Do I need to be afraid of using Mail-in-a-Box?

I have been testing to use Mail-in-a-Box for a couple of month now. I like it, I like the feeling that I am independent hosting my own email server.
But I also feel insecure moving my main email addresses on my self hosted email server. I am not sure if I could handle it if my box breaks or the Mail-in-a-Box support suddenly stops. :confused:

Right now I’m running mine with a little-used email address that’s purely for projects, if you’re not sure I’d suggest starting with that.

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I think it depends on your own comfort level with Linux and the Mail-in-a-Box setup. If you are familiar enough with Linux and have a good backup strategy, even if the box were to completely fail, you could restore from backups.

To get more comfortable, I would suggest in addition to starting with a little used email address (or create one just for this purpose), to put your backup strategy in place and test it. Destroy your instance and see if you’re able to recover the data. If so, you have now proven to yourself you could recover from a catastrophic event. If you are still not comfortable, you probably need more practice/proving to yourself.

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So are you running you MIAB server for your main email addresses? And don’t have big problems?

Yes, I use my box for my main email. I’ve tested it with no fewer than 5 hosting providers and a variety of DNS arrangements (completely inside the box, using 1 box DNS and 1 external secondary, using completely external DNS) and they’ve all been fine. There are sometimes issues with IPs being on blacklists but I’ve also been able to address this by submitting manual requests to various places (Outlook365, live.com, McAfee anti-virus, etc.)

Importantly, I’ve also established for myself how I wish to backup and recover in case it becomes necessary.

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Running MIAB for years. No problems. If you get issues with IPs getting blacklisted (v60fan) you just selected a bad VPS provider. Use a VPS provider that is legit and actively bans abusive users.

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I am running MiaB over a year now. It’s been great.

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I have been using MIAB for well over a year with ALL my email addresses. I have no issues, no unusual security issues. etc. Just remember that your email is only as secure as you make it to be. Use TLS/SSL when sending and reading mail from the server. Use software you trust like Mozilla. And If you are really scared, you and your family and friends could also use OpenPGP to encrypt even the text in the email.

I hope this helps friend.

I have been on this for a bit over a year, and happy as a clam. A few minor issues, that were easily remedied.

My attitude, perhaps dated, is to justg wait a few days when a new rev comes out to ensure that any bugs have remedies. That seems to be working. That and stay on top of the base Ubuntu’s system updates. This easily weorks with my existing other VPS nodes running subdomains.

I forward mail to my gmail account as a backup.

I also compare messages that reach my gmail inbox versus my miab.

If a message appears in my miab and not my gmail, it almost always means it is spam.

I would like to configure my miab spamassassin to be more sensitive (more like gmail), in future.

Also,

Backups are stored on this machine’s own hard disk. You are responsible for periodically using SFTP (FTP over SSH) to copy the backup files from /home/user-data/backup/encrypted to a safe location.

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There is nothing to be afraid in using Mail-in-a-Box (MIAB) as even big email providers like Gmail and Namecheap break down at times. I tried sending email from Gmail to Namecheap but the email despite being sent out never arrived at Namecheap.

Now, yes, my MIAB box did break down, but I just re-installed Ubuntu and then re-installed MIAB and it works again. I am using Ubuntu 18.04 LTS and not the Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. I am not afraid of sudden server failure and even mail loss as my main purpose of using MIAB is to help decentralisation and break up big tech monopoly be it Outlook, Gmail, or Yahoo.