EOF caught while checking if connected while using phpmailer - smtp

Question

I've some problem trying to use phpmailer on my localhost.
I've been trying for at least 2 hours to connect my ionos 1&1 SMTP server using phpmailer.
<<?php
// Import PHPMailer classes into the global namespace
// These must be at the top of your script, not inside a function
use PHPMailer\PHPMailer\PHPMailer;
use PHPMailer\PHPMailer\Exception;
require 'vendor/autoload.php';
$mail = new PHPMailer(true); //Passing `true` enables exceptions
try {
//Server settings
$mail->SMTPDebug = 4; // Enable verbose debug output
$mail->isSMTP(); // Set mailer to use SMTP
$mail->Host = 'smtp.ionos.fr'; // Specify main and backup SMTP servers
$mail->SMTPAuth = true; // Enable SMTP authentication
$mail->Username = 'mymail#mymail.fr'; // SMTP username
$mail->Password = 'mypassword'; // SMTP password
$mail->SMTPSecure = 'tls'; // Enable TLS encryption, `ssl` also accepted
$mail->Port = 465; // TCP port to connect to
//Recipients
$mail->setFrom('anyrecipient#test.fr', 'Test');
$mail->addAddress('realadress#gmail.com', 'Joe User'); // Add a recipient
//Content
$mail->isHTML(true); // Set email format to HTML
$mail->Subject = 'Here is the subject';
$mail->Body = 'This is the HTML message body <b>in bold!</b>';
$mail->AltBody = 'This is the body in plain text for non-HTML mail clients';
$mail->send();
echo 'Message has been sent';
} catch (Exception $e) {
echo '<br>' . 'Message could not be sent. Mailer Error: ', $mail->ErrorInfo;
}
?>
In fact, here is the error logs:
<2019-01-02 09:02:04 Connection: opening to smtp.ionos.fr:465,
timeout=300, options=array() 2019-01-02 09:02:04 Connection: opened
2019-01-02 09:02:15 SMTP INBOUND: "" 2019-01-02 09:02:15 SERVER ->
CLIENT: 2019-01-02 09:02:15 SMTP NOTICE: EOF caught while checking if
connected 2019-01-02 09:02:15 Connection: closed SMTP Error: Could not
connect to SMTP host. SMTP Error: Could not connect to SMTP host.
Message could not be sent. Mailer Error: SMTP Error: Could not connect
to SMTP host.
Any advise/clue?
Thanks a lot.

Answer 1

Read the docs & examples. You’re using SMTPSecure = 'tls' With Port = 465. It’s very well documented that that combination will not work. Either change to ssl or port 587, but not both.