PHPMailer connection Failed - php

Question

I'm using digital ocean.
I've been digging to fix this error.
2016-10-26 04:35:35 SERVER -> CLIENT: 220 smtp.gmail.com ESMTP ht5sm340860pad.16 - gsmtp
2016-10-26 04:35:35 CLIENT -> SERVER: EHLO example.com 2016-10-26 04:35:35 SERVER -> CLIENT: 250-smtp.gmail.com at your service, [128.199.201.169] 250-SIZE 35882577 250-8BITMIME 250-STARTTLS 250-ENHANCEDSTATUSCODES 250-PIPELINING 250-CHUNKING 250 SMTPUTF8
2016-10-26 04:35:35 CLIENT -> SERVER: STARTTLS
2016-10-26 04:35:35 SERVER -> CLIENT: 220 2.0.0 Ready to start TLS
2016-10-26 04:35:35 SMTP Error: Could not connect to SMTP host.
2016-10-26 04:35:35 CLIENT -> SERVER: QUIT
2016-10-26 04:35:36 SERVER -> CLIENT:
2016-10-26 04:35:36 SMTP ERROR: QUIT command failed:
2016-10-26 04:35:36 SMTP connect() failed. https://github.com/PHPMailer/PHPMailer/wiki/Troubleshooting
There was an error! Try again
Here is my setting:
require 'mailer/PHPMailerAutoload.php';
$mail = new PHPMailer;
$mail->SMTPDebug = 2;
$mail->isSMTP();
// Specify main and backup SMTP servers
$mail->Host = gethostbyname('smtp.gmail.com');
$mail->SMTPAuth = true; // Enable SMTP authentication
$mail->Username = 'mail#gmail.com'; // SMTP username
$mail->Password = 'psw'; // SMTP password
$mail->SMTPSecure = 'tls'; // Enable TLS encryption, `ssl` also accepted
$mail->Port = 587; // TCP port to connect to
$mail->setFrom('d#gmail.com', 'd');
$mail->addAddress('test#gmail.com', ''); // Add a recipient
$mail->isHTML(true); // Set email format to HTML
$mail->Subject = " Account Confirmation";
$mail->Body = "Hello. test Thank you for you using our service! To activate your account, please access this link:\n <a href='http://w2heaven.com/index.php?confirmcode=$confirmcode'>Click here</a> \n";
if(!$mail->send()) {
echo "There was an error! Try again";
} else {
echo "Please confirm your email at: blablah";
}
More info: It works without gethostbyname(); but extremely slow because DigitalOcean blocks IPv6