How to Setup Email Server on Vultr VPS with Plesk

In this guide you will learn how to setup email server with Vultr VPS and Plesk control panel. For making sure your emails go to user inbox and not spam, adding all correct DNS records are essential.

Table of Contents hide

1 Click to Watch Youtube video

2 Step#1 Setup Vultr VPS

3 Step#2 Install SSL certificate

4 Step#3 Enable reverse DNS

5 Step#4 Enable Mail Server

6 Step#5 Create Necessary DNS records

6.1 Method 1

6.1.1 How to get DKIM records.

6.2 Method 2

7 Final Testing

Click to Watch Youtube video

Step#1 Setup Vultr VPS

To learn how to setup vultr vps follow this guide or video

Step#2 Install SSL certificate

Follow the vps setup guide and issue a free lets encrypt wildcard certificate. Youtube video linked in Step 1 has chapters to make it easy to jump to ssl part tutorial.

Step#3 Enable reverse DNS

As shown in video.

Step#4 Enable Mail Server

As shown in video.

Step#5 Create Necessary DNS records

Method 1

Note:- Replace yourdomain.com

Records in first table are essential for records in second table to work. So create them if you don’t already have them as show in tutorial referenced in Step 1.

Host	Type	Record Value
@	A	server ip
www	CNAME	yourdomain.com
ftp	CNAME	yourdomain.com
_acme-challenge	NS	yourdomain.com

Records in second table required for email function to work.

Host	Type	Record Value
_dmarc	TXT	v=DMARC1; p=none
@	TXT	v=spf1 +a +mx +a:yourdomain.com -all
webmail	CNAME	yourdomain.com
mail	CNAME	yourdomain.com
default._domainkey	TXT	DKIM record – Find from control panel
_domainkey	TXT	o=-
smtp	CNAME	yourdomain.com
imap	CNAME	yourdomain.com
pop3	CNAME	yourdomain.com
@	MX (priority 10)	mail.domain.com

How to get DKIM records.

As shown in video.

Method 2

If you don’t want to manually add so many records you can use glue records and change nameservers of your domain to:-

ns1.yourdomain.com

ns2.yourdomain.com

Note for some accounts port 25 is blocked which is required for sending emails. If it is blocked you will not be able to send emails, you could still receive emails.