Joomla : Could not instantiate mail function - joomla

Question

I have developed a website in joomla, and I have a contact us page, in that the form works fine only when I use to send an email from the same domain
Eg :
From : rimaz#abcd.com
To : john#abcd.com
But when I send to a different domain the form gives an error as "Could not instantiate mail function."
Eg :
From : rimaz#abcd.com
To : john#gmail.com
Can anyone explain me about this problem ??

Answer 1

Instead of debugging your providers SMTP / email setup you can use the new mandrill service from the guys who do mailchimp - Mandrill ( http://blog.mailchimp.com/public-beta-of-mandrill-smtp-email-service/ ) with the plugin :
http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/content-sharing/mailing-a-distribution-lists/20624
Mandrill is a plugin that allows your Joomla installation to send transactional emails. The only thing you need to do is to provide your Mandrill API key and enable the plugin. After that all emails (new user registration, password reset etc) will be send through the Mandrill service.
Mandrill Features:
Uses MailChimp's awesome email delivery engine instead of your server
Tracks opens and clicks so you know how effective these emails are to your users . Now you can > see what you need to change to make them
more effective.
Has pretty, visual reports of the email results
Allows you to tag the emails and see your stats filtered by tag
Why would understanding transactional emails be important for you. An example is when a user signs > up on your site an email is sent via Joomla. But, you get no reports to understand how effective that email did. These emails are sent as instructions to your users telling them a message you want them to understand. Where they designed good? Was the content well written? Was it structured properly? This is hard to say when it goes thru Joomla but now you will understand all this when the emails goes thru Mandrill.

Answer 2

This is a setting from your host. YOu can ask them for help in figuring out how to make it work, but they are trying to prevent you from using their hosting to spam people.
Sometimes it is possible to work around it but not always.

Answer 3

This usually happens due to restrictive mail server settings, which you most likely don't have influence on with shared hosting.
If you have more control over the server, you should fix the mail server settings.
If not, the easiest way is to use Joomla's ability to send mails using any SMTP mail account. Create a mail account for Joomla, and enter the credentials in Joomla's configuration. Joomla will then use that account to send mails. So will extensions, if they are properly written.