending email address or subject line, you can either re-run twilio email:set, or use the corresponding flag to set a new value for the item you want to change in that specific command.

For example, to override the default subject:

twilio email:send \
  --to="me@example.com" \
  --subject="That cat pic you wanted" \
  --text="Look at this fluff: https://unsplash.com/photos/uhnZZUaTIOs"

Attachments

To send an email with an attachment, run twilio email:send and wait to be prompted to add an attachment. You can also use --attachment=filePath to attach a file:

twilio email:send \
  --attachment=/Users/example/Downloads/cutest-kitteh.png

Send command output as an attachment

To send the output of a different command as an email attachment, pipe that command to twilio email:send.

ps au \
  | twilio email:send \
  --to="me@example.com" \
  --text="See attachment"

If a default sending email address and subject line has been set, the command will automatically use the defaults, and you only need to include values for --text and --to.

If there is not a default subject line and sender’s email address, all flags need to be included to send the output of the piped command.

ps au \
  | twilio email:send \
  --from="me@example.com" \
  --to="me@example.com" \
  --subject="Current processes" \
  --text="See attachment"