"Password not accepted from server: 535 Incorrect authentication data" when sending with GMail and phpMailer

John Dorner picture John Dorner · Jan 12, 2013 · Viewed 48.5k times · Source

I have the same php script running on localhost - my PC with XAMPP and on a hosted server. It works from my PC, but not from the hosted server.

When I send it from the hosted server, I get the following output:

SMTP -> ERROR: Password not accepted from server: 535 Incorrect authentication data  
SMTP -> ERROR: RCPT not accepted from server: 550-Please turn on SMTP Authentication in your mail client, or login to the 550-IMAP/POP3 server before sending your message. dev.camppage.com 550-(patchvalues.com) [205.234.141.238]:50958 is not permitted to relay through 550 this server without authentication.  
SMTP Error: The following recipients failed: [email protected] FAILED

I suspect there is a configuration setting that needs to be changed on the server, but I don't know which one. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Here is the code:

function send_gmail ($recipients, $subject, $message, $attachment_filenames = array()) 
{
  global $email_address, $email_password, $email_name;
  require_once ($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT']. '/php/PHPMailer/class.phpmailer.php');   

  $body  = $message;
  $body  = str_replace("\\", '', $body);
  $mail = new PHPMailer();
  $mail->CharSet = "UTF-8";
  $mail->IsSMTP();
  $mail->Host       = "smtp.gmail.com";      // sets GMAIL as the SMTP server
  $mail->SMTPDebug  = 1;                     // enables SMTP debug information (for testing) 0 - none; 1 - errors & messages; 2 - messages only
  $mail->SMTPAuth   = true;                  // enable SMTP authentication
  $mail->SMTPSecure = "ssl";                 // sets the prefix to the servier
  $mail->Port       = 465;                   // set the SMTP port
  $mail->Username   = $email_address;  // GMAIL username
  $mail->Password   = $email_password; // GMAIL password
  $mail->SetFrom($email_address);
  $mail->FromName   = $email_name;
  $mail->AddReplyTo($email_address,$email_name);
  $mail->Subject    = $subject;
  $mail->MsgHTML($body);
  $mail->IsHTML(true); // send as HTML

  if (isset ($recipients[0]))
  {
    foreach ($recipients AS $to)
    {
        $to_pieces = explode (",", $to, 2);
        $to_email = trim ($to_pieces[0]);
        if (isset ($to_pieces[1]))
            $to_name = trim ($to_pieces[1]);
        else
            $to_name = " ";
        $mail->AddAddress($to_email, $to_name);
    }
    $mail->IsHTML(true); // send as HTML

    if ($mail->Send()){
        return TRUE;
    } else {
        return FALSE;
    }
} 
else 
{
    return FALSE;
}
}

TIA

Answer

John Dorner picture John Dorner · Jan 21, 2013

The solution was to enable outgoing SMTP from the server settings.

On servers running cPanel's WHM, this is located under WHM's "Tweak Settings" section.

The option is to enable/disable - choose disable.

Caveat: Making this change will redirect outgoing SMTP connections allow accounts to make direct connections which may increase your odds of getting your server blacklisted.