looks like your server (which is not that surprising given the errors that started this thread) as when i use my settings (which work here just fine) on your server i get timeout errors too.

not much i can do

The same thing happend with me extacle 2 weeks ago, at the end appeared to be the web hosting company which is hostgator, the sorted it out in less then a minute. In my experience its nothing to do with they plugin and I was using SMTP too .

warning: i do not recommend doing the following as such, but until you find a new / useful host the following might help (but you cannot update wordpress after doing that, so it’s just a possible temporary fix/workaround)

in /wp-includes/ find the file class-phpmailer.php

in that file on approx line 652 you will find a line that reads:

$result = @mail($to, $subject, $body, $header, $params);

change this to be

$result = @mail($to, $subject, $body, $header);

and save.

check if this is working now

again, do at your own risk, keep a backup of the original and test

for things to work on the order page, the shortcode has to be on the orderpage you defined in order settings

putting the shortcode for the order page on some other random page will not work

>Using the Gmail settings in the SMTP part of WP Pizza will not work. …

yes it does. (works just fine here on 3 different servers)
however, you might find that your firewall blocks things…(port 465 for example) if you get a “cannot connect ” etc

or maybe you do not have ssl installed…etc etc . all depends really on your particular scenario

see also https://github.com/PHPMailer/PHPMailer/wiki/Troubleshooting

it’s not about installing an ssl certificate for a particular site as such but the server having (typically) openssl installed/loaded – or at least that could also be part of the problem.

it works also just fine for a non ssl/https site provided the server setup doesn’t throw a spanner in the works (see firewall for example above )