To use ESMTP with mutt add the following line set sendmail="/path/to/esmtp" to your ~/.muttrc and create a ~/.esmtprc (see the included sample.esmtprc for an example.) For debugging purposes you may prefer using the follwing shell script. #!/bin/sh LOGFILE=/tmp/esmtp.log echo $0 $@ > $LOGFILE /path/to/esmtp -v $@ >> $LOGFILE exit $? Save it as esmtp.sh and put in your ~/.muttrc set sendmail="/path/to/esmtp.sh" instead.