please share your expert advise on choosing between DO & Vultr. I am on DO, with 2gb RAM, 12$ plan, smtp has been a major issue. I can’t move ahead. Googling shows vultr is competetive, not sure about smtp issue.. how are your experiences, server needs to be down here in australasia.
Not directly answering your question, I have been very happy with AWS Lightsail.
ye, heard that, and they have their email service for smtp as well. is it easy to install discourse…
Using Netcup and Mailgun, everything is running smoothly so far.
If I can install in on Lightsail folllowing community provided standard install instructions, anyone can. 
doesn’t matter what cloud host you use, none will work if you can’t figure out how to properly edit a yaml file and follow directions when people try to help you with it.
i edited the config in yaml as you @Lilly instructed, it did not work for me. tried few other edits in yaml, nah didn’t work. I’m not a developer. 1st step into discourse, 1st step into DO. Now, I dont have any smtp in my .yml.
ok i’m sorry this is happening to you. yml files are sensitive. i use Hetzner myself. i used to use Digitalocean but the configurations aren’t super different. i prefer the Hetzner dashboard and interface, and they are way cheaper.
i use Hetzner and Resend for email for 3 forum - a busy pubic one, and 2 private forums. when i first migrated to Resend from Mailgun, all the users had to re-login with their existing credentials. of course most just used the email link or reset. this maxed out my Resend quota before the day was out so i had to do some management there and adjust a few settings. but after 2 or 3 days it was back to normal.
good to know you are skilled. Hetzner is EU, again google says better find Sydney based server, everyone talked abt DO, so I signed up with them, plus it is linux based. Nothing biggy for now, let’s see how it goes.
SMTP issues, can you elaborate?
Often the provider will block SMTP ports by default and you must often verify your identity (often providing government ID) to unblock them.
It’s possible they may have customer location restrictions but in any case file a support ticket with them.
Then you are usually free to use any third party email service.
I use Scaleway and Elastic email. No issues but new customers will need to verify identity to use email ports.
@merefield OP’s problems are encountered here: If local logins are disabled
Thanks! Would have been good if that had been referenced in OP. 
but lines up with my response 
Hi,
seems like DO have blocked the port for my account. Their answer was “security team can’t lift the smpt block for this account”. My account is very new. I remember, right after signing up, my account was deactivated and restricted, which they removed after few emails.
i think it’s time to look into vultr.
Yes that’s not helpful
my original post was about smtp, a separate problem.
now I wanted to know if vultr is as good as DO. DO had marketplace to install discourse. - a separate curiosity.
unfortunately 
these were linked.
It has been a couple years since I tried Vultr but then it worked fine. No complaints there. It was not with Discourse but web related stuff still.
Just to throw another option: Upcloud has Sydney location and there are instructions about ports and port 25.
No affiliation to upcloud. I have couple client vps there and they are working just fine also.
I’m on Vultr too, and have no complaints. It’s been a while since I configured email for Discourse – I recall it being a bit tricky, but no issues specific to Vultr. They didn’t have blocked ports that couldn’t be opened or anything.
Just mentioning — DO marketplace version of Discourse has quite bad reputation. Or had, I don’t know what is nowaday situation. But when using that you get (or got) here quite easily an answer that one isn’t a supported install.
honestly, several search results said that, not to go with marketplace. Me being me, looked for easy install like php admin.
The irony here is that a supported standard install takes about 20 mins to set most of it up, the only really annoyingly tricky and time consuming setup is … email … so the marketplace install is probably not winning you much efficiency … and getting familiar with the command line build is valuable experience for later on …