# Discourse on DigitalOcean with SMTP server on HostGator

**URL:** <https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-on-digitalocean-with-smtp-server-on-hostgator/287615>\
**Category:** Self-hosting\
**Tags:** email\
**Created:** [December 5, 2023, 6:25pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-on-digitalocean-with-smtp-server-on-hostgator/287615 "2023-12-05T18:25:47Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Varlov](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/varlov/32/346873_2.png) [@Varlov](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Varlov)\
**Post date:** [December 5, 2023, 6:25pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-on-digitalocean-with-smtp-server-on-hostgator/287615/1 "2023-12-05T18:25:47Z")

</div>

Hey everyone, apologies in advance for the probably very novice question…

I don’t really specialize in the web development realm but I need to set up a community for an organization. I currently run some web servers on HostGator (LAMP stack with cPanel) which of course have fully functional SMTP servers. My question is this: is it possible to run the application on a DigitalOcean droplet but use an SMTP server on my HostGator account? I really don’t want to use one of those third party services.

I’d be thankful for any pointers 💗

---

_[View the full topic](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-on-digitalocean-with-smtp-server-on-hostgator/287615)._