email hosting?

February 4, 2013 14.9k

By:

mike91786

I have a hobby Django project that I'm finally turning into a monetized web app. I'm going to try out DigitalOcean ASAP as your prices are the best out here and is sounds like you have great services and support. When I move this domain out of my shared hosting I realize I'll loose their email services too. Does DigitalOcean offer any sort of managed email account hosting? I'd rather not have to manage my own mail server if possible. If not, what to other people do for email when they're running their apps on cloud hosting? Gmail? My app will send out mail to users but on the same domain I also need accounts for support and marketing.

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17 Answers

kamalnasser February 4, 2013

We do not offer email hosting. However, you can setup a mail server on a droplet, or use an email hosting service such as Google Apps.

maciej February 4, 2013

For your mailbox - Google Apps or Rackspace email.
For you app - Sendgrid, Postmark or Amazon SES.

moisey MOD February 5, 2013

We have no plans to offer managed email hosting as that has already been done by quite a large number of companies and without constant attention to that product we wouldn't be able to provide as good a user experience as other companies in this space.

We'd recommend Google Apps as Kamal mentioned for your own hosted email or Sendgrid if you are sending a lot of mails out from your app.

hypertextsol July 5, 2013

Is there some restriction on number of sending email, if we set up our own email server ?

kamaln7 MOD July 5, 2013

@hypertextsol: No, there aren't any restrictions by default.

david.shave November 15, 2013

Hi, I have seen many replies to this question say 'use Google Apps'. But how do we do this? Just a point in the right direction woulod help us. Where/ how do we go about setting this up?

david.shave November 15, 2013

I want to give a little more info so hopefully I get a more specific answer. I have setup my website and configured the DNS by changing the name-servers from where I registered the domain (1and1) to DO's name-servers. Bing, the site is up, I'm happy. But then I start getting email bouncing, so I'm assuming the change of DNS last night has caused this.
I want to know what I have to do now to get my email working. DO don't do email hosting, so I am electing to use Google's servers (Ed Snowden is kinda making me think twice, but since it's not going to be anything remotely interesting to the NSA or GCHGQ I think I'm good...). How, what 'n' where. As in:- How do I set it up, What (internal)configuration do I have to do on my droplet, Where in my (external)gmail accounts do I link it all together?
Or am I coming at this totally ineptly(not for the first time)?

kamaln7 MOD November 17, 2013

@amp3rsand: To use google mail, you do not need to edit any configuration on your droplet. Simply add Gmail's MX records to your domain.

screenshot

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(ADD GMAIL MX RECORDS)

timona May 16, 2014

Does it cost money to use google apps to set up your email via Digital Ocean? And can you use your own domain that is for instance hosted at Godaddy?

asb MOD May 16, 2014

@Timona: There's no charge on the DigitalOcean end, but Google Apps is a paid service. They let you setup your own domain.

timona May 23, 2014

@Andrew - thank you. What other options are available to set up email via Digital Ocean? I have my domain hosted at Godaddy.

asb MOD May 23, 2014

@Timona: DigitalOcean provides unmanaged hosting. That means you get the power of full root access, but it also means you need to set everything up yourself. The best solution depends on your needs. If you only need one or two email address, I'd say you'd be best off just using GoDaddy's email forwarding.

maheshkummara July 7, 2014

Follow the tutorial if u registered domain with free email provider or you have shared server

Read this tutorial

alicheaib November 19, 2014

[deleted]

hansli February 22, 2016

For our startup ideas we work with many droplets and many domains. It was getting insane managing and paying Google Apps for all of them, so we’ve built Migadu.com, mainly for our own needs. We’ve since opened it to the public. It pairs nicely with DigitalOcean: from 0 to email hosting for your droplet in a matter of seconds. You can use it for free if you don’t send too many mails or 12$ a month for as many domains and mailboxes you want.

mcroni July 31, 2019

hi, i saw an automatic email configuration at migadu, but it says server errors when i try to authenticate it with my DO account

xiaohecaiyun September 18, 2016

😭😭😭😭😭😭

pythonforum September 25, 2016

You can just setup your own on your droplet via sendmail or postfix, etc. Its free but you need to be a little linux savy.

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