All in all, I think I should rename this to something like "Central [Clown Computing](https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=clown%20computing)", since I'm trying to cram as many services as possible into that poor machine (Spending 5$ is better than spending 10$)
Mail-in-a-Box helps individuals take back control of their email by defining a one-click, easy-to-deploy SMTP+everything else server: a mail server in a box.
* Have automated, auditable, and [idempotent](https://web.archive.org/web/20190518072631/https://sharknet.us/2014/02/01/automated-configuration-management-challenges-with-idempotency/) configuration.
Mail-in-a-Box turns a fresh ~~Ubuntu 18.04 LTS~~ Debian 10 (Buster) 64-bit machine into a working mail server by installing and configuring various components.
* Webmail ([Roundcube](http://roundcube.net/)), mail filter rules (thanks to Roundcube and Dovecot), and email client autoconfig settings (served by [nginx](http://nginx.org/))
* Spam filtering ([spamassassin](https://spamassassin.apache.org/)) and greylisting ([postgrey](http://postgrey.schweikert.ch/))
* DNS ([nsd4](https://www.nlnetlabs.nl/projects/nsd/)) with [SPF](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sender_Policy_Framework), DKIM ([OpenDKIM](http://www.opendkim.org/)), [DMARC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DMARC), [DNSSEC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNSSEC), [DANE TLSA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNS-based_Authentication_of_Named_Entities), [MTA-STS](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc8461), and [SSHFP](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4255) policy records automatically set
* TLS certificates are automatically provisioned using [Let's Encrypt](https://letsencrypt.org/) for protecting https and all of the other services on the box
* Comprehensive health monitoring that checks each day that services are running, ports are open, TLS certificates are valid, and DNS records are correct
* A control panel for adding/removing mail users, aliases, custom DNS records, configuring backups, etc.
* An API for all of the actions on the control panel
It also supports static website hosting since the box is serving HTTPS anyway. (To serve a website for your domains elsewhere, just add a custom DNS "A" record in you Mail-in-a-Box's control panel to point domains to another server.)
Post your question on the [discussion forum](https://discourse.mailinabox.email/) instead, where maintainers and Mail-in-a-Box users may be able to help you.
Note that while we want everything to "just work," we can't control the rest of the Internet. Other mail services might block or spam-filter email sent from your Mail-in-a-Box.
This is a challenge faced by everyone who runs their own mail server, with or without Mail-in-a-Box. See our discussion forum for tips about that.
This project was inspired in part by the ["NSA-proof your email in 2 hours"](http://sealedabstract.com/code/nsa-proof-your-e-mail-in-2-hours/) blog post by Drew Crawford, [Sovereign](https://github.com/sovereign/sovereign) by Alex Payne, and conversations with <ahref="https://twitter.com/shevski"target="_blank">@shevski</a>, <ahref="https://github.com/konklone"target="_blank">@konklone</a>, and <ahref="https://github.com/gregelin"target="_blank">@GregElin</a>.
* In 2007 I wrote a relatively popular Mozilla Thunderbird extension that added client-side SPF and DKIM checks to mail to warn users about possible phishing: [add-on page](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/thunderbird/addon/sender-verification-anti-phish/), [source](https://github.com/JoshData/thunderbird-spf).
* In August 2013 I began Mail-in-a-Box by combining my own mail server configuration with the setup in ["NSA-proof your email in 2 hours"](http://sealedabstract.com/code/nsa-proof-your-e-mail-in-2-hours/) and making the setup steps reproducible with bash scripts.
* Mail-in-a-Box was a semifinalist in the 2014 [Knight News Challenge](https://www.newschallenge.org/challenge/2014/submissions/mail-in-a-box), but it was not selected as a winner.
* Mail-in-a-Box hit the front page of Hacker News in [April](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7634514) 2014, [September](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8276171) 2014, [May](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9624267) 2015, and [November](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13050500) 2016.
