Arca Mail Backup
Mail backup on storage you own
Only for Mac
Free · In‑App Purchases
Mac
Back up your mail to storage you own, as standard mbox files. Search all of it with operators like from: and has:attachment, and with Pro, encrypt it with age.
Arca Mail Backup copies your email to storage you control and keeps it in an open format you can read without us.
It works with any IMAP account: your hosting or internet provider, Gmail and Google Workspace with an app password, and Outlook.com or Microsoft 365 with Microsoft sign-in. Arca backs up in the background, picks up where it left off if it's interrupted, and saves every message byte for byte in standard mbox files, one per folder and month, with a JSON manifest. Thunderbird, Apple Mail or any mbox reader can open them.
SAVE
• Scheduled backups in the background, and Back Up Now whenever you want.
• Mail deleted on the server stays in your backup, marked as deleted. Arca never removes anything from your backup because it was deleted on the server.
• Back up to a disk of your Mac, internal or external. With Arca Pro, also to a NAS, to S3-compatible storage (Wasabi, Backblaze B2, Cloudflare R2, Hetzner, AWS and others) or to a folder synced with your cloud drive, and to several destinations at once.
• With Arca Pro, encrypt the backups on a destination with age, an open standard. Arca shows you a recovery key once and checks that you saved it; with it you can open your backups even without Arca.
• If an account goes days without a successful backup, Arca tells you. Click the notification to go straight to the account.
• Import .mbox files from Google Takeout, Apple Mail or Thunderbird as an offline account you can search and restore.
SEARCH
• Search by subject, sender, recipient or text across all your accounts, with operators like from:, has:attachment, filename: or before:.
• Filter by attachment type (PDF, images, documents, spreadsheets…) or by person.
• Message previews never load remote content.
• Check a backup at any time against what Arca saved.
RESTORE
• Restore into the same account: messages come back into a new folder and nothing already on the server is changed.
• By default only what was deleted on the server comes back, so you get no duplicates.
• Restore an imported .mbox into your connected account.
PRIVATE BY DESIGN
• No server of ours in between: everything runs on your Mac.
• Passwords stay in the macOS Keychain.
• No sign-up, no analytics, no tracking. We never see your mail.
FREE AND PRO
Free: one account connected by IMAP (Microsoft sign-in included), backed up in full to a disk of your Mac, on a schedule of up to once a day. Back Up Now, search, checks, import and restore are always included, with no size limit.
Arca Pro adds more accounts, NAS and S3-compatible destinations, folders synced with the cloud, several destinations at once, age encryption and backups every few hours.
If Pro ends, nothing is locked or deleted: your backups stay searchable and restorable. Whatever goes beyond the free plan is paused, and it resumes when you have Pro again.
SUBSCRIPTIONS AND PURCHASES
• Arca Pro (yearly subscription) comes in levels of 1, 5, 10, 50 and 100 accounts. Each level includes a 2-week free trial for eligible customers. The app shows the price before you buy.
• Payment is charged to your Apple Account. The subscription renews every year until you cancel it in your App Store account settings. Moving to a higher level starts right away; to a lower one, at the next renewal.
• Arca Pro for Life is a one-time purchase: Pro for 1 account, with no renewal.
Terms of Use: https://arcamailbackup.com/terms/
Privacy Policy: https://arcamailbackup.com/privacy/
Requires macOS 14 or later.
Ratings & Reviews
- This app hasn’t received enough ratings or reviews to display an overview.
• Search with operators: from:, to:, subject:, has:attachment, has:pdf, filename:, before:, after:, "exact phrase", OR, and -word to leave something out. Search Tips, in the toolbar, lists them and adds them to the field for you.
• New Attachments and People filters above the results: find mail with a PDF, images, documents, spreadsheets, presentations or archives, or from and to someone. Right-click a message to search for more from its sender. In backups made with earlier versions, search by attachment type or name gets ready little by little as Arca backs up.
• With Arca Pro, encrypt the backups on a destination with age, an open standard: a disk of your Mac, an external disk, a NAS, a cloud-synced folder or S3-compatible storage. The first time, Arca shows you a recovery key just once and asks you to give it back before going on, so you know it's saved. Encrypted destinations show a lock.
• If Arca Pro ends, encrypted destinations are paused, like NAS and S3 destinations. Nothing is locked: what's already there stays readable with your recovery key, and restore works as always.
• Arca tells you when an account with scheduled backups goes 3 days without a successful one, and why, when it knows. The account page shows it too, with Back Up Now. Choose the number of days, or Never, in Settings › General.
• Clicking an Arca notification now opens the account it's about.
The developer, Color Vivo Internet, SL, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .
Data Not Collected
The developer does not collect any data from this app.
Accessibility
The developer has not yet indicated which accessibility features this app supports. Learn More
Information
- Seller
- Color Vivo Internet, SL
- Size
- 23.5 MB
- Category
- Utilities
- Compatibility
Requires macOS 14.0 or later.
- Mac
Requires macOS 14.0 or later.
- Mac
- Languages
- English and Spanish
- Age Rating
4+
- 4+
- In-App Purchases
Yes
- Arca Pro for Life $44.99
- Arca Pro, 5 accounts $29.99
- Arca Pro, 50 accounts $149.99
- Arca Pro, 1 account $8.99
- Arca Pro, 10 accounts $49.99
- Arca Pro, 100 accounts $199.99
- Copyright
- © 2026 Color Vivo Internet, S.L.