Thanks coinstar for your input.
Since the OP is testing in a VM, it is unlikely that sendmail would be installed AND correctly set up. As you know setting up an email server is a lot of hard work. This is why I suggested the plugin solution.
As for emails going to the spam folder, this can be easily solved for testing purposes, if you just add the email to your contacts in your webmail solution.
On an actual live setup you would not have to do any of this, of course.