mailrivaMAILRIVA

mailriva vs MailStore Home: Backup, Archive, and Migration

MailStore Home is a well-known tool for archiving and backing up emails. But what if you also want to migrate your emails to a different provider? mailriva combines backup, archiving, and migration in a single tool — and it runs on macOS too.

Feature comparison: mailriva vs MailStore Home

MailStore Home

  • Archive emails locally
  • Back up emails locally
  • Migrate emails between providers
  • IMAP-to-IMAP transfer
  • Preserve folder structure
  • Full-text search in archive
  • Runs on Windows
  • Runs on macOS
  • Pre-configured providers (GMX, Gmail, etc.)

    MailStore: manual configuration

  • Free for personal use
  • No registration required

    MailStore requires a license key

  • Source mailbox stays unchanged

MAILRIVA

Recommended
  • Archive emails locally
  • Back up emails locally
  • Migrate emails between providers
  • IMAP-to-IMAP transfer
  • Preserve folder structure
  • Full-text search in archive
  • Runs on Windows
  • Runs on macOS
  • Pre-configured providers (GMX, Gmail, etc.)
  • Free for personal use
  • No registration required
  • Source mailbox stays unchanged

What is MailStore Home?

MailStore Home is a free Windows application for archiving and backing up emails. It connects to your email account via IMAP, POP3, or directly through Outlook, and stores your messages in a local archive. The archive includes a full-text search feature that lets you quickly find old messages.

What MailStore Home cannot do: transfer emails from one provider to another. It is purely a backup and archiving tool. If you want to move from GMX to Gmail, you need a separate tool — or you can use mailriva, which combines both capabilities in one application.

Why mailriva offers more

mailriva was designed from the ground up as an all-in-one solution for personal email management. You can back up your emails, archive them locally, and migrate them to a new provider — all in a single workflow. Instead of using two separate tools (one for backup, one for migration), mailriva handles everything.

  • Backup, archive, and migration in one tool
  • Runs on Windows and macOS — not just Windows
  • No license keys or registration needed
  • Pre-configured IMAP servers for all major providers
  • Direct provider-to-provider migration (e.g., GMX to Gmail)
  • Source mailbox always stays unchanged

When MailStore Home is the better choice

If you exclusively need a local email archive with a powerful full-text search and have no plans to migrate, MailStore Home is a solid choice. Its search functionality is more mature than most alternatives, and its archive format is well-established. However, MailStore Home is limited to Windows — Mac users cannot use it.

If you want to archive and migrate — or if you use a Mac — mailriva is the more flexible solution.