php - Phpmailer using smtp with Gmail not working - connection timing out

I've looked into the following links:

phpmailer send gmail smtp timeout

send email using Gmail SMTP server through PHP Mailer

http://uly.me/phpmailer-and-gmail-smtp/

...and tried to implement for myself a combination of those however...most of the time it sends this message...

Message could not be sent.

Mailer Error: SMTP connect() failed.

However there was one time where it sent this when I experimented between "tls" and "ssl"...

SMTP ERROR: Failed to connect to server: Connection timed out (110) SMTP connect() failed.
Message could not be sent.

Mailer Error: SMTP connect() failed.

My code is attached...did I somehow miss something? I asked the web hosting service if they're blocking and gave them a template of my code - they said the server allows connections to Gmail's SMTP.

    require_once("class.phpmailer.php");
    $mail = new PHPMailer();
    $mail -> IsSMTP();
    $mail -> SMTPDebug = 2;
    $mail -> SMTPAuth = 'true';
    $mail -> SMTPSecure = 'tls';

    $mail -> SMTPKeepAlive = true;
    $mail -> Host = 'smtp.gmail.com';
    $mail -> Port = 587;
    $mail -> IsHTML(true); 

    $mail -> Username = "myemail@gmail.com";
    $mail -> Password = "mypassword";
    $mail -> SingleTo = true; 

    $to = xxx;                           

    $from = xxx;
    $fromname = xxx;
    $subject = xxx;
    $message = xxx
    $headers = "From: $from\n";
    $headers .= "MIME-Version: 1.0\n";
    $headers .= "Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1\n";

    $mail -> From = $from;
    $mail -> FromName = $fromname;

    $mail -> AddAddress($to);

    $mail -> Subject = $subject;
    $mail -> Body    = $message;

    if(!$mail -> Send()){
        echo "Message could not be sent. 
";
        echo "Mailer Error: " . $mail-> ErrorInfo;
        exit;
    }