I understand the challenges with running your own mail server, but should that not be up to the developer? I don't know about the rest of you but I'm becoming more an more concerned about the centralization of hosting services. If others follow suit does it mean you must go to a "trusted" email platform? Seems like a bad move for a lot of reasons, with a a trade off for less email junk and a decision that should be the choice of the digital ocean customer. Perhaps I'm being naive?

I suppose the biggest reason is to stop people sending spam, but I feel like there has to be a better way to do this.

I understand why they do this, but I hope this is not strictly enforced against accounts with good history/reputation who request access.