Hello everyone,
I’m currently facing an issue with sending emails from my Droplet. Each time I try to use SMTP, the connection fails.
After some research, I found this note:
NB! You cannot use EmailEngine to send emails from DigitalOcean droplets, as all mail ports are blocked by default.
It looks like all SMTP ports (25, 465, 587) might be blocked on Droplets by default.
👉 My questions are:
-
Is there a way to unblock these ports or request DigitalOcean to allow outgoing SMTP connections?
-
If not, what’s the best alternative to send emails from my application (e.g., using an external relay like SendGrid, Mailgun, etc.)?
Thanks in advance for your help.
This textbox defaults to using Markdown to format your answer.
You can type !ref in this text area to quickly search our full set of tutorials, documentation & marketplace offerings and insert the link!
Hey!
Yes, the SMTP ports (25, 465, and 587) are blocked on all Droplets for new accounts to prevent spam and other abuses:
Even if SMTP were available, DigitalOcean strongly recommends against running your own mail server in favor of using a dedicated email deliverability platform. Dedicated email deliverability platforms are better at handling deliverability factors like IP reputation.
To send mail from DigitalOcean, they recommend using SendGrid or any other reliable SMTP service.
Alternatively, you could reach out to the DigitalOcean support team and check if they could lift the block for you but in many cases this is not possible:
Another option is to use a non-standard SMTP port like 2525 for example if your SMTP provider allows it.
- Bobby.
Become a contributor for community
Get paid to write technical tutorials and select a tech-focused charity to receive a matching donation.
DigitalOcean Documentation
Full documentation for every DigitalOcean product.
Resources for startups and SMBs
The Wave has everything you need to know about building a business, from raising funding to marketing your product.
The developer cloud
Scale up as you grow — whether you're running one virtual machine or ten thousand.
Get started for free
Sign up and get $200 in credit for your first 60 days with DigitalOcean.*
*This promotional offer applies to new accounts only.