Questions, answered plainly

Soon. We're finishing the Mac version, which is coming to the Mac App Store first (macOS 14 or later). A Windows version built on the same engine is coming to the Microsoft Store after that. There's no download yet and no date to announce; leave your email in “Notify me at launch” and we'll write once, on launch day.

Your email: every message in the folders you choose, with its flags and, in Gmail, its labels. Gmail is backed up from All Mail plus labels, so nothing is saved twice; Trash is included by default and Spam is optional. Calendars and contacts are not backed up.

Wherever you choose. On Free, in a folder on an internal or external disk of your Mac. On Pro, also on a NAS or S3-compatible storage such as Wasabi, Backblaze B2, Cloudflare R2 or Hetzner. Google Drive, OneDrive and Dropbox are coming soon; SFTP and FTP are under study. Arca also keeps a working copy in its own folder on your Mac.

Yes. Mail is saved as standard mbox files, one per folder and month, next to a manifest.json and a copy of the SQLite index. Thunderbird, Apple Mail or our reader MBox Viewer Pro (mboxviewerpro.com) can open them, and each destination includes a README that explains how.

If you want it to be. Encryption is already built into Arca's engine and is coming soon to the app, as a Pro option you turn on when you add a destination. Files are encrypted with age, an open standard, before they leave your Mac. Either your Mac's key or your recovery key opens them, with Arca or with the age tool. Arca doesn't encrypt the working copy on your Mac; use FileVault to protect that disk.

Yes. Gmail and Google Workspace connect over IMAP with an app password (the account needs 2-Step Verification and, on Workspace, an admin who allows it). Outlook.com, Hotmail and Microsoft 365 connect over IMAP when you sign in with Microsoft. Any other IMAP account works with its server, username and password. A Microsoft Graph connection, for organisations that block IMAP, is coming soon to Pro; the Gmail API, with your own Google Cloud project, is under study.

Yes, and it's included in the free plan. Arca imports mbox files from Google Takeout, Apple Mail and Thunderbird as an offline account that you can search and restore into a connected account. Imported accounts don't count towards your plan's limit.

Your backups stay yours. If a subscription lapses, you move down a level or a purchase is refunded, backups already made are never locked or deleted: you can still search and restore them. Only accounts over your new limit pause, and you choose which ones keep going. And because they are mbox files on your own storage, you can always open them without Arca.

Restoring into the same account is free: messages go to a new folder and nothing already on the server changes. By default only what was deleted from the server comes back, so you don't get duplicates. You can also restore an imported .mbox (a Google Takeout, for example) into one of your accounts, also for free. Migrating directly from one connected account to another (say, from your hosting to Gmail) is coming soon to Pro.

No. Arca has no server: it talks straight to your mail provider from your Mac and writes to the storage you choose. Passwords and sign-ins stay in the macOS Keychain, and logs never contain the content, subjects or addresses of your messages.

The store where you buy Arca: the Mac App Store, and the Microsoft Store once the Windows version is out. They handle billing, tax, subscriptions and refunds. Arca never processes payments itself. The prices on our pricing page are the ones we plan for launch.

Not yet, but it's coming. Arca Mail Backup launches first for macOS 14 or later. A Windows version built on the same engine is coming to the Microsoft Store after the Mac release, and it will use the same open backup format.