# 1 Introduction

The `email` package provides classes and utilities to create, parse, generate, and modify email messages, conforming to all the relevant email and MIME related RFCs.

This document describes version 3.0 of the `email` package, which is distributed with Python 2.4 and is available as a standalone distutils-based package for use with Python 2.3. `email` 3.0 is not compatible with Python versions earlier than 2.3. For more information about the `email` package, including download links and mailing lists, see Python's email SIG.

The documentation that follows was written for the Python project, so if you're reading this as part of the standalone `email` package documentation, there are a few notes to be aware of:

- Deprecation and ``version added'' notes are relative to the Python version a feature was added or deprecated.

- If you're reading this documentation as part of the standalone `email` package, some of the internal links to other sections of the Python standard library may not resolve.