Mailer Error: SMTP Error: Could not connect to SMTP host.

[carleton]

I am working on a customer site to add an email contact page.  When I go to send the email I get the error:

Mailer Error: SMTP Error: Could not connect to SMTP host.

I am using the PHP FormHandler library found here: https://github.com/justcoded/form-handler

My understanding is that with the cPanel, you simply use the sendmail server on the localhost and do NOT need a username/password.  This is the code to send the email, what do I have wrong?

At the moment I have the emails going to my gmail account for testing.  Once I get that working I will send it to the customer's Exchange server which has a Barracuda spam filter in front of it.

<?php

define('__ROOT__', dirname(dirname(__FILE__)));
require_once(__ROOT__ . '/vendor/autoload.php');

use JustCoded\FormHandler\FormHandler;
use JustCoded\FormHandler\Handlers\MailHandler;
use JustCoded\FormHandler\DataObjects\MailMessage;
use JustCoded\FormHandler\FileManager\FileManager;

// https://github.com/justcoded/form-handler

$validationRules  = [
    'fields' => [
			'fname' => ['required'],
			'lname' => ['required'],
			'email' => ['required', 'email'],
			'message' => [ 'required', ['lengthMin', 5] ]
			], // according to Valitron doc for mapFieldsRules.
        'labels' => [
        'name' => 'Name',
        'email' => 'Email address',
        'message' => 'Message',
	] // according to Valitron doc.
];

// Mandrill config.
$mailerConfig = [
    'mailer' => MailHandler::USE_PHPMAILER,
    'host' => 'localhost',             // set your smtp host.
    'user' => '',                      // set email.
    'password' => '',                  // set password.
    'protocol' => 'FALSE',             // 'tls', 'ssl' or FALSE for not secure protocol/
    'port' => 25,                      // your port. (was 587 for tls)
    'attachmentsSizeLimit' => 8000000, // around 8MB.
];

$message = [
    'from' => ['website@customers.com' => 'webSite'],
    'to' => ['<my_account>@gmail.com' => 'me me me'],
    'subject' => 'Contact request from {fname} {lname}',
    'bodyTemplate' => __DIR__ . '/template-html.php',
    'altBodyTemplate' => __DIR__ . '/template-plain.php'
];


$mailer = new MailHandler($mailerConfig, new MailMessage($message));
$formHandler = new FormHandler($validationRules, $mailer);

if ($formHandler->validate($_POST)) {
    $formHandler->process();
}

echo $formHandler->response();

exit;

// write errors and return back.
setcookie('advanced_response', $formHandler->response());
header('Location: index.php');
exit;