My install service uses ansible to fully automate the installation. One playbook creates the digital ocean droplet, does some basic settings manipulation, and creates the domain in mailgun. Then it sends an email with the dns instructions and waits for the A record to be created and then waits for mailgun to validate the domain. It then proceeds to install Discourse, plugins, set up webhooks for mailgun bounce processing, creates the mail receiver, configures discourse to use it and sends a message to the user when it’s complete.
The piece that’s missing now is to do the dns configuration, but my clients use such a wide range of services that it would be a fool’s errand. ( I would likely have spent much less time to do the installations all by hand, but what’s the fun of that? )