htmlentities ignores <br> when using PHPmailer

Question

Some times ago I made a contact form to send email.

I had this:

If  ($validity !='Good@Ripsi'){
      $to = "contact-us@xx-xxxx.com";
      $subject = "xx xxxx new Subscriber";
      $email_address = htmlentities($_GET['email_address']);
      $headers = "xxxxxxxxxx" . "\r\n" .
      mail($to,$subject,$email_address,$headers);

      header("Location: index.php");
}

And that worked fine. After I read that although I don't plan to send thousands of Newletters it would be better to use PHPmailer else it could be seen as spam and be blocked. I don't understand much about those mailing things. So I read a tutorial and it works just fine but for one thing: htmlentities doesn't do the job anymore and all <br> are ignored at reception.

I checked that : $mail->IsHTML(true);

Help would be greatly appreciated.

Here is the code using PHPMailer:

    <?php

       require "phpmailer/PHPMailer/PHPMailerAutoload.php";

      define("DB_HOST","localhost");
      define("DB_USERNAME","xxxx_xxxx");
      define("DB_PASSWORD","xxxx");
      define("DB_NAME","xxxxxx");

      $conn = mysqli_connect(DB_HOST,DB_USERNAME,DB_PASSWORD,DB_NAME) or die (mysqli-error());

      // Check connection
      if ($conn->connect_error) {
        die("Connection failed: " . $conn->connect_error);
      }


      function smtpmailer($to, $from, $from_name, $subject, $body)
    {
        $mail = new PHPMailer();
        $mail->IsSMTP();
        $mail->SMTPAuth = true; 

        $mail->SMTPSecure = 'ssl'; 
        $mail->Host = 'mail.xxxxx.com';
        $mail->Port = 465;  
        $mail->Username = 'newsletter@xxxxx.com';
        $mail->Password = 'xxxxxxx';   


        $mail->IsHTML(true);
        $mail->From="newsletter@xxxx.com";
        $mail->FromName=$from_name;
        $mail->Sender=$from;
        $mail->AddReplyTo($from, $from_name);
        $mail->Subject = $subject;
        $mail->Body = $body;
        $mail->AddAddress($to);
        if(!$mail->Send())
        {
            $error ="Error Ocured...";
            return $error; 
        }
        else 
        {
            $error = "Please wait!! Your email is being sent... ";  
            return $error;
        }
    }

    $from = 'newsletter@ts-ripsi.com';
    $name = 'xxxxxxx T & S';
    $subj = 'Newsletter from xxx and xxxx';
    $msg = htmlentities($_GET['message']);

    $sqli = "SELECT ID, Email FROM mailing_addresses";

    $record = mysqli_query($conn, $sqli);

    while ($row = mysqli_fetch_array($record)) {
        $to = $row['Email'];
        $error=smtpmailer($to,$from, $name ,$subj, $msg);
    }

    header("Location: index.php");
?>

Answer 1

I hadn't understood the use of IsHTML. In this case it had to be set to false.