Best Free Email Backup Utility

 
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Introduction
For many people, email backup is nearly as or more important than backing up documents, yet it's often not as easy. And if you have more than one account, email backup can quickly get out of hand, particularly if you need to find or restore some particular message(s).
Discussion

Mailstore screenshot.MailStore Home enables you to backup all your email messages from multiple applications and online accounts into one secure and persistent archive. Lightning-fast search, one-click backup, powerful export - all information from your email is at your fingertips anytime. Never lose important email again!

  • Microsoft Outlook 2000, XP, 2003 and 2007
  • Microsoft Outlook Express and Windows Mail
  • Microsoft Exchange Server Mailboxes
  • Mozilla Thunderbird and SeaMonkey
  • POP3 and IMAP (including webmail services such as Gmail and Yahoo)
  • .eml and other files

Backup with MailStore Home comes as close to being a snap as you're going to get. Reading emails in the backup archive is as easy or easier as reading them in a regular email client. And with the quick search utility, you have the best chance you'd ever have to find that one message you're looking for out of all the possible locations it could have been in.

KLS Mail Backup backs up email for many of the popular email clients. It also backs up profiles for popular internet programs. KLS Mail Backup is free for personal use. It's a clean, straightforward backup tool. KLS Mail Backup uses standard ZIP files to archive email, so you have direct access to the backups. Each step of the backup and restore processes employs wizard-like dialog boxes that keep the process straightforward and intuitive.

KLS Mail Backup does not backup POP or IMAP accounts. That means you cannot use it to backup webmail accounts like Gmail or Hotmail directly.

Related Products and Links

StaticBackup, Inc has free individual backup programs for Windows Mail, Windows Live Mail, Outlook, Outlook Express, IncrediMail, Thunderbird, Becky, and Eudora. Scroll down their page a bit to find them.

I briefly tried the free program for Windows Live Mail. It was very fast and seemed to work fine. "Static Windows Live Mail Backup Free" backs up/restores all your WLM registry entries as well as your messages.

MailBrowserBackup is a simple standalone (no install) program that detects and offers to back up Internet Explorer (Favorities ONLY), Mozilla Firefox (profile), Flock, Windows Mail, Windows Contacts (Win 7), Windows Live Mail, Mozilla Thunderbird, Opera (browser & mail), Apple Safari, Google Chrome, SRWare Iron, FileZilla FTP Client and Windows Live Messenger Plus.

In Windows 7 I found that you must be running as an Administrator in your own account or Mail Browser Backup will not back up Windows Contacts for your own account. You can open the backup archives with 7-Zip (and maybe other programs) and see exactly what's in them. Of course you could also extract them with 7-Zip.

Microsoft has a free backup program for Outlook that creates backup copies of your .PST files at regular intervals, in Outlook 2002 and later versions.

MozBackup: for Thunderbird and other Mozilla products
Best Free Outlook Express Backup

Quick Selection Guide

MailStore Home    Rating 10 of 10  Gizmo's Top Pick

Pros   Backup all your email messages from multiple applications and accounts. One-click backup and powerful export. Browse all your archived email directly. Backup both POP3 and IMAP (including webmail services such as Gmail and Yahoo! Mail). MailStore Home is as easy-to-use as as it is powerful.
Cons   Requires Microsoft .Net, although that is included in Windows 7, and probably Vista.
Developer Home Page   http://www.mailstore.com/en/
Download link   http://www.mailstore.com/en/mailstore-home.aspx
File Size   8.3 MB   Version 4.0.0.3493  License Type Private Freeware (not free for commercial use)   Installation Requirements Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista/7

KLS Mail Backup    Rating 8 of 10

Pros   Backs up email for many of the popular email clients. It's a clean, straightforward backup tool. Uses standard ZIP files to archive email, so you have direct access to the backups.
Cons   The free version does not back up POP or IMAP accounts directly.
Developer Home Page   http://www.kls-soft.com/klsmailbackup/index.php
Download link   http://www.kls-soft.com/klsmailbackup/downloads.php?freeware=
File Size   2.41 MB   Version 1.7.0.0   License Type Private Freeware (not free for commercial use)   Installation Requirements Windows 2000, XP, Vista and 7
4
Average: 4 (1 vote)
Your rating: None

Try EZ eMail Backup. It's freeware.

Moderators comment: The link given to rentinax studios is rated as dangerous by WOT and has been removed. ALWAYS check the website ratings for sites with WOT, Link Extend or a similar program first, and never download software from an untrusted and/or unverified source. If what you want doesn't fall into these categories then you don't need it.

More options here:

http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/best-internet-safety-check.htm

Advise checking the rating at WOT before visiting the site.

Cheers

Thanks for posting this philip before I got round to seeing it!

There is a regular backup program I have seen but not used yet called Backup To Email. It doesn't backup up your e-mail but rather let's you use the space in your email account to backup whatever you want from your PC. Might be worth taking a look at.

TestForEcho78

I too know nothing about this software. What I do know is that they operate a support forum via Google Groups but it only lists 8 members and 3 posts, two dating back to April.
I would need to see some real user experience accounts and much more information before making this a consideration.

For mozilla applications ,not outlook ,Mozback-up is an alternative.It back ups browser setings also.
Reliability is the most important in an program like this,and personally i only restored once and it worked.Anyone who is dispossed to give the program a few tests would be great
http://mozbackup.jasnapaka.com/

If only MailStore had a restore option it would be perfect. It works well, very well. But when I snap back to a former image, to rid myself of Windows issues, I loose all my emails saved in Outlook. Microsoft pst backup program works so-so, but seems to always causes issues of double enteries or dropping some emails at restore time. It therefore would be perfect if MailStore had a restore option and was able to stick the emails back into Outlook which are not presently there. I guess that would be a sync option.

I have noticed that many programs here are not Freeware, but paid versions. I'm gonna stop using this site. Rename it to Gizmos Shareware or something.

Could you please provide some examples of non-freeware that we recommend?

Restore is not very easy to figure out. It is asking for an operative installation of Mailstore Server? I used the next one on the list, Genie-soft- very easy for outlook express. (experienced rookie)
Waynebob.

I believe the commercial version of MailStore relies on an external server to enable actual restoring, as apposed to just archiving your messages.

Cheers

The updated version is even better. It now includes a setup for Gmail, which all you need to do is just fill in your Gmail address, password and it just goes. Very fast too.

Realy great prog for archiving (allmost) everthing from mail this deserves a A++.

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