Works for me, maybe you're doing something wrong...

P.S.: it is generally a good idea to post the code that produces error messages along with error messages. Here's the line you can use to check how it works:

perl -MNet::IMAP::Simple -E'say Net::IMAP::Simple->new(q(imap.gmail.co
+m:993), use_ssl => 1, debug => 1)->login(qw(user pass))'
[download]

Using the code right off the man page

 #  use strict;
    use warnings;
    use Net::IMAP::Simple;
    use Email::Simple;
    #use IO::Socket::SSL;
    
    $mailhost = "imap.gmail.com";

    # Create the object
    my $imap = Net::IMAP::Simple->new(
    $mailhost,
    port    => 993,
    use_ssl => 1,
    debug => 1,
) || die "Unable to connect to IMAP: $Net::IMAP::Simple::errstr\n";

    # Log on
    if(!$imap->login('login','pass')){
        print STDERR "Login failed: " . $imap->errstr . "\n";
        exit(64);
    }

    # Print the subject's of all the messages in the INBOX
    my $nm = $imap->select('INBOX');

    for(my $i = 1; $i <= $nm; $i++){
        if($imap->seen($i)){
            print "*";
        } else {
            print " ";
        }

        my $es = Email::Simple->new(join '', @{ $imap->top($i) } );

        printf("[%03d] %s\n", $i, $es->header('Subject'));
    }

    $imap->quit;
[download]

Works fine with SSL on Linux here. Non-SSL times out, probably because Google doesn't offer non-SSL IMAP any more. Perhaps your OS has some issues?