SMTP Error: Could not connect to SMTP host using PHPMailer

Question

we are using SMTP advanced authentication to send a test mail using PHPMailer. We are using 1and1.com server with SMTP and SSL for E-mail Exchange. We need to run this php page from a third party server. we have taken a example from the downloaded PHPMailer package. we have tried with "test_pop_before_smtp_advanced" example and " SMTP advanced test with authentication" example. In both cases we are getting same Error.

SMTP Error: Could not connect to SMTP host.

Here is the php file we have written for sending Mail.

<html>
<head>
<title>PHPMailer - SMTP advanced test with authentication</title>
</head>
<body>

<?php
echo "hai";
include('class.phpmailer.php');
include('class.smtp.php');
$mail = new PHPMailer(true); // the true param means it will throw exceptions on errors, which we need to catch


$mail->SMTPSecure = "ssl";
$mail->SMTPKeepAlive = true;
$mail->Mailer = "smtp";
echo "hai1";
$mail->IsSMTP(); // telling the class to use SMTP

try {

  $mail->Host       = "smtp.1and1.com"; // SMTP server
  $mail->SMTPDebug  = 1;                     // enables SMTP debug information (for testing)
  $mail->SMTPAuth   = true;                  // enable SMTP authentication
  $mail->Host       = "smtp.1and1.com"; // sets the SMTP server
  $mail->Port       = 587;                    // set the SMTP port for the GMAIL server
  $mail->Username   = "[email protected]"; // SMTP account username
  $mail->Password   = "xxxxx";        // SMTP account password
  $mail->AddReplyTo('[email protected]', 'First Last');
  $mail->AddAddress('[email protected]', 'John Doe');
  $mail->SetFrom('[email protected]', 'First Last');
  $mail->Subject = 'PHPMailer Test Subject via mail(), advanced';
  $mail->Body = 'hello';

 if(!$mail->Send()) {
   echo "Mailer Error: " . $mail->ErrorInfo;
 } else {
   echo "Message sent!";
}
} catch (phpmailerException $e) {
echo "error";
  echo $e->errorMessage(); //Pretty error messages from PHPMailer
} catch (Exception $e) {
echo "err";
  echo $e->getMessage(); //Boring error messages from anything else!
}
?>

</body>
</html>

Can anyone help us in this regard, please suggest any other easy approach for the same purpose. Thank you...

For questions like this, you should read the troubleshooting docs. — Synchro

Dakota Hipp Dakota Hipp · Accepted Answer · 2015-03-11T00:50:19

I had the same problem, and was walked through a bunch of different port, domain, and security configuration attempts. Try to use these settings, I found them on another help site and they worked for me.

$mail->IsSMTP();                                    // Set mailer to use SMTP
$mail->Host = '74.208.5.2';             // Specify main and backup SMTP server (server name)
$mail->Port = 25;                // TCP port to connect to 587 or 465, 425, 25 

$mail->Username = '[email protected]';  // SMTP username
$mail->Password = 'xxxxxx';        // SMTP password

$mail->SMTPAuth = true;       // Enable SMTP authentication
$mail->SMTPSecure = 'tls';     // Enable TLS encryption, `ssl` also accepted

I had to set SMTPSecutre to tls or remove this line completely, use smtp.1and1.net's ip for the host (you can verify with a ping or whois), and set port to 25. Even though 1and1 suggested other ports more often. Hopefully this saves someone some time.

SMTP Error: Could not connect to SMTP host using PHPMailer

3 Answers