pip install smtplib Not Working

Why is pip install smtplib not working?

Because there is nothing to install. smtplib is part of the Python standard library — it ships with every Python interpreter (CPython 2.3+ and all of Python 3). It is not published on PyPI, so pip has no distribution to download. That is exactly why you see:

ERROR: Could not find a version that satisfies the requirement smtplib
       (from versions: none)
ERROR: No matching distribution found for smtplib

This is the same reason pip install json, pip install os, or pip install collections all fail — those are built-in modules, not packages.

How do I fix it?

You don't install it — you just import it. Delete the pip install smtplib line (and drop it from any requirements.txt), then use it directly:

import smtplib

with smtplib.SMTP("smtp.example.com", 587) as server:
    server.starttls()
    server.login("user@example.com", "app-password")
    server.sendmail("user@example.com", "to@example.com", "Subject: Hi\n\nBody")

To confirm it's already available, run:

python -c "import smtplib; print(smtplib.__file__)"

That prints the path to smtplib.py inside your Python installation — proof it's present without pip.

What about the secure-smtplib package?

Some older answers tell you to run pip install secure-smtplib. Skip this on Python 3. secure-smtplib is a Python 2-only backport that added SMTP_SSL and TLS certificate validation to Python 2's smtplib. Python 3's standard smtplib already includes SMTP_SSL and starttls() natively, so the backport adds nothing and importing it does not give you a smtplib module. Installing it will not fix this error and only adds an unmaintained dependency (no release since 2015).

What if import smtplib itself fails?

If pip was never the problem and import smtplib raises ImportError/ModuleNotFoundError or an odd AttributeError, you almost certainly have a local file shadowing a standard-library module. The two usual culprits:

• A file named smtplib.py in your project — Python imports your file instead of the stdlib one.
• A file named email.py (or an email/ folder) — smtplib imports the stdlib email package internally, so shadowing it breaks smtplib too.

Fix it:

1. Rename the offending file to something unique (e.g. my_email.py).
2. Delete the stale compiled cache: remove the matching .pyc and any __pycache__/email.*.pyc / smtplib.*.pyc.
3. Make sure you're not running from a directory containing such a file, and re-run import smtplib.