MailSteward

I have never made a review before. And for many reasons I have become very disappointed, even disgruntled with Apple and my MacBook Air and my iPad. But I wanted to share here the main reason I still use my MacBook Air - what I believe is the best mail archive program out there - for Mac or Windows - MailSteward. Up front - two reasons: (1) it is the only mail archive program I have used with which I never had a problem of it not finding an email. When other programs failed to find something I was sure was there, I always returned to MailSteward, and it found the emails. (2) John Seward has always provided outstanding tech support - always zoomed in on the problem, or lack thereof, and resolved my issue. What’s more, I usually get a response in hours, sometimes minutes. For me, he defines good tech support - knows the product inside-out, actually provides quality support, and does so in a timely manner. That said, I would like to share the best example of how I know what I speak of. In 2018 I made my first ever online course purchase. I then moved to Spain, then to Kuwait, then back to Spain. In 2020 I moved back to the USA. My editor convinced me to pursue my attempts to get my $3000 back through the Better Business Bureau. I spent weeks going through multiple computers and hard disks, to review recorded webinars, recorded phone conversations, and yse, emails. I made transcripts and spread sheets to submit my casse. What is important here, is that using other mail archive programs, I could not find some emails I was sure existed, and that would support my case. In comes MailSteward. I had to combine/merge some data, but I used MailSteward and indeed found all the needed emails. Additional details: I am a collector. I never delete an email. I never waste time trying to organize emails. I rely on searches to find what I need. I have archived decades of email, many hundreds of thousands of emails, tens of Gigabytes of data. MailSteward is not the fastest archive program. The two I used on Windows are much faster, yet at times, for unknown reasons, they cannot find something. It reminds me of the not completely reliable search on Amazon - I have put an exact product name I just saw minutes ago on Amazon into the Amazon search, and it will not come up. Yes, very unusual occurance - but when you need to find an important email, reliability trumps speed. A final note - despite my complete documentation of my BBB case, it was denied, appealed, denied, ignored. Due to some circumstances I choose not to share here, after three years, dealing with a company with a complete lack of integrity (in my humble opinion), I did indeed receive a full refund of my roughly $3000. And MailSteward was a big help in that.

I have used the free and paid up cheaper versions for several years and have found the retrieval from archives has been a life-saver. HOWEVER there have been various glitches, the last being related to upgrading to OS X Big Sur. Having paid $49.95 in August 2019, it looks as if another payment to upgrade is now needed. These are not trivial sums, and committing to using MailSteward does seem to mean periodic financial haemorrhages. Functionality when working is 5-stars but overall not 5

I have used MailSteward for a very long time. The app has been bulletproof until recently. Over the last year, I've unexplainably lost thousands of emails and now my files corrupt on a regular basis. I've contacted the company, but they offer little help other than to rebuild my databases which doesn't seem to work. He has also told me that I'm the only person with that problem which I find hard to believe since there is seldom one of anyting. The app is no longer reliable for me.

After upgrading Mac OS to Mojave MailSteward 13.1.5 does not show MailBoxes in Accounts panel.

This has been my default Mail backup client for as long as I have owned a MAC. The developer releases periodic updates, with new releases that require a small fee for upgrade. The program works very well (I would recommend MailSteward rather than the lite version) you can set schedules, set up databases etc. It has full search handling and will also store attachments etc. Like any database program it can slow while searching, especially if you database is big. Mine is currently around 8 GB and it takes a minute or two to search for emails. It has never crashed on me, and you can export files, print etc from within the program. I wouldn't be without this program. The initial purchases fee is high, but you are getting a stable program with minor upgrade fees between major version changes. Well worth the money I paid for it.

EXCELLENT

Utterly horrible experience. Having archived your emails with this company and paying them $50.00 to do it, a couple of years later with literally no perceivable update to the UI and using something that works at a snails pace on the fastest Mac available, they hijack your archives and charge you another ¢20.00 and to add insult to injury, the serial number they sell you to access your archives doesn't work and tells you it isn't on their database... you email them as you need to access the database you paid them to create and nobody answers... what a bunch of total ransomware scumbags

I hate this app. I would give it minus four stars because the developers seem to be extremely greedy and to use a very manipulative tactic to make money. This app might as well be a subscription service because essentially I am charged $20 every 3-4 months. I bought the pro version and have been using it for some time. I cannot say that it is easy to use. But what bugs me the most is that they have VERY frequent upgrades and charge $20 per upgrade! Essentially, I am being billed (knowingly but extremely begrudgingly) every three months or so. The latest upgrade which is at the time I am writing this review is for 2 bug fixes and costs yet another $20. Also, when you get the app, you get to store emails until 2020. In 2020, there will be yet another upgrade. So expect, to pay every 3-4 years for the annual upgrade, and every 3-4 months $20 for a couple of bug fixes with no major overhaul of their interface!

The developer has been extremely responsive to my questions, so that is definitely has not been an issue for me.

Excellent for archiving emails

I've been using Mail Steward since 2010 and found it to be robust and reliable. When I've run into issues, the developer has been responsive and helpful. I think Mail Steward Pro (the version I'm running) is well worth the investment and I'm subtracting half a star only because the interface could do with an overhaul.

Potentially a good application but buggy and with extremely poor support. I paid $50 for this, and have continual problems with it being unable to open my mail to archive it. I have contacted Mail Steward several times asking for help but they just ignore the emails.
Oh well, $50 just written off.
My advice is to avoid this application.

Love this app, have been using it for just over a year with no problems. But we had a burglary here and had the Mac stolen which was running our copy of MailSteward (they left the external hard drive that stored the backed up database - luckily). My problem is, I have lost my license key, so I cannot re-install on my new Mac. I have all my account details and proof of purchase. But I have no way to contact the people at MailSteward because their website has no customer support contact details. I have tried emailing their "BugReport" email, but after 1 month - still no reply. I would love to keep using this great app, but with no way of contacting them, I am going to be forced to look for an alternative.,, Shame. Let's hope someone from MailSteward reads these messages and gets in touch.

Since last update, version 11.3.2 everything is fine again: scheduling works. So rating is up! The app does the job but I really don't like the user interface: not the apple's way first and old fashioned and not powerful.

I used MailSteward for years, but have encountered severe data loss problem, with Version 11.3.2 (1359). The bodies of many email messages have vanished!. The developer John Seward examined the problem and has offered no real help. There is evidently no way to rebuild a corrupted database, which is ridiculous. I am now backing up my emails using the high quality webmail client FastMail, at $40 per year. I cannot count on MailSteward.

I used MailSteward for years, but have encountered severe data loss problem, with Version 11.3.2 (1359). The bodies of many email messages have vanished!. The developer John Seward examined the problem and has offered no real help. There is evidently no way to rebuild a corrupted database, which is ridiculous. I am now backing up my emails using the high quality webmail client FastMail, at $40 per year. I cannot count on MailSteward.

The best of all mail archivers is, no doubt, Mail Archiver X. Simple, robust, quick, reliable. Developer is excellent in responding to your questions or solving problems in a 24 hours time. Compering to MailSteward Mail Archiver X is much better and the price is $10 less. What to want more!

I am an old user of MS. Interface is not Apple's standards, there are minor problems as managing saving search and some workflow may be lighten but the app does the job and it helped me a lot. But since last version scheduling does not work anymore. Developer is aware of it as we exchange a lot but currently he "don't know what to tell me" ! So I have an app I can use anymore. This maybe seem unfair for this software but from my current usage it does not work anymore.

Four weeks prior to v11 I registered MailSteward v10. I had a very rare issue with 5 out of 50.000 emails, which I imported flawlessly in a first batch, that I reported. John Seward, the developer, instantly replied and kindly gave me a link to the to-be-released version 11, which solved my small issue.
Further on I send in some suggestions. Communication was always fast and helpful.
This is a great app, which I consider a must have for serious backups of your email. Having used quote some other options I must say, that finding things in my emails has never been so effective (from simple to very granular search options) as with MailSteward. MailSteward 11 of course has been working fine here all these weeks including the automatic schedules.
Considered the great support from the developer on top, I regret that I can only rate this applications 5 stars only.

Been a happy camper since version 5 or so…:) Does what it says on the tin.

Caution: The MacUpdate info is incorrect as of Oct 24, 2014. MailSteward 10.3 requires OSX 10.7, not 10.6.