I’ve been looking for ways to send emails via Bluehost SMTP server. I have a pro plan with Bluehost, and for some reason, it was keep giving out an error. The error was Connection could be not established error.

Similar to Swift_TransportException in StreamBuffer.php line 269: Connection could not be established with host XXXXXX.com [Connection timed out #110]

The reason was that MAIL_ENCRYPTION setting was on tls. The trick was to leave MAIL_ENCRYPTION field blank.

MAIL_DRIVER=smtp 
MAIL_HOST=YOUR-DOMAIN (in my case: mail.seyongcho.com)
MAIL_PORT=26
MAIL_USERNAME=YOUR-EMAIL-ADDRESS
MAIL_PASSWORD=YOUR-EMAIL-PASSWORD
MAIL_ENCRYPTION=