Latest update: Sunday, April 27, 2025.

Starting sometime this afternoon of Friday, April 25, 2025, most email-related transactions are failing. This includes:

• Logging in
• Password resets
• Signing up
• Sending email for new posts
• Possibly other things I haven’t considered

The failure point appears to be on the DigitalOcean side, where this site is hosted, not with Mailgun, the provider that actually handles mail transactions.

A block was apparently added to the server that now prevents outgoing SMTP (email) communication. The block was added without warning.

Everything had been working flawlessly for almost a year, and there were no configuration changes on my end, nor has there been a change in usage that I’m aware of.

This is the first issue I’ve had with DigitalOcean since signing up with them last year. I’m painfully aware that they’ve been (and currently are!) featured as a “Supported by” affiliate on this site. I’m unclear how they will resolve this issue, or whether it will happen again. How they address this issue will determine whether they remain an affiliate on this site… and whether this site remains hosted with them.

This is one of the downsides to managing your own servers. I wouldn’t expect this issue if I had a Ghost Pro account instead, but I also wouldn’t have the depth of control I currently do, nor the—let’s call it delight—of being a sysadmin.

Stay tuned, and thanks for your patience.

Update (Saturday, April 26, 2025): DigitalOcean unblocked the necessary SMTP ports and normal operations are restored 🎉 (try it here 😉). DigitalOcean’s response was relatively timely, and they noted that this change was planned and messaged:

To clarify, port 25 has always been restricted by default on our platform due to the high volume of spam and abuse it tends to attract. However, due to continued abuse across the platform, we made the decision to extend those restrictions to ports 465 and 587 as well. This change was part of a broader effort to improve platform-wide security and reliability.

We sincerely apologize that this change affected your setup, However this update was announced in our March 6th, 2025 release notes, and you can find additional details here: 

Why Is SMTP Blocked? – DigitalOcean Docs

This is, of course, is a kind way of saying RTFM. The release notes are… sparse… and lost in a sea of other changes that are irrelevant to me, but indeed, it was announced:

6 March

SMTP ports 465 and 587 are now blocked on Droplets.

However, despite the implication these ports are blocked as of March 6, I know they remained open for me earlier Friday, and for weeks prior. I can only assume this was a rolling block, and my servers were finally reconfigured.

One curiosity in their response:

It’s also worth noting that SMTP port unblock requests are currently only being considered for accounts with a solid track record and a long-standing relationship with us–like yours, which has been with us for over a year.

(Emphasis their’s.)

This was a head-scratcher. Did this mean a new customer looking to self-host Ghost (which requires Mailgun and thus SMTP port access) would be unable to use DigitalOcean? While this doesn’t affect me directly, I suspect it might affect whether Ghost.org continues to recommend DigitalOcean for self-hosted installs.

Update (Sunday, April 27, 2025): I followed up with the DigitalOcean support team and they responded quickly:

While SMTP ports 25, 465 and 587 may not be available to brand-new accounts right away, new users can still send email using port 2525, which is widely supported by providers like Mailgun and Ghost setups.

Port 2525 is a documented option for Mailgun, though not for a standard Ghost configuration, so this will continue to be an issue for new customers. At least there’s an acknowledgement from Ghost that port 2525 a viable option for some configurations.

I hope DigitalOcean updates their documentation to address this new port reality.