Hey everyone, I’m having a weird issue with my Laravel app. The Gmail SMTP setup works fine on my local XAMPP environment, but it’s acting up on my cpanel hosted website. This problem started about two weeks ago.
I’m getting an authentication error when trying to send emails. Here’s what I’ve tried:
- Using the correct Gmail address as the username
- Generated an App Password (I have 2FA enabled)
- Tried different encryption settings
My .env file looks something like this:
MAIL_MAILER=smtp
MAIL_HOST=smtp.gmail.com
MAIL_PORT=587
[email protected]
MAIL_PASSWORD=my-app-password
MAIL_ENCRYPTION=tls
[email protected]
MAIL_FROM_NAME=${APP_NAME}
I’ve checked with my hosting provider, and they say they haven’t put any SMTP restrictions in place. Any ideas what could be causing this? It’s driving me nuts!
hmm, sounds frustrating! have u tried using port 465 instead of 587? sometimes that works better with gmail. also, double-check ur app password - they can be finicky. maybe try generating a new one? good luck!
I’ve dealt with this exact problem before, and it can be really frustrating. One thing that worked for me was explicitly setting the SMTP_HOST to ‘smtp.googlemail.com’ instead of ‘smtp.gmail.com’. It’s a small change, but it made a difference in my case.
Another thing to check is your server’s PHP version. Some older PHP versions have issues with newer TLS protocols that Gmail uses. You might want to verify that your hosted environment is running a recent PHP version (7.2+) that fully supports TLS 1.2.
If none of that helps, you could try using Gmail’s API instead of SMTP. It’s a bit more work to set up initially, but I found it more reliable in the long run, especially on shared hosting environments where SMTP can be problematic.
I encountered a similar issue recently. One thing to consider is that some hosting providers block outgoing connections on port 587 for security reasons. Have you tried contacting your host to confirm if this port is open for SMTP traffic? Additionally, ensure your server’s PHP installation has OpenSSL enabled. If all else fails, you might want to look into using a third-party email service like Mailgun or SendGrid. They often provide more reliable email delivery and can bypass some of the common SMTP issues with shared hosting environments.