I know shared hosting is a bad idea, but sadly I do not have much of a choice at this point :(
It appears to be an issue with the hosting provider, I uploaded the project to a different shared host I have access to and it works fine, no caching problems, no errors, mails send and deliver as I expect them to. It's not supposed to use cache folder for emails, however it uses session and cookies for the form.
I do not know much about server configs, like I said, i am a lowly front end designer/dev, but willing to learn more.
Anyway, it's not a Laravel issue, it's a hosting problem so if anyone else runs into this (because I had a hard time getting info on this type of error on a Laravel app on google), it's most likely a hosting problem and you should avoid using shared hosting with Laravel apps, or get your hosting provider to help you out, because it's some kind of server configuration they need to do in case you don't have that level of access.