[chaoskitty]

You're conflating a few different issues: the newness of a domain, and the quality and cost of of your VPS.

Some email providers don't like brand new domains, yes, but if a domain is brand new, nobody is going to immediately start using it for mission critical things. That's just common sense, although now I want to buy a domain to see how much of an issue this really is.

The cost and quality of a VPS means very little because if a VPS is on a network with a poor reputation, one can easily smarthost through a mail provider that has a good reputation.

Likewise, people can run servers at home, or they can colocate, or whatever, and don't have to run a VPS at all, although I think you're just generalizing and aren't suggesting that people can't use other servers.

[immibis]

Perhaps IP reputation became less important than domain reputation when SPF and SKIM became things.