What do you use for email that doesn't suck on cheap hosting?

armstrongvds

Member OP

ARM Enjoyer

Joined:: Jun 2024
Posts:: 199
From:: Seoul, KR

3mo ago

#1

I've been fighting deliverability on my Time4VPS €18/yr plan for 3 months! SPF/DKIM/DMARC all configured, IP not on any blocklists I can find, yet Gmail throws everything to spam and Yahoo just bounces with useless codes!

Tried their cPanel mail, tried Roundcube, tried switching to SSL ports... insane value for the web hosting but the email is killing me! My Ampere ARM box at home handles everything else beautifully but residential IP = instant blacklist

What are people actually using for reliable outgoing mail on these budget boxes? Self-hosted solutions? Smart relays? Give me specs!

one small ping for man...

uma

Member

99.99% or bust

Joined:: Jun 2024
Posts:: 324
From:: Dublin, IE

3mo ago

#2

I've measured this across four providers.

Status pages won't show IP reputation degradation. By the time you detect it, you're already in spam folders.

I run monitoring on my mail stack same as infrastructure. Alert fatigue from bounces exceeded actual business email volume. Switched to external relay, problem solved.

436 days. reboot is surrender.

svendeal

Member

Deal Sniper

Joined:: Jul 2024
Posts:: 301
From:: Miami, US

3mo ago

#3

Had to grab this
Vultr has a $3/mo SMTP relay tier, 3k emails/month, $36/YR ARE YOU KIDDING

Price history: was $15 in 2024, dropped March 2026, I track these things

Not self-hosted but at this price who cares

world record: 4min Arch install

SingaporeRep

Member

Benchmark Addict

Joined:: Jul 2024
Posts:: 227
From:: Singapore, SG

3mo ago

#4

=== Mail deliverability test ===
Provider: Time4VPS shared IPv4
SPF: pass
DKIM: pass
DMARC: pass
IP reputation: 2/10 (SenderScore)
DNSBL: listed on 3/40 (Spamhaus ZEN, Barracuda, UCEPROTECT3)
Inbox placement: 12% (Gmail), 8% (Outlook), 34% (Yahoo)
=== Comparison ===
Vultr relay IP: 9/10 reputation, 94% inbox placement
OVHcloud relay: 8/10, 91% placement

Decent disk IO, meh network. Your IP is the problem, not your config.

fio, iperf, geekbench. results or gtfo.

blubhyper

Member

type-2 trauma

Joined:: Dec 2024
Posts:: 20
From:: Bangkok, Thailand

3mo ago

#5

Self-host is same but different, you fight every day Gmail change rule, Yahoo change rule, Outlook change rule, no end. Use relay better, same but different. I use Vultr relay 3 year now, no problem, cheap, good.

type-1 or go home

sofialund

Member

homelab heatstroke

Joined:: Jul 2024
Posts:: 140
From:: Buenos Aires, Argentina

3mo ago

#6

¡the analysis of SingaporeRep is the good one! The IP red, not the config red. ¡I tried the server self-hosted for two years, the headache constant!

Vos tenés two options:

The relay cheap, the time saved
The server dedicated with IP clean, the price high

¡I work now for RackNerd, the team email! ¡we search the engineer with experience in the deliverability, the salary good! @armstrongvds vos have the knowledge of the problem, vos want the job?

hot air, steady hand, magic smoke

Rangga

Member

Joined:: Jun 2024
Posts:: 42
From:: Bandung, Indonesia

3mo ago

#7

Alert fatigue from bounces exceeded actual email volume, too real lah

armstrongvds

Member OP

ARM Enjoyer

Joined:: Jun 2024
Posts:: 199
From:: Seoul, KR

3mo ago

#8

SingaporeRep said:

Your IP is the problem, not your config.

This hurts but tracks. I ran my own SenderScore after seeing your post: 3/10. The whole /24 is poisoned.

€18/yr was never going to come with IP warmup or dedicated reputation. Lesson learned.

Vultr relay at $3/mo puts me at €18 + $36 = roughly €51/yr total. Still absurdly cheap for what I need. Do they handle the SMTP auth or do I need to run something like Postfix on my end to forward?

one small ping for man...

lisbonred

Member

Tiny VPS Club

Joined:: Sep 2024
Posts:: 11
From:: Lisbon, Portugal

3mo ago

4 #9

Postfix null client, five lines in main.cf. Vultr gives you a hostname, port 587, STARTTLS. Done.

I run this on a 512MB BuyVM slice in Luxembourg. The VPS does nothing but queue and forward. Memory usage sits under 40MB.

relayhost = [smtp.vultr.com]:587
smtp_sasl_auth_enable = yes
smtp_sasl_password_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/sasl_passwd
smtp_sasl_security_options = noanonymous
smtp_tls_security_level = encrypt

Same setup worked with OVHcloud relay when I was price-hopping. Their €4/mo tier is honest but Vultr undercut them hard — I was using https://www.ovhcloud.com/en/vps/ at the time.

svendeal

Member

Deal Sniper

Joined:: Jul 2024
Posts:: 301
From:: Miami, US

3mo ago

#10

OVHcloud relay is €4/mo for 100k emails. Vultr is $3 for 3k.

If you're under 3k, Vultr wins. If you blast newsletters or have user notifications, OVHcloud's cap is 33x higher for only 33% more money. I track effective price per thousand:

Vultr: $1.00/k
OVHcloud: €0.04/k

The sniper in me respects the Vultr headline but the math changes fast.

world record: 4min Arch install

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