You’re right, this is my first time working with mail servers, steep learning curve.
I’ll keep my account with Vultr open and see what happens - get back to you 
Contabo didn’t ask me anything other than the usually required billing info.
It’s likely the account management team is on different hours and they may actually perform some sort of review. Tech support will be 24/7, but they deal exclusively with technical problems, and believe me - you will get brutal arguments with them if you try to blame them for something that is truly on you (you are completely and solely responsible for your server, they provide no assistance).
Also note that according to their ToS, you are supposed to complete all of the fields somewhere in your account info. I forget where all of them are, but one asks about your planned usage with their services. I may breeze through these things because I take the time to read all that boring stuff, but I know others didn’t bother and still got approved. If you get disapproved, please let me know because I currently recommend the service.
@acdit May I ask which location you provisioned your droplet with DO in?
DO has some locations with a no port 25 opened ever policy - some locations are opened on request - and some are not closed to begin with.
1 Like
Oh, I destroyed it already so cannot check, but I believe with 95% certainty it was New York.
1 Like
@ openletter Hi - Vultr did get back to me, asking for descriptive details of what I need an open port 25 for. I’ve responded with the facts, an entirely innocuous and low-volume array of uses, so I’d expect a positive response. Fingers crossed.
On GDPR, I have the TOS pdf from Contabo in Germany, which contains info about what’s required. You may be interested in that - it’s most probably entirely standard, so could be useful info to have. I can send it to you if you like - I’m not sure if it’s cool, or even possible, to post it here.
It is off topic, but if there is a link to the file available on Contabo’s site, please do post it as it may well be of interest.
I’m not sure why you ran into this issue. I too started with DO and ran into the fact that every IP assigned was blocked. After about a dozen attempts there, I tried Vultr and it worked flawlessly the first time. It’s been running great and I didn’t have to do anything with blocked ports.
@ markand Hi - I’ve learned that hosting providers are in a constant fight against spam, 25 billion of 30 billion emails sent everyday are spam, hosts can be held liable for damages where spamming is illegal, hosts can have their IP ranges blacklisted - just some of the things I’ve read here and there this past week.
DO definitely discourages running a private email server, not just in my case; they have articles about it. Vultr is also being reticent in my case - it’s not personal of course, they’re just protecting themselves and the internet in writ large.
In a chat with Hostwinds I was informed that all “hourly-paid” accounts have port 25 blocked, other accounts don’t - that may be typical.
https://www.spamhaus.org/ seems to be the main authority.
I’d advise anyone intending to fire up a new MiaB to contact the host first to check port restrictions and get the right kind of account.
Out of curiosity, what plan did you sign up for? I have the 2GB instance that costs $10/mo. I add to that the backup service for $2. So it costs $12/mo. Did you sign up to pay hourly? If so, could that be the problem?
Both accounts I made at DO and Vultr were the hourly-paid 25gig 1mb cloud products at about $5 a month, and they both came with blocked port 25 and a support response which seems more like a run around than anything else.
I’ve been perfectly professional in all my messages with them, but I’m guessing that the package I chose is not deemed professional, not exactly surprising either I was just thinking, hey, $5 to check this out, I can do that!
But they have not been clear in their messaging, so that’s a bit disappointing.
Luckily, after calling to the host in Germany (I’m a Brit, so Europe is fine for me) I got clear info and recommended a VPS far, far bigger that those little cloud deals for just a couple of dollars more.
All well that ends well, and I’ve learned loads along the way.
I’m loving MiaB - it’s working great and fulfills my needs
1 Like
FWIW, with Linode, all that is needed is to ask to open the port with reference to MIAB. No questions asked. They support the project even by putting up a guide: How to Create an Email Server with Mail-in-a-Box | Linode
This topic was automatically closed 7 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.