MailCatcher VS Mail-in-a-Box

hey HN, I recently published an article going deep into email previewing (in Ruby on Rails, but I think it's relevant beyond Rails).

MailCatcher (https://github.com/sj26/mailcatcher) and MailHog (https://github.com/mailhog/MailHog) are super handy and easy to run locally. Both spin up an SMTP server which you can direct mail to, and give you a nice web interface to browse mail and preview it.

Happy to answer any question! thanks, harrison

A couple others

* Mail Catcher https://mailcatcher.me/

Useful. Seems very similar to MailCatcher, but not depending on Ruby is always a plus.

I just upgraded to Alpine Linux 3.16.1 This is an important upgrade as it fixes 2 major issues: - busybox CVE-2022-30065 - openssl CVE-2022-2097 Related information: Mailcatcher as a docker image using Alpine Linux 3.16.1: https://hub.docker.com/r/stpaquet/alpinemailcatcher Github repo: https://github.com/spaquet/docker-alpine-mailcatcher Mailcatcher: https://mailcatcher.me

Mailcatcher: https://mailcatcher.me

Mailhog sounds a lot like mailcatcher

I would install https://mailcatcher.me and see if that local smtp works.

Useful links: Mailcatcher homepage: mailcatcher.me Dockerfile and Docker Compose: https://github.com/spaquet/docker-alpine-mailcatcher Dockerhub: https://hub.docker.com/r/stpaquet/alpinemailcatcher

I can run MailCatcher or MailHog or Postfix or Sendmail or any number of other solutions, but there's not any other linux sysadmins here so something with an easy gui setup would be convenient so others can poke around if needed.

may i recommend https://mailinabox.email ?

I don't see why we are a long way away. At the sandstorm end, we need to get to the point, where all updates (of both sandstorm and the apps) on the user machine are automatic. Much like they are automatic on various OSes (mobile OSes in particular but also MacOS/Windows). This is not impossible if a single OS like Debian-testing is targeted.

Mailinabox [1] almost does it. They target Ubuntu stable, and upgrades are mostly silent. But they needed user intervention when Ubuntu had to be upgraded from 18.10 to 22.04, which was quite challenging.

If sandstorm can get there, then putting it into a RPi box is simple. What's difficult is helping the general public understand the importance of protecting their data, so such a product has a reasonable market.

[1] https://mailinabox.email/

If you have a better solution, for example a good provider who offer agency packages which allows many domains and there is no catch, for example very small disk space, then hit me right away. Otherwise, please share your experience with hosting your own mail service. I found https://mailinabox.email/ and https://www.iredmail.org/ for example, but never had any experience with neither of them.

mailinabox.email works great on a basic vps.