Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Mail-in-a-box VS Fantastical 2

Compare Mail-in-a-box VS Fantastical 2 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.

Fantastical 2 logo Fantastical 2

Fantastical, the Mac calendar app you'll enjoy using. Quickly create new events with natural language input and more.
  • Mail-in-a-box Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-04-21
  • Fantastical 2 Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-20

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

Fantastical 2 videos

Friday 5: Fantastical 2 - my favorite Mac calendar app!

More videos:

  • Review - Fantastical 2 Review

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Mail-in-a-box and Fantastical 2)
Email
100 100%
0% 0
Calendar
0 0%
100% 100
Self-hosted Email
100 100%
0% 0
Appointments and Scheduling

User comments

Share your experience with using Mail-in-a-box and Fantastical 2. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Mail-in-a-box and Fantastical 2

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.

Fantastical 2 Reviews

The 13 best calendar apps for Android and iOS help you organize a chaotic day
Many of the app’s features are standard fare and just what you’d expect a calendar app to offer, but Fantastical 2 strives to make every process more convenient in order to save time. For example, you can start a sentence with “reminder,” “to do,” or “task” to create reminders, or use phrases like “remind me tomorrow at 3PM,” or “alarm 3PM” to set new alerts. You can also...
Beyond Google Calendar and Apple Calendar: The 18 Best Apps to Manage Your Schedule
While it's nice to have the mobile app, Fantastical 2 is at its best on desktop. The app is colorful without being gaudy or overwhelming, and it's easy to use without sacrificing control over your event details. On a Mac, the menu bar app lets you quickly add an event or see what's on your agenda in the coming days. Adding details to your events—such as notes, URLs,...
Source: zapier.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Mail-in-a-box should be more popular than Fantastical 2. It has been mentiond 116 times since March 2021. 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 / 27 days 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 / 8 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: 11 months ago
  • what to use for self hosting email
    Mailinabox.email works great on a basic vps. Source: 12 months ago
View more

Fantastical 2 mentions (27)

  • Ask HN: What macOS apps/programs do you use daily and recommend?
    - Raycast (https://www.raycast.com/) there's also a free version, I just prefer to support the author with a Pro purchase. - Homebrew (https://brew.sh/) - Visual Studio Code - SyncThing (https://syncthing.net/) - Fantastical (https://flexibits.com/fantastical) - MonitorControl (https://github.com/MonitorControl/MonitorControl#readme). - Source: Hacker News / 8 days ago
  • Calendar advice for home + work?
    I use an app called Fantastical (https://flexibits.com/fantastical). I believe it is macOS/iOS only, but there might be alternatives with work with other systems. Basically, I add in my work Office365 account and my personal iCloud and it shows everything together. Whenever I'm making an appointment, I just check that rather than my Outlook calendar. Source: about 1 year ago
  • Sick of Fastmails subpar iOS app
    Looks like most of your issues are with the calendar. For this I highly recommend an app dedicated to this, like Fantastical, BusyCal, Calendar366 or even a native ios calendar app. These apps have clients for ios, macos and even watchos. Lots of config options and nice features and timely notifications. Source: about 1 year ago
  • Productivity apps - recommendations needed
    I personally have been trying out Fantastical and it literally is life changing doing everything in a calendar. You can make a recurring event or something and have it notify you whenever you want. The time limit can be achieved by just creating the duration. Although I'm unsure about the "mark as done" functionality. Source: over 1 year ago
  • Todo app that syncs with calendar?
    Fantastical https://flexibits.com/fantastical. Source: over 1 year ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Mail-in-a-box and Fantastical 2, you can also consider the following products

mailcow - An open source mailserver suite.

Google Calendar - Spend less time managing your day & more time enjoying it

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

Microsoft Outlook - Organize your world. Outlook’s email and calendar tools help you communicate, stay on top of what matters, and get things done.

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

Morgen.so - All-in-one Calendar, Tasks & Scheduler. Morgen is the single hub for everything that revolves around time management.