Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Mail-in-a-box VS OPNsense

Compare Mail-in-a-box VS OPNsense and see what are their differences

Mail-in-a-box logo Mail-in-a-box

Mail-in-a-Box provides webmail and an IMAP/SMTP server for use with mobile devices and desktop mail software and also includes contacts and calendar synchronization.

OPNsense logo OPNsense

OPNsense® you next open source firewall. Free Download. High-end Security Made Easy™. Offers Intrusion Prevention, Captive Portal, Traffic Shaping and more.
  • Mail-in-a-box Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-04-21
  • OPNsense Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-12-26

Mail-in-a-box videos

Setup and Install your Email server easily with this Free, Open Source Option - Mail-In-A-Box.

More videos:

  • Review - Mail-in-a-Box Setup Guide (v0.16 - January 2016)
  • Review - Setting up your own mail server with Mail-In-A-Box

OPNsense videos

Introduction to OPNSense firewall the PFsense fork. Overview

More videos:

  • Review - pfSense vs OPNsense
  • Review - ✅ OPNsense Install - not what i was expecting!

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Mail-in-a-box and OPNsense)
Email
100 100%
0% 0
Operating Systems
0 0%
100% 100
Self-hosted Email
100 100%
0% 0
Perimeter Security And Firewalls

User comments

Share your experience with using Mail-in-a-box and OPNsense. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
Log in or Post with

Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Mail-in-a-box and OPNsense

Mail-in-a-box Reviews

15 Best Email Hosting for Small Business (2019)
Mail-in-a-Box is an open source software bundle that make it easy to turn a cloud server into your own email server for multiple domains.

OPNsense Reviews

Best pfSense Software Alternatives and Competitors
OPNsense is the best open-source and free firewall alternative to pfSense Software. OPNsense is a user-friendly, open-source, FreeBSD firewall and router. Most of the same capabilities are available in this fork of pfSense Software. It distinguishes itself from other firewalls by combining highly sophisticated features with an open-source system. First, the OPNsense firewall...
The Best Open Source Router OS Software for Large or Small Networks
OPNsense is an open-source router OS software that is based on FreeBSD. It is designed to be used as a firewall, router, and VPN gateway, and it includes a range of advanced networking features. OPNsense is a fork of the pfSense project, and it is actively maintained by the OPNsense community.
Best free Linux router and firewall distributions of 2023
OPNsense makes the top of the list in 2023 because, for the last four years of maintaining this list, it has proved to be one of the most quickly developing operating systems on the market. It's an easy to use, mature system with a slick UI. OPNSense includes most, if not all, features found in expensive enterprise commercial firewalls. It has the quality of a commercial...
Source: teklager.se
11 Best pfsense Alternatives To Secure Your Network
By screening out unnecessary network traffic and malicious apps, firewall software protects networks and computers from attacks. For safeguarding your secure network from malware attacks and unauthorized access, OPNsenseis arguably top on our list of pfSense alternatives.
Top 7 pfSense Alternatives
OPNSense is a rising star in the router software arena. It is powered by HardenedBSD, which is a security-oriented fork of FreeBSD. Its current development pace is rapid, and it’s packed with features. It also has one of the best user interfaces of all of these options. Like a lot of these options, its primary weakness is its Wi-Fi support. A lot of OPNSense users started...

Social recommendations and mentions

Mail-in-a-box might be a bit more popular than OPNsense. We know about 116 links to it since March 2021 and only 94 links to OPNsense. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Mail-in-a-box mentions (116)

  • Ask HN: Do you run your own DNS servers?
    Mail-In-a-Box (MIAB)[1] comes with a built in nameserver. I think you may use it as a standalone DNS even for the domain names whose email is not managed by MIAB. Not sure about any benefit of doing it this way though. [1] https://mailinabox.email. - Source: Hacker News / about 2 months ago
  • Ask HN: Self Hosting an Email Server?
    I've been using https://mailinabox.email on a small VPS where I host a few other websites and projects. I'd recommend it for the management aspect: It has backup scripts and a UI for let's encrypt and dns entries. - Source: Hacker News / 5 months ago
  • Sandstorm, Tempest, and the Future
    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... - Source: Hacker News / 9 months ago
  • [advice needed] - Selfhosted Mail Server
    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. Source: 12 months ago
  • what to use for self hosting email
    Mailinabox.email works great on a basic vps. Source: about 1 year ago
View more

OPNsense mentions (94)

  • How to bypass public IP and NAT
    Firmware's like Asuswrt-Merlin or OpenWRT can support dynamic-dns, or you can do like I do and run something like OPNsense in an x86 VM with a NIC passed through, or buy an inexpensive firewall appliance (up to 500mbps/1gbps/10gbps). Source: 7 months ago
  • Stop ISP from getting into my Router
    The easiest solution is to buy your own router, set it up, disable the router functionality on the Fritzbox 7590 and plug your router into it. It'll be cheaper and easier than a Cisco Firewall, but if you want to go the dedicated firewall route then I would recommenced OPNsense. Source: 7 months ago
  • OpenBSD Innovations
    BSDs may not have a significant presence on desktops, but they're well known in the networking world for their reliability. They also were the foundation used to build OSes for specific applications. OpnSense and XigmaNAS, for example, are two excellent FreeBSD based applications aimed at firewalling/security and NAS/services. https://opnsense.org/ https://xigmanas.com/xnaswp/. - Source: Hacker News / 12 months ago
  • Switches That You Actually Own
    For switches? OpenWrt supports a few models toward the lower end, and SONiC support a bunch at the higher-end datacenter ToR market, but none of these options are SME production-ready like Linux servers or OPNsense firewalls. Source: about 1 year ago
  • Having to pay postage to ship back a DoA product sucks from a customer perspective
    That’s a stupid policy, and it looks like one of my UDMs is defective. I’m an idiot for not just buying good quality open boxes and putting https://opnsense.org/ on them. 🤦🏻‍♂️. Source: about 1 year ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Mail-in-a-box and OPNsense, you can also consider the following products

mailcow - An open source mailserver suite.

pfSense - pfSense is a free and open source firewall and router that also features unified threat management, load balancing, multi WAN, and more

iRedMail - A fully fledged, free email server solution, an open source project (GPL v2).

MikroTik RouterOS - The main product of MikroTik is a Linux-based operating system known as MikroTik RouterOS.

Modoboa - Modoboa is a mail hosting and management platform including a modern and simplified Web User Interface.

OpenWrt - OpenWrt is an open-source firmware based on Linux for wireless routers