MailFundusArchive email without the cloud
October 2026 · about 4 minutes to read
In short: An email archive does not have to live in the cloud. On your own Mac or your own drive you stay in full control of who can read your mail. Three things matter: the archive has to be complete, stay searchable, and be backed up by you.
Why without the cloud?
- Privacy. Email holds contracts, invoices, health information and personal matters, often about other people too. If it stays with you, no additional provider processes it.
- No account, no lock-in. A local archive keeps working when a service changes its prices or shuts down.
- Available offline. Searching and reading work on a train or when the connection is down.
What a local archive has to do
- Complete and unchanged. Every message with its headers and attachments, exactly as it arrived. A printout or a screenshot is not enough.
- Verified. Only once it is certain that everything arrived should the mailbox be cleaned up.
- Searchable. An invoice from six years ago has to turn up in seconds, ideally also by what is inside the PDF attachment.
- Backed up. Local means you are responsible for the backup. Time Machine or a second drive belong to it.
What about retention requirements?
Businesses in many countries have to keep certain email, such as invoices, contracts and business correspondence, for several years, and often in its original electronic form. A local archive can meet that, as long as it is complete, protected against later changes and documented. Which rules apply to you depends on your country and your business, so ask your accountant or tax advisor if in doubt.
How MailFundus Archive does it
MailFundus Archive backs up your Apple Mail mailboxes into an archive on your Mac or on a drive of your choice and verifies every message byte for byte. There is no account, no sign-in, no statistics, and no server of ours that the app talks to. No messages, search terms or usage data are sent to us or to anyone else.
For businesses there is MailFundus Pro, a subscription: scheduled backups, a seal chain that detects any later change, retention periods per account or mailbox, auditor access, and procedural documentation generated from your settings. If you like, Pro also reads IMAP accounts you add yourself, read-only and directly between your Mac and your mail server.
Free for up to 500 messages, full version US$24.99 once, no subscription. MailFundus Pro: US$129 a year or US$12.99 a month, free for the first 14 days. Prices vary by country.
Free for up to 500 messages: get it on the Mac App StoreNot legal or tax advice. Which email you have to keep, and for how long, depends on your country and your business.