Stop Hardcoding Email Addresses in Laravel

The Problem: Hardcoded Email Addresses Everywhere

From time to time, I need to send notifications to fixed email addresses that don't have user accounts in the database – like a booking manager or support team.

The quick solution is to hardcode the email throughout your codebase. It works, but it's messy.

The Basic Solution: Config Files and Mailables

The first step toward cleaner code is centralizing email addresses in a config file:

// config/emails.php
return [
    'booking_manager' => env('BOOKING_MANAGER_EMAIL', 'bookings@example.com'),
    'support_team' => env('SUPPORT_EMAIL', 'support@example.com'),
];

Now you can reference these email addresses when sending mails.

Mail::to(config('emails.booking_manager'))
    ->send(new Mailables\BookingReceived($booking));

This works fine, but I prefer using notifications.

Why I Prefer Notifications

I always reach for Laravel's notification system instead of Mailables because:

• You can send to multiple channels (email, Slack, SMS) from one place
• All your communication logic lives in dedicated notification classes

But notifications need a Notifiable instance, typically a User model.

Using AnonymousNotifiable

Laravel has a solution for this: AnonymousNotifiable. It lets you send notifications without a database-backed user.

$bookingManager = (new AnonymousNotifiable())
    ->route('mail', config('emails.booking_manager'));

$bookingManager->notify(new Notifications\BookingReceived($booking));

This gets the job done, but I don't like creating ⁠AnonymousNotifiable instances all over the place. It's repetitive and verbose.

The Clean Solution: Wrapper Classes

My solution is to wrap each AnonymousNotifiable in a dedicated class with a static factory method:

<?php

namespace App\Notifications\Notifiables;

use Illuminate\Notifications\AnonymousNotifiable;

final class BookingManager
{
    public static function make(): AnonymousNotifiable
    {
        return (new AnonymousNotifiable())
            ->route('mail', config('emails.booking_manager'))
            ->route('slack', config('phone.booking_channel'));
    }
}

Now I can reuse this across the codebase:

BookingManager::make()->notify(new Notifications\BookingReceived($booking));

Why I Like This

• It's simple and readable. Your IDE autocompletes ⁠BookingManager::make().
• You can discover more Notifiables in the Notifiables folder.
• If you need to change the email address, you do it in one place. Want to add Slack or SMS? Just add another route without touching your business logic.
• The return type hint also catches errors early instead of at runtime.

How do you handle static email notifications in your Laravel applications?