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Installation & Setup

Installing AcelleMail on DigitalOcean

This quickstart has moved. The install walkthrough for any server, a DigitalOcean droplet included, is Install AcelleMail and Get Started.

Technical Editor
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1 min read Beginner

This guide has moved

👉 Please read the install guide here: Install AcelleMail and Get Started.

That one guide applies to any server, a DigitalOcean droplet included. It walks through the installation wizard step by step (system check, site and admin details, database, cron job) and then the first sending server and plan. It is the install walkthrough we keep current, so follow it instead of a server-specific copy that drifts out of date.

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9 comments

7 comments

  1. Ahmed
    Any reason to use MariaDB over MySQL 8? We default to MariaDB everywhere but I see most Acelle install guides use MySQL.
    1. Admin
      No real reason, guides say MySQL because that's what we test on. MariaDB 10.5+ is fine, just set utf8mb4_unicode_ci explicitly since it has no utf8mb4_0900_ai_ci.
  2. Isabella
    for anyone using systemd-resolved (ubuntu 22+): set dnsstublistener=no in /etc/systemd/resolved.conf before installing. otherwise port 53 conflicts when you eventually run a bounce handler. 👀
  3. Anna
    we use Hetzner instead of DO — same Ubuntu image, identical install. Probably $4/mo cheaper. The PTR record on Hetzner requires opening a support ticket but they respond same-day.
  4. Aisha
    Is the install wizard skipable for automated deploys? Asking because we Terraform our infra and clicking through a wizard is awkward.
    1. Admin
      No headless flag. You can template .env and run the migrations over SSH yourself, but the app may still redirect to the installer until that flag gets set at the end. Need to check on a clean droplet.
  5. James
    installed on a $12/mo DigitalOcean droplet for our 30k-subscriber list. Performance has been fine. Memory peaks around 1.6 GB during batch sends; comfortable on 2GB.
  6. Rafael
    Clean walkthrough. The supervisor config copy-paste worked first try.
  7. Daniel
    Followed this on Ubuntu 24.04 last week. Zero issues. The php-imap and php-sqlite3 notes saved me a wizard-error round-trip...

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