📧 Mail-Archiver - IMAP Email Archiving System

A comprehensive solution for archiving, searching, and exporting emails from IMAP accounts

✨ Key Features

📌 General

• Automated archiving of incoming and outgoing emails
• Support for multiple IMAP accounts
• Storage of email content and attachments
• Scheduled synchronization at configurable intervals
• Mobile and desktop optimized responsive UI
• MBox Import

🔍 Advanced Search

• Search across all archived emails
• Filter by date range, sender, recipient, and more
• Preview emails with attachment list

📊 Dashboard & Statistics

• Account-specific statistics and overview
• Storage usage monitoring
• Top senders analysis

📤 Export Functions

• Export individual emails in EML format
• Bulk export search results to CSV or JSON
• Attachment download with original filenames

📤 Restore Function

• Restore a selection of emails or an entire mailbox to a destination mailbox

🖼️ Screenshots

🚀 Quick Start

Prerequisites

• Docker
• Docker Compose
• IMAP email account credentials

🛠️ Installation

1. Install the prerequisites on your system

2. Create a docker-compose.yml file

services:
  mailarchive-app:
    image: s1t5/mailarchiver:latest
    restart: always
    environment:
      # Database Connection
      - ConnectionStrings__DefaultConnection=Host=postgres;Database=MailArchiver;Username=mailuser;Password=masterkey;

      # Authentication Settings
      - Authentication__Enabled=true
      - Authentication__Username=admin
      - Authentication__Password=secure123!
      - Authentication__SessionTimeoutMinutes=60
      - Authentication__CookieName=MailArchiverAuth

      # MailSync Settings
      - MailSync__IntervalMinutes=15
      - MailSync__TimeoutMinutes=60
      - MailSync__ConnectionTimeoutSeconds=180
      - MailSync__CommandTimeoutSeconds=300

      # BatchRestore Settings
      - BatchRestore__AsyncThreshold=50
      - BatchRestore__MaxSyncEmails=150
      - BatchRestore__MaxAsyncEmails=50000
      - BatchRestore__SessionTimeoutMinutes=30
      - BatchRestore__DefaultBatchSize=50

      # Npgsql Settings
      - Npgsql__CommandTimeout=600

    ports:
      - "5000:5000"

    depends_on:
      postgres:
        condition: service_healthy


  postgres:
    image: postgres:17-alpine
    restart: always
    environment:
      POSTGRES_DB: MailArchiver
      POSTGRES_USER: mailuser
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: masterkey
    volumes:
      - ./postgres-data:/var/lib/postgresql/data
    ports:
      - "5432"
    healthcheck:
      test: ["CMD-SHELL", "pg_isready -U mailuser -d MailArchiver"]
      interval: 10s
      timeout: 5s
      retries: 5
      start_period: 10s

3. Edit the database configuration in the docker-compose.yml and set a secure password in the POSTGRES_PASSWORD variable and the ConnectionString.

4. If you want to use authentication (which i'd strongly recommend) definie a Authentication__Username and Authentication__Password.

5. Configure a reverse proxy of your choice with https and authentification to secure access to the application.

⚠️Attention⚠️ The application itself does not provide encrypted access via https! It must be set up via a reverse proxy! Moreover the application is not build for public internet access!

4. Initial start of the containers:

docker compose up -d

5. Restart containers:

docker compose restart

6. Access the application

7. Login with your defined credentials and add your first email account:

• Navigate to "Email Accounts" section
• Click "New Account"
• Enter your IMAP server details and credentials
• Save and start archiving!

🐳 Docker Deployment

Service	Port	Description
mailarchive-app	5000	ASP.NET Core Application
postgres	5432	PostgreSQL Database

🔐 Security Note

• 🔒 Use strong passwords and change default credentials
• 🔐 Consider implementing HTTPS with a reverse proxy in production
• 💾 Regular backups of the PostgreSQL database recommended

📝 How To - Mailbox migration

It is now also possible to migrate a mailbox to another target mailbox, for example when changing mail provider. The following steps are planned for this

1. add the source account under the accounts
2. synchronisation of the source account
3. adding the target account
4. synchronisation of the possibly still empty target account
5. select ‘Copy All Emails to Another Mailbox’ in the details under the accounts for the source account
6. select the target account and the target folder in this account and start the migration. If there is a large amount of emails to be moved, this is carried out as a background task. The status and progress of this can be viewed in the Jobs tab.
7. after the successful transfer, set the source account to ‘Disabled’ under the accounts so that it is no longer archived in future.

📋 Technical Details

Architecture

• ASP.NET Core 8 MVC application
• PostgreSQL database for email storage
• MailKit library for IMAP communication
• Background service for email synchronization
• Bootstrap 5 and Chart.js for frontend

🤝 Contributing

Contributions welcome! Please open an Issue or Pull Request.

🚀 Roadmap / Ideas

The roadmap is now maintained on the repos project page.

📄 License: GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE Version 3 (see LICENSE file)