Message Archive vs Decipher TextMessage
An honest comparison of Message Archive and Decipher TextMessage for saving and printing iPhone text messages on a Mac, including price, formats, and the difference between an export that cannot be edited in the app and one a third party can verify.
What Decipher TextMessage is good at
Decipher TextMessage is a focused, long lived tool that does one job well: it reads the message history out of an iPhone backup on your computer and saves or prints it, including recovering messages the phone no longer shows. It is straightforward, it is cheaper than we are, and it is a one time purchase rather than a subscription.
It runs on Windows as well as macOS, it exports in more nominal formats than we do, and its free trial never expires, so you can confirm it reads your backup before paying anything. For somebody who needs a readable copy of a conversation and nothing more, it is a sensible purchase and costs less than a year of ours.
The comparison below is about what happens after the file exists: whether the record keeps accumulating, and whether somebody who does not trust you can check that the file was not changed.
Side by side
| Message Archive | Decipher TextMessage | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $47 per year, per Mac. | $29.99, one time. No recurring fee, and updates are included. |
| What the licence counts | Macs. One licence, one Mac. | Phones. Two device activations per purchase, with installation on any number of computers. |
| Platforms | macOS only. | macOS and Windows. |
| Free trial | A trial that archives and searches, with sealing available so the seal can be tested. | Never expires, and shows a few messages per contact so you can confirm it works. |
| Export formats | PDF, CSV and JSON. | PDF, CSV, HTML and TXT. |
| Reads from | The Messages database on the Mac and the iPhone backups made on that Mac, merged into one archive. | The iPhone backup on the computer, and messages on macOS. |
| Ongoing archive | The archive accumulates and keeps history the Mac and phone have since pruned. Coverage shows which date ranges are held. | Reads a backup and produces a file. Each run reflects whatever the backup currently holds. |
| Search across years | Full text search across the whole merged archive at once. | Oriented around selecting a contact and saving or printing that thread. |
| Integrity of the exported file | SHA-256 fingerprint recorded in a seal file written beside the export. | No hashing, signing, checksum or timestamping of exports is described. Their integrity argument is that message data cannot be edited inside the program. |
| Independent timestamp | An RFC 3161 token from DigiCert, so the time claim does not rest on your own computer’s clock. | None described. |
| Third party verification | Anyone can verify the export at our verify page, free, with no account. The file is never uploaded. | A reader has the file and the vendor’s statement about how it was produced, which is a claim about the tool rather than a checkable property of the file. |
Choose Decipher TextMessage if
- You want a one time purchase instead of a subscription.
- You are on Windows. We are macOS only.
- You need this once, for one conversation, and cost is the deciding factor.
- You want to try the full reading step for free before paying.
- You want HTML as an export format, which we do not offer.
Choose Message Archive if
- You want a message archive that keeps growing rather than a one off export.
- You want the exported file to carry a fingerprint and an independent timestamp.
- You want somebody else to be able to check that file themselves, for free, without an account.
- You want to search many years of history quickly rather than export and then read.
- You want to see which date ranges you actually hold, including the gaps.
It cannot recover messages that are already gone from every source on your Mac and from every backup you still hold, and it cannot pull messages from a phone over the air. It is macOS only. It is not a certified forensic tool, and no software can promise that a court or an employer will accept what it produces.
Questions
- Is Decipher TextMessage cheaper?
- Yes. It is $29.99 once, against $47 a year for us, so for a single job it costs less and stays cheaper indefinitely. If what you need is a readable copy of one conversation, that price difference is real and we are not going to argue you out of it.
- Does Decipher TextMessage verify its exports?
- Not cryptographically. There is no hashing, signing or timestamping of the exported file described in their documentation. Their stated argument is that the program imports data directly from the backup and offers no way to edit it inside the program, which is a reasonable description of the tool but is not something a reader of the file can check for themselves.
- What is the difference between that and a seal?
- One is a statement about how a file was made, and the other is a property of the file. A seal records the file’s SHA-256 fingerprint with an independent timestamp authority, so anybody holding the file can recompute the fingerprint and see whether it matches. That check does not require them to believe anything about the software that produced it.
- Which should I buy if I only need this once?
- If nobody is likely to dispute the messages, and you want one conversation in readable form, the cheaper one time purchase is the sensible choice and there is no reason to pay a subscription. Our case starts when the record needs to keep growing, or when somebody may question whether the file was changed after you made it.
- Can Decipher TextMessage recover deleted messages?
- It advertises recovering deleted texts from an iPhone backup, which works when a backup was made before the deletion and still contains them. That is worth understanding generally: any tool, including ours, can only read what a surviving copy still holds. Nothing recovers a message that no backup and no device retained.
- Do either of these make messages admissible in court?
- No. Admissibility depends on the rules where a matter is heard and on the person deciding it, and no software vendor can promise it. The honest technical claim is narrower: a record that is tamper evident and, in our case, independently timestamped.
Sources
- Decipher TextMessage product page
- Decipher TextMessage purchase page
- Decipher on subscriptions and recurring charges
- Decipher on printing texts for court
Message Archive is $47 a year, per Mac. It archives your iMessage and SMS history into a searchable vault on your own machine and seals exports so anyone can check them.
Related reading
How to print or export text messages for a court case
A plain English guide to getting text messages off an iPhone or Mac and into a form you can hand to a lawyer or file with a court, including what a screenshot does and does not show, and how to make an export that can be checked by someone who does not trust you.
Why Messages still has no archive function, and what to do instead
Mail has archive. Every chat app has archive. Apple’s Messages has delete and nothing between it and keeping everything forever. Here is why that gap exists, what the workarounds actually cost, and how to get a thread out of your inbox without losing it.
Where iMessages are actually stored on a Mac
Your Mac keeps every iMessage and SMS in a SQLite database inside your home folder. Here is exactly where it lives, what each file does, how to open it safely, and why copying it is harder than it looks.