A permanent archive on your own hardware that pulls every message from any account — or an entire hosting server — into storage you control. Deleted at the source? Your copy survives. Forever.
Your professional history lives inside an account controlled by someone else. Close a Google or Microsoft account? Get locked out? Provider shuts down? Years of correspondence vanish.
Exports are one-off, incomplete, and rarely repeated. Provider lock-in means leaving costs you your history. Solo professionals — lawyers, accountants, consultants — increasingly need retention for compliance but have no affordable, self-controlled tool.
Deleting a message on the original account never deletes it from your archive. Your local copy survives account wipes, provider shutdowns, and accidental clicks. You own the copy.
Every message is stored as a plain file on your own disk, not locked inside a proprietary database. That makes backups, moving to new hardware, and long-term storage straightforward — the format will outlive any provider.
We handle the setup — you get one simple dashboard to add accounts, watch sync status, and choose between archiving (nothing deleted) or mirroring. No scripts or manual maintenance on your end.
The Mail Archive Stack is one piece of a larger idea: stop renting your digital life. Own the three things that most people rent, and nothing can disappear.
A domain you control at a registrar that cannot suspend it. Cloudflare, Porkbun, Gandi.
Static files on infrastructure that cannot delete them. Self-hosted or provider-independent.
A permanent local archive that survives any provider action. This is the piece most people are missing.
ACTIVEOwn your domain. Own your website. Own your email. Then it does not matter what happens to any provider — nothing disappears.
Add any email account — Gmail, Fastmail, Outlook, your own server. Or archive an entire hosting server in one job, without needing every individual mailbox password.
New messages are pulled into your archive automatically, checked every few minutes. Deletions on the original account never remove anything from your archive.
Your archive opens in a simple read-only mailbox view — nothing can be sent from it, so there's no risk of it being misused. It stays there even if the original account is gone.
| Capability | Mail Archive | Gmail Takeout | MailStore | DIY Sync Scripts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Permanent by design | ✓ | — | ✓ | — |
| Web UI for browsing | ✓ | — | ✓ | — |
| Customer-owned archive storage | ✓ | — | — | — |
| Server-source archiving | ✓ | — | ✓ | — |
| One UI for all accounts | ✓ | — | ✓ | — |
| Runs on any OS (Docker) | ✓ | ✓ | — | ✓ |
| Automatic scheduled sync | ✓ | — | ✓ | — |
The difference is by design, not a setting you could toggle off — deletions never propagate, and the archive is built to be yours from day one.
You provide the PC, laptop, or server. MERC installs and configures the archive remotely, connects it to your existing mail environment, and hands it over ready for use.
One-time setup
Keep remote help available after setup for troubleshooting, software updates, configuration assistance, and one annual archive health check. Your hardware and archived data remain yours. On-site support is quoted case-by-case.
Per year
Tell us about the PC, laptop, or server you provide. MERC installs and configures the archive remotely, while your hardware and archived data remain yours. On-site support is quoted case-by-case.
Yes. The archive only runs on your own hardware and is not exposed to the open internet. Passwords are stored securely and are never shown back in the interface.
By default, deletions on the original account never remove anything from your archive. It stays as a permanent, unchanging copy — messages stay in your archive forever.
Yes, on any Windows machine that supports Docker. We handle the setup as part of remote installation.
Your mail lives as plain files on your own machine, so you can back them up with any standard backup tool. No proprietary format, no vendor lock-in.
Yes — we can connect to a shared hosting server (cPanel, Plesk, Virtualmin) and pull every mailbox on it in one job, without needing each individual mailbox password.