PHPMailer: SMTP Error: Could not connect to SMTP host

user_411915 0
Viewed 379097

I've used PHPMailer on several projects but now I'm stuck. It gives me the error:
SMTP Error: Could not connect to SMTP host.
I've tried sending email from Thunderbird and it works ! But not through PHPMailer ... Here are the settings from Thunderbird:

Server name: mail.exampleserver.com
Port: 587
Username: user@exampleserver.com
Secure Authentication: No
Connection Security: STARTTLS

I've compared these with the server at my last project where I used PHPMailer and they were:

Server name: mail.exampleserver2.com
Port: 465
Username: user@exampleserver2.com
Secure Authentication: No
Connection Security: SSL/TLS

My php code is:

 $mail = new PHPMailer();
 $mail->IsSMTP(); // send via SMTP
 $mail->Host = SMTP_HOST; // SMTP servers
 $mail->Port = SMTP_PORT; // SMTP servers
 $mail->SMTPAuth = true; // turn on SMTP authentication
 $mail->Username = SMTP_USER; // SMTP username
 $mail->Password = SMTP_PASSWORD; // SMTP password
 $mail->From = MAIL_SYSTEM;
 $mail->FromName = MAIL_SYSTEM_NAME;
 $mail->AddAddress($aSecuredGetRequest['email']);
 $mail->IsHTML(true); // send as HTML

Where I am wrong?

phpmailer email php
13 Answers

does mail.exampleserver.com exist ??? , if not try the following code (you must have gmail account)

$mail->SMTPSecure = "ssl";  
$mail->Host='smtp.gmail.com';  
$mail->Port='465';   
$mail->Username   = 'you@gmail.com'; // SMTP account username
$mail->Password   = 'your gmail password';  
$mail->SMTPKeepAlive = true;  
$mail->Mailer = "smtp"; 
$mail->IsSMTP(); // telling the class to use SMTP  
$mail->SMTPAuth   = true;                  // enable SMTP authentication  
$mail->CharSet = 'utf-8';  
$mail->SMTPDebug  = 0;
user_5068220

Followed code worked for me:

$mail = new PHPMailer(true);

$mail->isSMTP();// Set mailer to use SMTP
$mail->CharSet = "utf-8";// set charset to utf8
$mail->SMTPAuth = true;// Enable SMTP authentication
$mail->SMTPSecure = 'tls';// Enable TLS encryption, `ssl` also accepted

$mail->Host = 'smtp.gmail.com';// Specify main and backup SMTP servers
$mail->Port = 587;// TCP port to connect to
$mail->SMTPOptions = array(
    'ssl' => array(
        'verify_peer' => false,
        'verify_peer_name' => false,
        'allow_self_signed' => true
    )
);
$mail->isHTML(true);// Set email format to HTML

$mail->Username = 'Sender Email';// SMTP username
$mail->Password = 'Sender Email Password';// SMTP password

$mail->setFrom('example@mail.com', 'John Smith');//Your application NAME and EMAIL
$mail->Subject = 'Test';//Message subject
$mail->MsgHTML('HTML code');// Message body
$mail->addAddress('User Email', 'User Name');// Target email


$mail->send();
user_75250890 
$mail->SMTPDebug = 2; // to see exactly what's the issue

In my case this helped:

$mail->SMTPSecure = false;
$mail->SMTPAutoTLS = false;
user_13475720

Well this is really old but I still want to share my solution. If you are using phpmail with an local server like xampp turn off your antivirus. That solved it for me :)

user_135049780

I recently dealt with this problem, and the cause of the problem turned out to be that the root certificate on the SMTP server that I was connecting to was the Sectigo root certificate that recently expired.

If you're connecting to the SMTP server by SSL/TLS or STARTTLS, and you've not changed anything recently in the environment where your PHPMailer script is running, and this problem suddenly occurred - then you might want to check for an expired or invalid certificate somewhere in the certificate chain on the server.

You can view the server's certificate chain using openssl s_client.

For SSL/TLS on port 465:

openssl s_client -connect server.domain.tld:465 | openssl x509 -text

For STARTTLS on port 587:

openssl s_client -starttls smtp -crlf -connect server.domain.tld:587 | openssl x509 -text
user_25329460

In my case in CPANEL i have 'Register mail ids' option where i add my email address and after 30 minutes it works fine with simple php mail function.

user_66248460
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