But, another thing to remember is that many hosting providers block the default ports by default. Many will open the port with a customer service ticket but others will only do it at a certain “tier” of service.
I, personally, use linode as my provider and I had to open a ticket with support in order to unblock the right ports to send email.
As an aside:
Standing up an email server itself is a good exercise because it’s an absolute PITA. Mainly due to trust and ensuring all your DNS records are right and stuff.
Overall, it’s a nifty exercise to understand but I, personally, don’t really feel like it’s worth the pain.
If you’re standing something up for yourself, and it doesn’t have to be anything fancy, any email provider that provides SMTP *will work.
This even includes gmail: https://support.google.com/mail/answer/7126229?hl=en
But, another thing to remember is that many hosting providers block the default ports by default. Many will open the port with a customer service ticket but others will only do it at a certain “tier” of service.
You mentioned a droplet so I googled digital ocean and smtp, and this thread popped up: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/questions/sending-email-with-do-app-is-it-possible
I, personally, use linode as my provider and I had to open a ticket with support in order to unblock the right ports to send email.
As an aside:
Standing up an email server itself is a good exercise because it’s an absolute PITA. Mainly due to trust and ensuring all your DNS records are right and stuff.
Overall, it’s a nifty exercise to understand but I, personally, don’t really feel like it’s worth the pain.
Edit: forgot to finish a sentence