I host a number of websites on my droplet that need to occasionally send emails for things such as password resets or sale acknowledgements. The volumes are very low - maximum of 100 per week but often none. I have previously used a free Gmail SMTP but it now seems that without SPF and DMARC that any emails sent to the likes of gmail or outlook addresses get rejected.
I tried setting up SendGrid but the second email I tried to send failed to be delivered because the IP address used by SendGrid was blacklisted at the time. The only suggestion from support to avoid this would be to purchase a PRO service at $90 per month with a dedicated IP address rather than use the IP pool. This suggested to me that all the major volume email providers are likely to suffer the same issue which might be OK if sending lots of marketing emails where it doesn’t matter if some fail to be delivered. Whereas my requirement is very low volume but reliable delivery.
I am sure that many DigitalOcean users must have a similar requirement so has anyone found a free or low cost reliable SMTP option?
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!
Heya,
I would assume that all free SMTP providers suffer from the same issues with IPs being blacklisted as there are a lot of people that used them(since it’s a free service) for spamming.
Having said that, here are a few other solutions that I’ve used in the past and might still be a good option to try out:
-
Mailgun:
- Mailgun is a popular transactional email service provider.
- They offer a “Pay As You Go” plan where you get 5,000 free emails per month for the first three months, and then a small charge per email afterwards.
- They provide good deliverability, and their setup process guides you through setting up SPF and DKIM records to improve deliverability.
-
Mailjet:
- Mailjet offers a free tier that includes 6,000 emails per month (with a limit of 200 emails per day).
- They also guide you through setting up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records.
-
Postmark:
- While they don’t offer a free tier, they are known for excellent deliverability for transactional emails.
- Their pricing starts at $10/month for 10,000 emails.
Hi there,
In addition to what has already been mentioned I could suggest using https://smtpfa.st/ or SendGrid.
They offer free plans so you should be covered.
Hope that this helps!
Best,
Bobby
Heya,
Our new disabled-by-default SMTP policy went into effect June 22, 2022, for all new accounts. While our Security team will still be monitoring spam activity, we believe this decision will benefit our customers and the broader internet community in our shared quest to minimize spam.
https://www.digitalocean.com/blog/smtp-restricted-by-default
You have a couple of options: you can open a support ticket and request the SMTP restriction to be lifted on your Droplet and they’ll usually do it if your account has some history and you explain the use case.
You can use a service like https://smtpfa.st/, SendGrid, Mailgun, or Postmark, much better for deliverability anyway. They allow SMTP over API, which is a good workaround and better for performance too.
Honestly the API route is usually the better option anyway, it is more reliable deliverability and you don’t have to worry about your IP getting blacklisted.
Regards
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 AI-native businesses
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.
Start building today
From GPU-powered inference and Kubernetes to managed databases and storage, get everything you need to build, scale, and deploy intelligent applications.
