I've always used Mail::Mailer from MailTools. Here's some example code:

use Mail::Mailer;
    
my $body = "This is the message body, line 1\n";
$body .= "This is the message body, line 2\n";
    
my $mailer = Mail::Mailer->new(
    'smtp', Server => 'smtp-server.example.com')
    or die "Unable to create a new mailer object:$!\n";
    
$mailer->open({    
    From => "jfluhmann\@example.com",
    To => "jeremy\@example.com",
    Subject => "Test E-mail"})
    or die "Unable to populate mailer object:$!\n";

print $mailer $body;
$mailer->close;
[download]

You should also take a look at Mail::Sender (for attaching files or sending in HTML with a plaintext alternative). I hope that helps!

Jeremy

To develop a perl based solution, use Net::SMTP.