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.) ESMTP supports SENDMAIL envelope sender '-f' flag, so don't forget to add set envelope_from=yes as well. For debugging purposes you may prefer to put in your ~/.muttrc set sendmail="/path/to/esmtp -X /tmp/esmtp.log" instead.