

Tell HN: Digital Ocean IP addresses largely blacklisted by MIPSpace - exratione

Advice: don&#x27;t run a mail server at Digital Ocean.<p>I transferred my science site and mailing list to Digital Ocean, and a few weeks ago found it suddenly overtaken by a growing block-range blacklist by MIPSpace. Much of Digital Ocean&#x27;s IP address range is now blacklisted by MIPSpace, which certainly degrades my ability to send mail.<p>Digital Ocean&#x27;s reply to this:<p>-----------
At this time we are not sure if we can get this block removed. Mipspace does not email abuse and anyone can say an ip is bad and eventually they block the entire range.<p>At this time only a small % of our ip space is effected, nyc1 is the only location we offer that has less than 10% of all ip space on this list.. Personally, I would move to nyc2 if possible and reconsider who you email and what you email. They don&#x27;t even follow quarantine removal processes. We&#x27;re sorry we cannot accommodate your needs but will be more than happy to refer you to services that can relay to almost everyone in the world.
-----------<p>So on the one hand I understand their position; MIPSpace is a bad actor from what I&#x27;ve read. On the other hand Digital Ocean are in the business of renting IP addresses, with the implicit understanding that they are responsible for ensuring that this sort of block-level blacklisting isn&#x27;t happening for addresses they rent out.<p>It is a frustrating situation all round for people like myself, who carefully manage our email and play by the rules, to be stepped on in this way by a combination of parties and bad incentives.
======
dangrossman
If you care about e-mail delivery, you won't send it from a VPS or virtual
server anywhere. You'll have the same problem anywhere it's easy for someone
with the same shared IP space to set up an account with a prepaid or stolen
credit card and send a bunch of spam before being caught.

Use SendGrid or Mandrill. Mandrill is free for up to 12,000 e-mails per month
then it's just pocket change per thousand. You can point Sendmail at their
SMTP server and your apps will send mail through that without any code
changes.

------
mjn
Many VPS type things have ended up on blacklists; they're increasingly seen as
just another version of consumer-level dynamic IP space, like dialup or
cablemodem IP ranges.

Amazon's solution has been to provide an outgoing email-relay service, SES,
that people can use instead of sending email directly from AWS IP addresses.
Sort of the cloud version of relaying mail through your ISP's SMTP server
rather than mailing directly. SES makes an effort to keep down outgoing spam,
so it stays a "clean" outgoing mail route:
[http://aws.amazon.com/ses/](http://aws.amazon.com/ses/)

~~~
rajnetgen
yes many cloud server providers now use this method. Godaddy has been using
this for shared hosting accounts , vps and dedicated servers. they have a
limit on outgoing email and it prevents users from abusing the services and
use them for spamming.

Digital Ocean can do something similar to relay messages through their gateway
and thus preventing email spam issues.

------
csense
What are your options for running a mailserver cheaply?

