I know this question has been answered but I have an alternative solution that matches the original description and might help someone. You did not answer Loek's question about whether you run cPanel or not. We run cPanel with lfd/csf firewall, and it has TCP_OUT configuration that lists what outbound ports may be connected to. Port 465 (tls) was not in that list, so we got 'Connection Refused' reports, even trying a low level telnet test on the command line of our VPS server:
$ telnet smtp.gmail.com 465
Trying 74.125.140.109...
telnet: connect to address 74.125.140.109: Connection refused
Trying 74.125.140.108...
telnet: connect to address 74.125.140.108: Connection refused
Trying 2a00:1450:400c:c08::6d...
telnet: connect to address 2a00:1450:400c:c08::6d: Connection refused
The same telnet test worked fine from my local machine.
After adding 465 to the TCP_OUT list:
- Load WHM control panel
- go to
ConfigServer Security & Firewall
- go to
Firewall Configuration
- find
TCP_OUT
and include 465 (or whatever port you are trying to connect to) to the list
- click
Change
at the bottom of the page, then Restart lfd/csf
.
Telnet now succeeds, as does smtpauth mail sending via PHPMailer:
$ telnet smtp.gmail.com 465
Trying 74.125.140.109...
Connected to smtp.gmail.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
(this indicates the socket connection was established.. you probably don't want to actually talk SMTP to Google so hit ctrl-] and type quit
and hit enter to close the connection)
Of course this isn't cPanel specific, you may be running another firewall manager that is not allowing outbound connections on the port you're trying to connect to.