

Note: Mail-in-a-Box’s maintainers work on Mail-in-a-Box in their limited free time. If you are looking for something more advanced, try iRedMail or Modoboa. There are basically no configuration options and you can’t tweak the machine’s configuration files after installation. Please note that the goal of this project is to provide a simple, turn-key solution. See the README on github for advanced instructions. Consult the setup guide for complete details.

You will be asked to enter the email address you want and a few other configuration questions. Users report it taking just a few hours to get to a fully operational system. The setup guide walks you through getting your own box set up. See our discussion forum for tips about that. This is a challenge faced by everyone who runs their own mail server, with or without Mail-in-a-Box. Other mail services might block or spam-filter email sent from your Mail-in-a-Box. Note that while we want everything to “just work,” we can’t control the rest of the Internet. Control panel functionality can also be accessed over the RESTful HTTP API ( API documentation). The control panel displays comprehensive status checks for DNS records and system activity/monitoring. Mail-in-a-Box includes a web-based control panel where you can add mail accounts, mail aliases, and custom DNS records and set up backups. It also supports simple static website hosting (since the box is serving HTTP anyway), or you can host a website elsewhere (just add a custom DNS A record in you Mail-in-a-Box's control panel to point domains to another server). Your box can host mail for multiple users and multiple domain names. TLS certificates are automatically provisioned from Let’s Encrypt. Mail-in-a-Box uses the latest security best practices, including using TLSv1.2, opportunistic TLS for outgoing mail, strong TLS ciphers, and HSTS for the web services.

When enabled, DNSSEC (with DANE TLSA) provides a higher level of protection against active attacks with other mail servers also running DANE TLSA. The box also includes automatic DNS configuration when you let it become your nameserver so that it can set important DNS records for mail deliverability and security including SPF, DKIM, DMARC, and MTA-STS. The box also includes other standard mail functionality like spam protection (spam filtering and greylisting), mail filter rules, email client autoconfiguration, and automated backups to Amazon S3 and other services, and Exchange ActiveSync (for recent versions of Outlook) as a beta feature.
