Using PHPMailer on Hostgator (timeout when try to login into SMTP server)

Question

Solved: The problem was that to use the service through hostgator, for some reason the user must log in using main dsn name and not the SMTP domain name.

I was using the simple PHP mail() function to send emails and it was working fine but it didn't require to login into SMPT server. When I moved to PHPMailer library I wrote this code to send email but I'm having timeout when when trying to do this login. According to info from hostgator, the SMTP server (with SSL/TSL) is at port 465. So I wrote:

$mail = new PHPMailer;

$mail->SMTPDebug  = 3;
$mail->isSMTP();                                       // Set mailer to use SMTP
$mail->Host       = 'mail.mydomain.com';               // Specify main and backup SMTP servers
$mail->SMTPAuth   = true;                              // Enable SMTP authentication
$mail->Username   = '[email protected]';            // SMTP username
$mail->Password   = 'pass';                            // SMTP password
$mail->SMTPSecure = 'tls';                             // Enable TLS encryption, `ssl` also accepted
$mail->Port       = 465;                               // TCP port to connect to
$mail->setFrom('[email protected]', 'my name');
$mail->addAddress('[email protected]', 'someone');        // Add a recipient

$mail->addReplyTo('[email protected]', 'my name');
$mail->isHTML(true);                                   // Set email format to HTML

$mail->Subject = 'subject';
$mail->Body    = 'msg body <b>bold!</b>';
$mail->AltBody = 'Corpo alternativo caso o primeiro não seja exibido';

if(!$mail->send())
{
    echo 'Message could not be sent.';
    echo 'Mailer Error: ' . $mail->ErrorInfo;
}
else
{
    echo 'Message has been sent';
}

But when this php file is called, besides not showing the echo I placed before the code, it also waited the 300 seconds to open a modal warning me of the timeout error. Thanks in advance.

Solution

I think the answer is in your code. You have lines like $mail->Host = 'mail.mydomain.com'; Be sure to switch all these out with actual domains. You have to use your www.com website domain.

The following is wrong.

$mail->Host       = 'mail.mydomain.com';               // Specify main and backup SMTP servers

I'm not surprised it won't send. Swap all the values out with real strings that matter to your site.

Comments

[Michael Hampton]

Check that you are trying to connect to the right host.

[fabionr]

Well, I went to this email's account page and searched for it's configs. There it said Outgoing Server: mail.mydomain.com SMTP Port: 465 I just changed to "my domain" here but it is the same string. I'm using port 465 because it's through there to send using SSL/TLS

[Michael Hampton]

I think you should have a chat with the service provider, then. The timeout in this circumstance is generally an indication that the connection has been firewalled.