This guide might be of use to you

[Kevo X Thomson]

Like a lot of you, I checked out Digital Ocean and WebFaction - but with Digital Ocean, I was dismayed by the lack of support for email like we're all used to having on Shared Hosting.

BUT, the ability to customise your environment is very powerful.

This fellow has written up a guide (more or less) to do hosting on Digital Ocean and point MX (mail) DNS records to a cheaper shared hosting alternative that hosts all the email accounts (in this case, HostGator).

http://thereluctantdeveloper.com/2013/12/moving-vps-hosting-dealing-email-part-2/