My script send the email but it doesn't render the html tags. I'm not sure why not.
$email = $row['email'];
$mail_body = '<html>
<body>
<p>hello,'.$name.'</p>
<p>this is a testing email </p>
<hr />
<p>by server</p>
</body>
</html>';
$subject = "Better website";
$to = "$email";
$headers = "From: mailscript@hotmail.com\r\n";
$headers .= "Content-Type: text/html\r\n";
$mail_result = mail($to, $subject, $mail_body, $headers);
Try setting the mime type as well as shown in the manual for mail()
// To send HTML mail, the Content-type header must be set
$headers = 'MIME-Version: 1.0' . "\r\n";
$headers .= 'Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1' . "\r\n";
as Jrod already answered you need to add the header
$headers .= 'Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1' . "\r\n";
but I found that this one is screwing mine up as of late and had to comment it out:
$headers = 'MIME-Version: 1.0' . "\r\n";