Vultr is no friend to Mail in a Box! Avoid them at all costs

I have a Vultr account with two Mail in a Box instances running on it. One for personal use and one for an activist group. My significant other wanted to move away from Gmail to MIAB and I decided to help her by setting up a Vultr account. It’s been extremely painful from the beginning, with Vultr blocking her account immediately and preventing the use of her credit card.

I send them a photo of her ID card. Seriously, this is what they were asking for. It’s been a process spanning multiple days of communication. After all that, this is the final conversation where they explicitly tell us that we are not allowed to use Vultr to run MIAB. Look on.

I had very similar experiences with Vultr and also with Scaleway.

I fully understand that they need to eliminate spammers and abusers, but their customer service to users who try to comply with their requirements is totally second rate.

I am now quite happily sitting on Linode, which is fast and suits my needs. I have two mail servers and two other boxes for other development needs. I also point my friends in their direction now.

I’m not affiliated with Linode in any way, other than a satisfied customer.

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I use MIAB on Vultr and it’s working pretty good, but even with Port 25 open, there’s at least one ISP that’s blocking my IP address for mail connections. EDIT: That one ISP has unblocked me. Dunno if it’s because I sent a request to their abuse department, or it was a temporary block.

I have yet to see a list of VPS providers with good IP address reputation for hosting mail servers. I’m not surprised there’s this much trouble, considering how pervasive spam is.

I used Linode before and was quite happy, but I switched to Vultr to get more for my money. This may have been before Linode had the $5 plan for a 1GB server.

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@kretek - Vultr autoblocks port25 and if the account is BRAND NEW no, they are not going to open port 25 for you. I’ve had my account with them for about 4 years, no malicious activity from my account. I just emailed support and they instantly opened port 25 for me, no problem. Vultr is one of the best VPS providers. You have to understand if the account is new, they are not going to open port 25. You probably need to be with them for atleast 6 mos - 1 year with a good account history.

@Locker, I totally agree with you. Vultr is FANTASTIC and the prices are dirt cheap and they have 99.99% reliability. The only problem I’ve ever had with miab is that all of my outgoing emails from the miab goto spam folder no matter the email address. Any suggestions? spf dkim dnssec are all set properly.

Try this test. It’s pretty good at letting you know if your settings are correct.

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