Just curious about the MiaB userbase. How many of you run MiaB on a PC from home/office, like I do. How many run it on a hosted on-line server you rent space on, which seems the recommended option?
I have an elderly Toshiba Satellite laptop sitting in my utility closet with the screen disabled and all power-saving turned off. It’s got a 120Gb SSD and 16Gb of RAM and it works perfectly.
There must be a few people out there self-hosting 
It seems a little frowned-upon, and does require a little more network & admin knowledge, but I see no real difference between a server at someone else’s site and a server at my site. As long as it’s got real network access, MIAB just works.
I’m currently running MIAB on a headless Intel NUC under my stairs - 12GB RAM of which typically 1GB is used and 2GB is cache 
, a 200GB SSD (because I had it lying around 
), and a UPS that keeps my servers and network up. I’m lucky to have a sensible ISP who provides a fixed IP address and all ports open.
It’s been no drama. There are a couple of config items that get re-added after each version update, but it’s easy. I did put some notes on the forum a couple of years ago, and would be happy to write a little how-to guide if people want. You might need to tweak fail2ban, and handle IPv6 reverse DNS (Of course you have IPv6, don’t you!), but all very do-able.
Before the NUC, I was running MIAB on a Raspberry Pi. Apart from a missing library (easily installed) it too ran perfectly well. I didn’t find the Pi as reliable as I liked, so it got swapped into a NUC. But I have a Pi running other services and can’t complain.
I run it at home on a Cox Business connection with a block of 13 public IP addresses. Cox has not yet implemented IPV6 for business customers.
I run TrueNAS on a Dell R730xd server (second owner) with 16 hard drives in it. Six of the drives are setup in a volume for MIAB use. I run three MIAB servers in VM’s for three separate domains. This setup has been going for almost two years. I migrated to MIAB from other mail servers running on Windows Server boxes.
I’ve been running my own private mail server since about 2002. My initial deployment used qmail plus Courier IMAP and involved a cobbled-together setup of spamassassin and other open-source tools to create a functioning server. I switched to MiaB (running on a Digital Ocean droplet) in 2014. ( 
@JoshData )
It’s really no longer feasible to host your own SMTP service from a homelab on a residential internet connection. Those days are long gone. But if you have access to a business class internet connection with a fixed IP address, there’s really no reason you can’t run MiaB on an old laptop in a closet.
I’m running my own mail server, which I’m using for a few websites, on a Digital Ocean server. It took a while to get the domains removed from Spamhaus and the IP address removed from Proofpoint, but did eventually, and I haven’t had any problems since. It’s been about a year.
I’m not using IP6. Don’t see the point plus I don’t think my ISP supports it yet. 
I used to run MiaB on a seconf hand HP ProLiant server in a Hyper-V VM along with several other VMs (domain controller etc). But I bought a power monitoring plug socket and was horrified that the server alone was costing £18 to £20 per month in electricity so I retired it and out MiaB on an old laptop. Costs pennies per month to run now. Don’t miss the server - other than it kept my office a bit warmer in the winter.
Depends where in the world you are. My home broadband in the UK has a free static IP and is perfectly good to run MiaB from. Been on it for six months or so now and no major issues at all. I love it.
Do they provide rDNS for free as well? And my advice would be to remove the battery from the laptop as it might cause a fire if it overheats and do keep the fans clean.
I’m obviously one of those frowned upon users 
As with @Gideon-IT-UK, I run my MiaB install from my home. My ISP is more inclined to technical users anyway and I do pay a little (not a lot) more than your average BT user but I do get a static IP (including v6 if I ever decide to use it) and configurable rDNS in my control panel.
MiaB here is running on an Unraid server in a VM, along with a couple of other VMs and a bunch of Dockers. I have a UPS protecting it from power outages and also have solar so if there is a power failure it can switch over to that as long as there is daylight or enough power in the batteries .
Sounds like a good setup. Who do you use for your ISP?
I’m with Zen. Not the cheapest but not ridiculously expensive either, though I’m due to renew my contract in a few months so we’ll have to see what they offer
On a Linode … I had bought a RaspberryPi and thought I could try running on it but at the time (6-7 years ago) the ARM packages weren’t all there. It would have been the perfect low power, low energy consumption box
ARM is now possible. There is a trick you must follow for backups to work. i.e. installing duplicity from snap.
I used to run MIAB on a PCEngines APU2 box in my wiring closet. On a fast, 120Kbps, ADSL line. Using only 4-6W power consumption it proved to be a very dependable installation which ran for years without any problems to speak of.
Then my ISP was taken over by KPN and I was no longer able to set reverse DNS for my server. Which effectively ended my self-hosting.
I now run MIAB on a virtual server somewhere in NL. This costs €10,- a month. And makes my mail server part of the cloud, running on someone else’s computer. Apart from that MIAB works as well from this virtual server as it did from my own wiring closet.
But if I ever get a provider that enables reverse DNS I’ll go back to my own box in my own office.