MIAB mail server - managed cloud migration plan

Maintenance
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Hi, MIAB community,

I really enjoy having my own private mail server and Mail-in-a-box does a really good job of providing a fully functional, lightweight, secure orientated and easy to set up now for a number of years I have served me and my family and a few close friends very well.

:clap: Much appreciate Josh all the developers plus the awesome MIAB community that makes this possible! :clap:

Sometimes life happens and it gets busy [ no time to maintain a secure private server with all updates ] and other times one may suddenly transition to eternity…
Looking at it from a point to provide resiliency and a good legacy/coherence for my family and close friends who had built a dependency on the personal mail server I’m running now.
So I’m contemplating the unthinkable find or creating an easy way to migrate MIAB [ only the mail server functionality ] to a third-party managed provider [ I know this won’t provide the same privacy/security*/ as offered by the self-hosted solution ] but will assure continuity.

How easy is it to migrate the main MIAB domain with all users and mail 1:1?
Has anyone done it or thought about it? What are the options?

The best option as I see it, would be if “One-click migration” is achieved, as I know it’s possible for me currently but it will take at least a few steps to complete. There are a few challenges that I can think of mainly around the current payments.

I’m paying for:

  1. The domain/s ownership ( this renews every few years ) is ~ $25 annually [ can add here 3 more domains ]
  2. VM hosting (monthly or annually) is - $86.4 annually
  3. AWS S3 backup of less than $2 annually
    Not paying for MIAB development/documentation and community resources, my time for occasional server updates and support and monitoring of the server etc.

After third-party potential migrations payments for a non-technical user, it’s important all the above to be consolidated as a single payment.

One of the major issues may be the DNS glue records - as MIAB works as an Authoritative DNS server for the domains it’s hosting.

Some of the potential third-party cloud hosting candidates:

Any thoughts are welcome!

Kind regards,
Martin

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If you have the skills and the tools, it can be very easy. It can be a cumbersome process if many mailboxxes and forwarders are involved, but again to one who has experience in using the tools and knowledge of what the tools are, it is easy.

That could be managed with the right MSP I would think.

If the MiaB service is being hosted by a third party managing it, I don’t see the issue here actually, as nothing would need to change.

So here you are completely changing the direction of the conversation from hosting your own personal MiaB instance, to seeking email hosting from a third party.

Yes, of course.

Hi Martin, @mveplus

I actually handle ALL of the above mentioned issues for clients. Those who have known me for years here on this forum have heard my story, but it bears to be repeated every so often for newcomers who may have missed it in the past. Somewhere between 2014 and 2016, I was volunteering for a non-profit which handled hosting for websites. We desperately wanted and needed email services for our clients, and it would have been easy to go to a third-party provider, but our clients would not have it - they wanted it to be handled by us, not some random third party. With the general difficulties surrounding hosting email servers - security, IP reputation, blacklists, spam, etc. it was simply a task that was too demanding for the people we had to maintain a full email stack. Then I discovered Mail-in-a-Box. That changed everything. I don’t need to elaborate on that as you covered the highlights in your first paragraph. I then spent a lot of time on this forum and Slack giving back to this community by helping others who had discovered this wonderful project, but just didn’t quite have the tech skills needed to handle it. Fast forward to late 2019, early 2020. I first released a product to help MiaB users get their emails delivered without having to jump through hoops of constantly battling blacklists, etc. AnyMXRelay was born. I then went on to offering services to those who needed or wanted their own private mail server but were not wanting to deal with the every day maintenance, or set up, or IP reputation, or offsite backups, or Secondary DNS, etc.

So, in short, I think I can offer what you are looking for …

Over the years I have also helped people transition away from Mail-in-a-Box, sadly. In most cases, it has been a friend who set it up and then later could no longer maintain it, not any issue with MiaB itself. In other cases, it has been the desire to reduce those costs that are minimal, yet do add up. I can help with that as well.

Please feel free to reach out. My Mail-in-a-Box services webpage is here and you can PM me through the forum. I have sadly abandoned Slack as it has not been stable for me for many months now.

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I too have thought about this if one of my few users would prefer to take control of their email (administratively not technically).

I also have no interest in setting up my users or groups of my users with their own MIAB, none have shown enough interest in running one. But they still like their problem free email experience.

My thoughts have been to direct them to using one of the community members that offer this as a single fee service, @alento being the the first that comes to mind. This would give my users the same (or possibly better) experience that they currently have.

Good luck, and I would be interested in hearing what you decide.

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Hi @alento,

Thanks for taking the time to respond I’m aware of your involvement with the community and the services you offer :slight_smile: . DM sent :wink:
Just to add here I’m perfectly capable to manage and migrate the MIAB to MIAB or to a third-party provider. I think the issue is more admin/logistical/ issue if I’m out of the picture, how do I pass credentials in a safe manner for the three providers [Domains/VM hosting/Backups all three use multifactor and some don’t support delegating to another account ] to you or a third party for the actual work?

I’m well aware of what I’ll part with if were to migrate to the “big ones”. This is not necessarily the best option but is most practical for non-technical users.

Hi @matidau
I’m just exploring the options if I decide I want to rearrange my priorities in my free time [choose to delegate the work and pay for it] or if I’m not around and a non-technical user needs to take over the most convenient and cost-efficient way.

I do not need to do something with immediate effect [ I’m staying with MIAB. if that’s not clear :slightly_smiling_face: ] just exploring what I’m thinking out loud.

Kind regards,
Martin

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Alento is a good person and professional! It’s a pleasure to work with him, you can trust him

He has saved me so many times

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