2019 Update phpMailer with Gmail
I know this is an old question but it still comes up in Google and I need to update the answer to this.
If you are experience the issue (where many do) with phpmailer that it only works when you comment out IsSMTP() when trying to use gmail's SMTP then here is why.
When you comment out IsSMTP() you are telling phpmailer NOT TO USE SMTP which by default phpmailer will send the request to your local mail() instead. If you look at the emails sent at this point and look at the header of the email you will see that it is coming from your local server and not the address/domain you are trying to send it as. So yes commenting out IsSMTP() will make it work, but it really isn't. And sending from your local server that is not setup correctly will most likely result in your emails going to spam.
So how do I fix this
Plain and simple you most likely are using an old version of phpmailer, you need a newer version. The easy way to tell this is how you set your From address. If it looks like this $mail->From = "name@example.com" then you are using an old version.
The newest versions of phpmailer defines From as $mail->setFrom("name@example.com", "First Last"). If you see that then you are using a newer version of phpmailer.
How to do it right and actually make it work
Please make sure that you have TCP OUT port for 587 on your firewall
SMTP Gmail will only work with tls/587 AND NOT ssl/465 (ssl is 1990's)
Make sure that you have allow less secure apps set correctly within gmail. If you are using a G Suite account then you will have to have your admin enable it if it isn't already.
This is a perfect example how to use the new phpmailer with gmail smtp (and yes it does work, if not then something is wrong on your end)
How to install phpmailer
First download the latest version of phpmailer
There are 2 ways to install it. Composer or manual. The manual way all you need is
use PHPMailer\PHPMailer\PHPMailer; <-- make sure these are not in a function
use PHPMailer\PHPMailer\Exception;
require 'path/src/Exception.php';
require 'path/src/PHPMailer.php';
require 'path/src/SMTP.php';
EXAMPLE
<?php
/**
* This example shows settings to use when sending via Google's Gmail servers.
* This uses traditional id & password authentication - look at the gmail_xoauth.phps
* example to see how to use XOAUTH2.
* The IMAP section shows how to save this message to the 'Sent Mail' folder using IMAP commands.
*/
//Import PHPMailer classes into the global namespace
use PHPMailer\PHPMailer\PHPMailer;
use PHPMailer\PHPMailer\Exception;
require 'path/src/Exception.php';
require 'path/src/PHPMailer.php';
require 'path/src/SMTP.php';
//Create a new PHPMailer instance
$mail = new PHPMailer;
//Tell PHPMailer to use SMTP
$mail->isSMTP();
//Enable SMTP debugging
// 0 = off (for production use)
// 1 = client messages
// 2 = client and server messages
$mail->SMTPDebug = 2;
//Set the hostname of the mail server
$mail->Host = 'smtp.gmail.com';
// use
// $mail->Host = gethostbyname('smtp.gmail.com');
// if your network does not support SMTP over IPv6
//Set the SMTP port number - 587 for authenticated TLS, a.k.a. RFC4409 SMTP submission
$mail->Port = 587;
//Set the encryption system to use - ssl (deprecated) or tls
$mail->SMTPSecure = 'tls';
//Whether to use SMTP authentication
$mail->SMTPAuth = true;
//Username to use for SMTP authentication - use full email address for gmail
$mail->Username = "username@gmail.com";
//Password to use for SMTP authentication
$mail->Password = "yourpassword";
//Set who the message is to be sent from
$mail->setFrom('from@example.com', 'First Last');
//Set an alternative reply-to address
$mail->addReplyTo('replyto@example.com', 'First Last');
//Set who the message is to be sent to
$mail->addAddress('whoto@example.com', 'John Doe');
//Set the subject line
$mail->Subject = 'PHPMailer GMail SMTP test';
//Read an HTML message body from an external file, convert referenced images to embedded,
//convert HTML into a basic plain-text alternative body
$mail->msgHTML(file_get_contents('contents.html'), __DIR__);
//Replace the plain text body with one created manually
$mail->AltBody = 'This is a plain-text message body';
//Attach an image file
$mail->addAttachment('images/phpmailer_mini.png');
//send the message, check for errors
if (!$mail->send()) {
echo "Mailer Error: " . $mail->ErrorInfo;
} else {
echo "Message sent!";
//Section 2: IMAP
//Uncomment these to save your message in the 'Sent Mail' folder.
#if (save_mail($mail)) {
# echo "Message saved!";
#}
}
//Section 2: IMAP
//IMAP commands requires the PHP IMAP Extension, found at: https://php.net/manual/en/imap.setup.php
//Function to call which uses the PHP imap_*() functions to save messages: https://php.net/manual/en/book.imap.php
//You can use imap_getmailboxes($imapStream, '/imap/ssl') to get a list of available folders or labels, this can
//be useful if you are trying to get this working on a non-Gmail IMAP server.
function save_mail($mail)
{
//You can change 'Sent Mail' to any other folder or tag
$path = "{imap.gmail.com:993/imap/ssl}[Gmail]/Sent Mail";
//Tell your server to open an IMAP connection using the same username and password as you used for SMTP
$imapStream = imap_open($path, $mail->Username, $mail->Password);
$result = imap_append($imapStream, $path, $mail->getSentMIMEMessage());
imap_close($imapStream);
return $result;
}
?>
