Joe Kissell can give a much better answer. I’m not saying this is archiving, but I did a simple test: (1) export some email from MailMaven, (2) Import > Files and Folders in DEVONthink. Clicking on the links (from, to) creates a new email in MailMaven.
Thanks so much for your reply. I’m referring to the archive eMail feature in DEVONthink which gives you sight of the Apple Mail mailbox(es) and lets you either import or archive any selected folder(s) in one step.
The lack of AppleScript support prevents me from being interested at present. Is there any clue as to when they propose to add it?
Great comments. I was using POP as well in order to be able to view mail on iphone or ipad etc and then know when I got back to my MotherShip desktop, I could see them and place in folders etc. Why? Because everything from receipts to registration numbers etc often come via mail. But now I’m on IMAP comcast and If I delete something on my iPhone, it is gone; unless I’m misunderstanding. Regards, Patrick
MailMaven looks interesting and capable. I never use v.1 of any app but it’s worth watching.
Although I use several mail providers my favorite Mac mail app is Mimestream, which so far has worked exclusively with Gmail, is bulletproof, and makes Gmail clear and usable in a way that Google’s and other mail products have not. (Obviously I have to use other apps for other mail services, but they’re not worth mentioning here.)
My understanding is that Mimestream is in beta with an iOS app and they have been working to expand functionality to handle other IMAP services like iCloud Mail, Yahoo! Mail, etc. So as interesting as MailMaven is I’ll wait to see what happens with MimeStream
Yes, I realized that’s what you wanted to know. I think we’ll have to wait and see if DEVONthink supports that. And it probably depends on AppleScript support in MailMaven, which I see someone else has asked about. My understanding is AppleScript support partially there and is coming. I think I read that in Joe’s book, which is free and answers a lot of questions that are being asked here.
My understanding, which I think I read in Joe’s book, is that AppleScript support is partially present and fuller support is coming. A lot of the questions being brought up are addressed in that Take Control book, which is free to download.
Having used MailMaven for a few days now, I cannot see me going back to Apple Mail. I have barely touched some of the more advanced settings, but just the ability to use the Search pane to find messages is SO much better. SpamSieve support was the main requirement for me, and that is already there.
It’s on the feature request list! (I was the one who requested it.) They tell me it won’t be hard to do, once they have better AppleScript support in the app. Meanwhile, yes, you can export and import, though that’s a bit cumbersome.
Joe, is this the app you hinted at a couple of times on Chuck Joiner’s show over the years?
Yes, exactly. In fact we’ve already recorded a multi-part MacVoices interview about MailMaven, coming soon!
For me it is subscription, call it Subscription 2.0 (as it differs to the common subscription where the app just stopped working after e.g. one year). After exactly one year I do not get any new features or other updates, not even security updates (as someone, well, I dont remember where it was, mentioned). Also: It does not matter if I am able to use the app after one year. Is is a subscription (as it is fixed to one year of updates; and an app NEEDS updates).
I am no against subscription, and I would also use the so-called "pro” features (I need more) of MailMaven. But for the me the price is just too high.
I’ve tried it and it looks promising, although being 1.0 is missing features that I use regularly. I stopped using AppleMail a long time ago (tried it with Mail Act-on and MailTags, too, from the same company). This was after Eudora gave up the ghost. I then moved to Postbox, which was fine, but they closed last year and shifted their code to eM Client. I’ve been using that since, and it’s got a lot of what I need, but definitely not a “Mac” app.
I will wait to see how MailMaven develops. For example, I would like templates that include set “To:” addresses, and from different account, for example. I’m happy about its integration with Things (which eM Client won’t do because they included a task manager inside the product). I’m glad they are just focused on e-mail.
I don’t think the price is too high at all: about 20¢ a day for something I use all the time. And if the product is good, with good support (thank you, Joe Kissell), then I’m happy to pay. Just not yet.
Is anyone aware of a side-by-side comparison of Apple Mail, MailMaven, and Mimestream?
I am using Apple Mail and I hate it. My biggest problem is the basically non-existent Spam filter (SpamSieve is good but difficult to fully integrate). And then the handling of a large amount of emails - in my case roughly 100.000 via IMAP.
So I am curious to know how MailMaven works with a rather large amount of emails via a few IMAP accounts.
I don’t know about “a few IMAP accounts” (I have only one) but it certainly works fine with 1,200,000 messages.
With so many messages, it’s reasonable to me that start-up is a bit slow (10 seconds on an M4 Pro MacBook Pro with 48 GB RAM running macOS 26.0.1), as is searching (29 seconds to find 193 hits of a two-word phrase occurring “anywhere”) — but otherwise it’s a delight.
It is hard to turn me into testing a new Mail app – that feels a little like giving away weeks of your life just to test something. I am not excited by any new functions at all (that I can think of) apart from a reliable signature editor where you could make signatures that actually works across all mail systems (I guess I know more than maybe anyone by this time about it, so I am fine doing my own HTML writing, but having a company behind it might have helped – but I doubt any company will succeed – no professional solutions work as it is).
That said I want to sort (nearly) all of my e-mail manually and do not want any help with it at all. I want all sent mail to land in the Inbox always manually as should have been the default in all clients obviously.
Now if there was a Mail client that just did not delete mail messages at random, like Apple Mail … but Mail is not deleting so many messages and I know more or less when it will do so (Apple of course do not have a clue, but …). So, no input here on MailMaven.
Hmmm, if you write HTML-Mails it is definitely not working across all mail systems. I only display plaintext, so any HTML would be lost.
I know, but try tell users in some companies that they cannot have a signature that matches the design of their website with their choice of obscure fonts, many images, links, columns. There are a few services out there to help with this, but they also cannot do it very well.
I have no idea how capable MailMaven is, but I’m staggered people feel they need to keep millions of emails, taking up many gigabytes of space. After using email for business for probably 30 years, the total number of emails on my machine is about 7,000 and I’m sure most of those could be safely deleted.
It’s the electronic equivalent of keeping every single receipt, every letter, bill, statement, or notice I’ve ever handled, from the past 30 years. No issue with those who do, it just seems a big waste of space to me. I much prefer to sort and filter my emails, before saving them.
Fair enough, but it’s really just a different way of looking at things, I suppose. I assume you’re referring at least partly to me, since I posted that I have a mail store of 1,200,000 messages.
My feeling is that it’s far easier to have something saved automatically on the off-chance that it’s needed again then it is to spend even one second dealing manually with each and every message that comes in. By my reckoning, I’ve saved two months’ worth of eight-hour business days by not spending one second processing each of those messages over the years. That is tedium I can well do without — especially considering that “one second” is likely an extremely conservative estimate for processing time: tbh, it would probably be something more like two or three seconds!
For the record, my messages also go back decades (though I’ve lost the first few years worth, I’m afraid): my oldest extant message is from 1989, and there are quite a few messages from the 1990s that I wish I still had, but that I manually deleted as “unnecessary” in 2001.
Are there drawbacks? Certainly: but I can do something else constructive for 30 seconds while MailMaven launches, or I can use Fastmail’s web interface which is nearly instantaneous. I do wish that MailMaven’s searches were faster; hopefully they will be improved to match MailMate’s (a two-word clear-text search on the same message store takes about 2½ seconds) or that of the Fastmail server.