Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by mastazi 1974 days ago
Regarding the VPS: It requires 512 MB RAM minimum, but 1 GB is recommended, that would be e.g. the $10/month Digitalocean VPS. MIAB will do automated backups of everything that's on the machine, this means that it will use more than double the space on disk (compared to just the space that it would be required to store your email + attachments), that's if you choose to store the backups on local disk (but why would you?). The alternatives are either not doing backups (bad!) or storing backups on a different machine using rsync, or on an S3 bucket. Personally I use DigitalOcean Spaces which is S3 compatible, and I store backups from the last 3 days. The Spaces bucket was an additional $5 in my Digitalocean bill. So you should consider the backup storage cost as well.

Regarding webmail: MIAB includes Roundcube by default, which is OK on desktop but basically unusable on mobile, so on mobile I just use the built in client that came with my iPhone.

Of course you can use whatever webmail client you prefer, you just install it on a different VPS though (because MIAB will pretty much take over the whole VPS for itself; the only thing you can have alongside it on the same VPS, is a purely static website).

MIAB also includes Nextcloud [ * ] where you can add an alternative webmail client [1]. In order to install that client you need to unlock the nextcloud admin by executing a script that is included in MIAB [2].

[*](in MIAB, Nextcloud is intended to manage calendar+contacts but you can also use it to store files or as an additional webmail client, even though those two use cases are not officially supported by the MIAB devs; this means that, if you have an issue related to storage or webmail, you should seek help from the Nextcloud community, not from the MIAB forums).

[1] https://apps.nextcloud.com/apps/mail

[2] https://github.com/mail-in-a-box/mailinabox/blob/master/tool...

1 comments

oh. i don't need contacts or calendar. just plain vanilla email with a webmail. i think any client on fdroid should work for mobile. backups are interesting and important really. vultr "seems" cheaper. will have to investigate