Two or three or four small, inexpensive VPSes wanted for mx and mx2 MTAs

Not_Oles

If I pay for a few VPSes, why shouldn't the revenue come to one of the great providers here at LES?

For years I have run my own email mx and mx2 MTAs. It's fun to read the logs. It's fun to read the headers. It's fun to read the mailop.org mailing list. And, a few times a month, I actually send or receive an email.

I've been running an mx2 backup receive-only MTA on Google Cloud Free Tier. Because of a Google Cloud service upgrade, I now have an opportunity to look around, since I need to reinstall even if I stay with Google Cloud Free.

Awhile back I set up at Upcloud another mx2 backup MTA for a different domain. I've used Upcloud off and on for a few years. Highly recommended! Support is fast, friendly, and, best of all, Upcloud support actually addresses the question asked rather than some other question.

The primary MTA for one domain has been at Linode for years. I could move it.

The primary MTA for another domain has been on my server at Hetzner. I seem frequently to reinstall that server.

I could put something on Oracle Cloud free tier, which seems to work well, and my account has port 25 open. But, like Google Cloud free, Oracle free seems to come without support.

So, this request is for:

• 2 or 3 or 4 small, inexpensive VPSes

• big enough to run apache2 plus postfix or notqmail

• port 25 open in both directions

• 1 IPv4 + 1 IPv6

• reverse DNS for both IPv4 and IPv6

• clean IPs

• ssh access

• Debian

• at least two different locations/networks; exactly where doesn't matter; could use more than one provider with one VPS per provider, or could put one MTA from each of two domains on each of two providers

• monthly payment; MaxMind will flag me (Perhaps a New Yorker coming from a Mexican IP is obvious fraud?); so far, however, zero problems paying for stuff by VISA with Stripe.

• no CAPTCHA on control panel; Yubikey is okay; no control panel is okay

@jarland @seriesn @Abdullah @mikho @MikePT @Mr_Tom @InceptionHosting Anybody else?

Thanks guys! 🗽🇺🇸🇲🇽🏜️

Neoon

check out gcorelabs, they got a few 1€ ones if you prepay 3 months.

Not_Oles

@Neoon said: gcorelabs

Hi @Neoon! Thanks!

Not_Oles

I sent gcorelabs a message using the web form near the bottom of the page at https://gcorelabs.com/

Hello!

Please read my request at https://talk.lowendspirit.com/discussion/3213/two-or-three-or-four-small-inexpensive-vpses-wanted-for-mx-and-mx2-mta

For additional context: https://talk.lowendspirit.com/discussion/3210/les-exclusive-ryzen-9-5950x-vermeer-zen-3-unlimited

I look forward to receiving G-Core Labs' offer!

Best wishes and kindest regards,

Tom

Neoon

Why do you want an offer on 1€ virtual servers? I don't get it.

Mr_Tom

What's your budget? Do you know ideal spec? If it's just apache and postfix it won't need to be a big VPS, unless you wanted to run rspamd/spamassasin too.

Not_Oles

@Neoon said:
Why do you want an offer on 1€ virtual servers? I don't get it.

It is not so much that I am looking for an extra discount on a 1€ virtual server.

At first glance the G-Core Labs website seemed unusually well put together! They seem very smart! Thus it seems appropriate for me, having suggested what I think I need, to ask them to recommend the most appropriate selection(s) from among their services. Who knows? Maybe they have something super special under development, and they might let me participate in their beta?

Moreover, by reaching out to them, maybe there is an opportunity to make friends with someone there. Maybe a long term relationship with their company could be born. Maybe I would use more of their services soon. For example, I also have been looking for another bare metal server in addition to the super excellent AX101 I have from Hetzner.

Additionally, by reaching out to them via web form and email, I have an opportunity to see their style of communication, and they have an opportunity to see mine.

Haha, last but not least, I have an opportunity to test my mail servers. I already received their auto-reply.

Best wishes and friendly greetings from New York City and Sonora, Mexico! 🙏

Not_Oles

@Mr_Tom said:
What's your budget?

Upcloud ticks all my boxes for $5/month. Except that they are not here at LES.

Google is free, Oracle is free. Linode and Upcloud are $5/month each. Budget could be increased if there were a reason.

Do you know ideal spec?

My email stuff seems to run great at Upcloud on 1 core, 1 GB RAM, 25 GB storage. It also ran great on Google Cloud Free Tier, 1 vcore, 0.6 GB RAM, 10 GB disk. However, the Google instance was running Caddy instead of Apache, so that might make a difference. The Linode is 1 CPU core, 1 GB RAM, 25 GB storage.

Oracle Cloud Free seems much higher specs and as fast as any of the others. I haven't yet run email at Oracle because I haven't yet figured out how to set the reverse DNS. I did do a whole bunch of compiling at Oracle, which repeatedly went great on various different instances -- even the teeny Intel instances.

The ideal spec perhaps might be 1 vcore, 1 GB RAM, 10 GB storage? Very low requirements and almost no bandwidth.

If it's just apache and postfix it won't need to be a big VPS, unless you wanted to run rspamd/spamassasin too.

So far I've done okay by enjoying reading the Postfix logs and the spam email's headers and then blocking the sending ip or ip range. I did try a blocklist, but it blocked gmail which didn't work well for me.

Greetings from Mexico! Thanks for your reply! I hope everything is going great for you!

Mr_Tom

@Not_Oles said: The ideal spec perhaps might be 1 vcore, 1 GB RAM, 10 GB storage? Very low requirements and almost no bandwidth.

We do a 1 core, 1gb RAM, 15gb NVMe plan for £3.75/month (Blesta is showing that as ~$5.30) but if you wanted a couple (and it would help out a fellow LES member) we could do something on price for you. Don't have Mexico but do have New York

@Not_Oles said: So far I've done okay by enjoying reading the spam email's headers

Can't say I "enjoy" spam but I do have an account or two where there is no spam filtering - it's handy for checking headers on things that might get caught by a spam filter, or rejected completely, so you can still check what's going, etc.

@Not_Oles said: I hope everything is going great for you

Thanks. It's 3:30am here and doing Magento upgrades for a client but other than that all good here. Hope you're good too.

mikho

NAT is out of the question unless you want to go ipv6 only.

I xan offer KVM in France and Canada https://clients.mrvm.net/cart.php?gid=21

danielcardosopt

I read your requirements, but still would like to ask: Netcup VPS 200 G8 1.79€ per month (need to be paid yearly) would be ok for you?

Neoon

You need to go to small providers, not gcore labs.
Gcore labs won't care if you order 3 servers or not.

The support is decent, you get replies within 30 minutes anytime, but they won't bend for that small.

Brueggus

@mikho said:

I xan offer KVM in France and Canada https://clients.mrvm.net/cart.php?gid=21

Do these come with IPv6?

jureve

@Neoon said:
You need to go to small providers, not gcore labs.
Gcore labs won't care if you order 3 servers or not.

The support is decent, you get replies within 30 minutes anytime, but they won't bend for that small.

"knocking on the door is not entering"

Not_Oles

@danielcardosopt said:
I read your requirements, but still would like to ask: Netcup VPS 200 G8 1.79€ per month (need to be paid yearly) would be ok for you?

Thank you for asking! Nothing wrong with Netcup that I know about. The main idea of this post was, if I decide to spend money by not using free services like Google Cloud and Oracle, might these funds go to a provider who is here at LES? Also, I like monthly payments because monthly payments help keep the market free and expectations aligned.

Amadex

Netcup is good if you want to get blacklisted IP with their VM, and they will not replace it with clean one. Then they will send collection agency to you for not paying for the blacklisted VM.

mikho

@Brueggus said:

@mikho said:

I xan offer KVM in France and Canada https://clients.mrvm.net/cart.php?gid=21

Do these come with IPv6?

yes

mikho

@Amadex said:
Netcup is good if you want to get blacklisted IP with their VM, and they will not replace it with clean one. Then they will send collection agency to you for not paying for the blacklisted VM.

Have you asked the spamlister to remove your IP?
Another "solution", or actually workaround, is to order a second IP and use that instead.

Amadex

@mikho I can't remember what I've tried. If I pay clean, I expect clean, else they should write notice "Before you pay, your VM IP may be somewhere blacklisted and you will not get a clean one".

Had blacklisted IP on Hetzner, resolved via simple ticket.
Had blacklisted IP on BuyVM, resolver via simple ticket.

and Netcup doesn't care.