Why PHPMailer/Google SMTP Server is so slow - php

Question

I am trying to create a simple contact form using PHPMailer and here is what i got so far:
contact.php:
<?php
require 'includes/config.php';
require 'includes/phpmailer/PHPMailerAutoload.php';
function sanitize($text) {
$text = trim($text);
if (get_magic_quotes_gpc()) {
$text = stripslashes($text);
}
$text = strip_tags($text);
return $text;
}
if ($_SERVER['REQUEST_METHOD'] == 'POST') {
$entries = array();
$response = array();
// Escape and extract all the post values
foreach ($_POST as $key => $value) {
$entries[$key] = sanitize($value);
}
$name = $entries['cf_name'];
$email = $entries['cf_email'];
$message = $entries['cf_message'];
$subject = 'Contact form';
$replySubject = 'Contact form';
$mailBody = '<b>Email message</b>';
// Check is an AJAX request
if (!empty($_SERVER['HTTP_X_REQUESTED_WITH']) && strtolower($_SERVER['HTTP_X_REQUESTED_WITH']) == 'xmlhttprequest') {
// Create a new PHPMailer instance
$mail = new PHPMailer;
// Tell PHPMailer to use SMTP
$mail->isSMTP();
// Set the hostname of the mail server
$mail->Host = MAIL_HOST;
// Set the SMTP port number - 587 for authenticated TLS
$mail->Port = MAIL_PORT;
// Set the encryption system to use - ssl (deprecated) or tls
$mail->SMTPSecure = 'tls';
// Whether to use SMTP authentication
$mail->SMTPAuth = true;
// Username to use for SMTP authentication
$mail->Username = MAIL_USER;
// Password to use for SMTP authentication
$mail->Password = MAIL_PASS;
// Set who the message is to be sent from
$mail->setFrom($email, $name);
// Set an alternative reply-to address
$mail->addReplyTo($email, $name);
// Set who the message is to be sent to
$mail->addAddress(MAIL_ADDR);
// Set the subject line
$mail->Subject = 'Formularz kontaktowy';
// Set email format to HTML
$mail->isHTML(true);
$mail->CharSet = 'UTF-8';
// HTML version
$mail->Body = $mailBody;
// Convert HTML into a basic plain-text alternative body
$mail->AltBody = strip_tags($mailBody);
// send the message
if ($mail->send()) {
$response['result'] = 1;
} else {
$response['result'] = 0;
$response['error'] = $mail->ErrorInfo;
}
echo json_encode($response);
} else {
header('Location: ' . BASE_URL);
exit();
}
} else {
header('Location: ' . BASE_URL);
exit();
}
config.php
<?php
define('BASE_URL', 'http://example.com');
define('MAIL_HOST', 'smtp.gmail.com');
define('MAIL_PORT', 587);
define('MAIL_USER', 'mygmailemail#gmail.com');
define('MAIL_PASS', 'mygmailpassword');
define('MAIL_ADDR', 'example#email.com');
Client-Side:
$('form').on('submit', function(e) {
e.preventDefault();
var formData = $(this).serializeArray();
var t1 = window.performance.now();
$.ajax({
type: 'POST',
url: this.action,
data: formData
})
.done(function(response) {
console.log('DONE', response);
var t2 = window.performance.now();
console.log('time', (t2 - t1) / 1000);
})
.fail(function(response) {
console.log('FAIL', response);
});
});
I am testing this code locally with EasyPHP Server. As you can see above i log time inside ajax done callback and the average time to send an email is 3-5 seconds which i found ridiculously slow. I am not PHP developer so I have no idea why is it so slow. Is it EasyPHP fault or something else I did wrong? Can you please tell how can I improve this code to send out emails faster?