Thanks! That looks very interesting.
If you don't need "Fancy" for a webmail interface, you could always install Ubuntu on a server/VPS (depending on # of mail clients and mailbox size allowances). It works really nice - kind of like iRedMail. With iRedMail you get a basic web interface for administration with their web client, but MailCow offers the same features that their paid one does. You can assign users as administers of domains, allowing them to create their own domain user emails, set mailbox size limits/quotas and more. The nice thing is it is fairly simple to set up. It is a docker setup, and that's probably the "hardest" thing about it. mailcow: dockerized documentation
MailCow is well maintained, highly recommended! BTW which provider & plan are you using? Ofc if you want to share...
My sites are hosted with RamNode. The mail server is hosted with Digital Ocean. I had a $100 credit valid for 60 days with them and their prices are comparable to RamNode - so for the mail I went with them to get the free months. The IP they issued was on Hotmail/Live/Outlook's "banned" list, but I was able to get that mitigated.
I should clarify.. there is NO need to use Ubuntu specifically - it's just what I wanted to try instead of CentOS. CentOS with Docker will work as well. It really does need to be on it's own VPS/server instance though.
Been busy with learning the guitar and slacking off on computer related stuff. In the process of bringing some of my sites back up.... and wanted to do my own email serving. Found that MailCow is MUCH easier than rolling your own on a server.
Just remember with Docker on CentOS filesystem type matters - Docker Discuss - Using Docker on CentOS 7 ? Choose EXT4 over XFS
Heavy customized iRedMail here since several years. Because we don't liked the docker detour and are also not using the admin interface very often. Otherwise and today we would look into Mailcow for sure. Good choice!
One thing I didn't like about Mail in a Box was the fact it set up it's own NS. I'd rather rely on an outside DNS service and didn't want to have to do any more manual configuration to disable something than necessary. MailCow is easily usable with services like CloudFlare DNS.
The email server(s) decision is that there are many 'right answers' depending on what your experience has been (which can result in less hassle and lower learning curve), and what you want to do with an email server. That can vary from serving up branded email for clients to using it for your own business or a limited number of managed clients. The basis for almost all email servers is postfix and dovecot with spamassasin, postgrey, and firewall such as configserver (CSF). The email client you use is independent of the server platform. And the client management interface is independent of the stack. What makes email difficult is that email has been abused in the past which caused a shift to commercial email services instead of self-hosting. The dedicated email services control the market such that using them results in your emails being allowed in most of the time. However, because of that, they charge a lot for a relatively simple service because much of it is 'automated'. They set sufficient controls on spam and do the authentication needed to show the emails are legitimate. The recipient servers tend to accept emails from their servers because of that and their market size. However, you can operate your own servers so long as you set it up correctly and don't allow spammers to use it. "The best choice is the one that works."
Also - their official release version of MiB is restricted to Ubuntu 14.04LTS if using Ubuntu. There is a way to get a later version, but I'm not sure about how reliable it is - I've got a new VPS with HostRush I'm trying out (8GB RAM/8GB VSWAP/4CPU/75GB SSD RAID-10 for $7.49 a month). The more I play with MiB (just installed it again on the HostRush VPS) the less I'm impressed with it. Setting up multiple domains is not intuitive, and it does not appear that you can set up a user to be a domain administrator, only a MiB administrator. You can set up an outside DNS service, and they provide the records needed, but the domain admin ability is a BIG loss if you plan on offering the mail service to others to do their own domains with.
Try Virtualmin/Webmin with the option of LEMP stack: NGINX, MariaDB, Ubuntu 16.04, and multiple versions of PHP including PHP 5.6 (for compatibility with old CMS site) up to current PHP 7.2. V/W provides modules/scripts for installing Letsencrypt, CSF, postgrey, DCIM, and has full DNS, etc. It is similar to Control Panel. You can extend V/W with Cloudmin to a multi-server platform with Docker. V/W stresses stability over using the latest versions or speed optimization. That makes it useful as an email server. Use Centmin Mod for Wordpress - by far the fastest and best IMO.
Many - and I'd imagine most here - do NOT like using panels for any type of administration. It's a resource drain that could be better used (those resources) elsewhere. To top it off, last I looked VirtualMin/Webmin were reliant on Apache - which is a step backwards in performance. If I was going to do any panel, it would probably end up being cPanel and use LiteSpeed for the HTTP server.
Virtualmin/Webmin can run on LAMP or LEMP stacks using Centos, Ubuntu and a few other Linux. It causes no unusual overhead and it is easy to control what boots and runs on the system. The topic is email servers. LiteSpeed or NGINX do not impact email servers that much - the eMail clients are usually low impact. V/W installs an email server by default. During the install process, you can select whether to run ClamAV and SpamAssassin and whether that is on a host or per server basis. It can work on a low-end VPS but a high-volume email server needs at least a couple GB of memory or scaled to your needs. Anyway, you are wrong about V/W: it can run the stack you want and you could use Litespeed by installing it after the initial install. V/W doesn't compile the core stack because it is not aimed at speed. However, the specialized email servers mentioned here are not designed as web servers and likewise don't come optimized for web traffic. Centmin Mod, on the other hand, is optimized for the web and, specifically for Wordpress. Read the docs about V/W if you are interested. Otherwise, don't debate public info .. that is being lazy.
No, they don't impact email services that much, agreed. As I said... last time I looked at it, Apache was the only option with NGINX as a possibility of a proxy. I see that they now have a module available to control NGINX to allow vhost generation. I'll have to spin up another DO droplet and play with it again. Stating that many here do NOT desire the additional overhead is not being lazy.. it's being factual. It's one of the reasons we use CentMin Mod. VirtualMin uses around 20MB, and yes, that's not much - but that 20MB can be used elsewhere. For a simple mail server, VirtualMin/WebMin are really overkill IMHO - which was confirmed by my test installation of it. If one also wants to host their sites on the same server then it would be one way to go. I personally prefer my mail to be handled off a different server and use SMTP to connect from my scripts to send the mail. And I'd still lean towards cPanel due to the commercial nature of it - and yes, I realize that you can also "purchase" VM/WM or CloudMin. This also kind of leans me towards MailCow as a solution for email solution Mailcow : Security vulnerabilities Sogo : Security vulnerabilities compared to VirtualMin Webmin : Security vulnerabilities I do like the fact you can use RoundCube and you can configure it to appear different for each domain.... MailCow does not have that ability when dockerized. VirtualMin setup script is a LOT nicer than the last time I played with it, which was a few years ago since I don't like panels.