DigitalOcean Cloud Manager

The DigitalOcean tab in Cloud Management lets you manage your DigitalOcean droplets directly inside PMTAcore using the DigitalOcean API v2 — no need to open the DigitalOcean control panel. From here you can connect an account, create and control droplets, and prepare them for PowerMTA installation.

Connecting your DigitalOcean account

Open Cloud Management → DigitalOcean and add an API token:

In the DigitalOcean control panel, go to API → Tokens and generate a Personal Access Token with read and write scopes.
In PMTAcore, paste the token into the Add Your DigitalOcean API Token field and click Validate & Save.
When the token is validated, give the account a name (for example, "Production"). The token is encrypted and stored locally on your machine.

You can save more than one token. Saved accounts appear as cards with a masked token — click Access to use an account or Delete to remove it. Use Switch Account at any time to change accounts.

Viewing your droplets

After connecting, PMTAcore lists every droplet on the account. Each droplet card shows:

Label and live power status
Public IPv4 address
Region and plan/size
vCPUs and memory (in the expanded details)

Click 🔄 Refresh to reload the list from the API.

Creating a droplet

Click 🚀 Launch Instance and complete the form:

Label — the droplet name/hostname
Region — fetched live from DigitalOcean
Plan — droplet size with current monthly pricing
Image — a distribution image (Ubuntu, Debian, AlmaLinux, Rocky, etc.)
Root Password — set for the new droplet

Because DigitalOcean does not accept a root password directly on creation, PMTAcore injects a cloud-init script that sets your root password and enables password SSH, so the droplet is ready for the PowerMTA installer. The password is saved (encrypted) so SSH and PowerMTA work later.

Managing droplets

Each droplet card has action buttons:

▶ Start — power the droplet on
■ Stop — power the droplet off
↻ Reboot — reboot the droplet
🗑 Delete — permanently destroy the droplet (asks for confirmation)

Instance details & SSH

Expand a droplet card to see the full details and SSH options:

Instance ID, region, plan, vCPUs, memory
IP address and a copyable ssh root@<ip> command
Root password — show, copy, or set/update it manually
🖥 SSH Terminal — open a built-in SSH session to the droplet
💾 Save to SSH Manager — validate the server over SSH (auto-detects OS and IPs) and save it to your SSH Manager

Installing PowerMTA

In the expanded card, the 📨 PowerMTA section has an 🚀 Install PowerMTA button. It validates the droplet over SSH, detects the OS, saves it as a PowerMTA-compatible server, and offers to open PowerMTA Management to start the installation — the same flow used for Linode and custom servers.

Note: PowerMTA supports Alma Linux 8/9, Rocky Linux 8/9, and Ubuntu 22.04/24.04. Make sure your droplet uses a supported image.

💡 Tip: A freshly created droplet may take a minute to boot and receive its public IP. If the IP or SSH options are not available yet, click 🔄 Refresh and try again.