Message Archive vs iMazing
An honest comparison of Message Archive and iMazing for archiving and exporting iMessage and SMS history on a Mac, including where iMazing does more, what each costs, and the one real difference in how an export can be verified.
What iMazing is good at
iMazing is a broad, mature and well maintained device manager, and for most of what people ask it to do it is a better tool than ours. It backs up and restores entire iPhones, extracts photos, music, apps, contacts, calendars, notes, call history and voicemail, transfers data between devices, and includes configuration and supervision tooling for managed fleets. Messages are one feature among many.
It also runs on Windows as well as macOS, which we do not, and it exports messages in more formats than we do, including RSMF for e discovery workflows. If you need any of that, the honest recommendation on this page is iMazing.
iMazing is not a lesser product with a missing feature. It is a wider product built for a different job. The comparison below is narrow on purpose: what happens when you need a message export that somebody else can check.
Side by side
| Message Archive | iMazing | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $47 per year, per Mac. | Personal $49.99 per year for up to 5 devices, Family $89.99 per year for up to 20. Subscription only. The perpetual device licence was discontinued in June 2025. |
| What the licence counts | Macs. One licence, one Mac, any number of phones and backups read into it. | Apple mobile devices, not computers. Install on any number of Macs and PCs, but each phone or tablet you connect uses a device slot. |
| Platforms | macOS only. | macOS and Windows. |
| Scope | Messages and their attachments. Nothing else. It does not back up or restore a device. | Full device management: backup and restore, photos, music, apps, contacts, calendars, notes, call history, voicemail, WhatsApp, file system access, device supervision. |
| Message export formats | PDF, CSV and JSON. | PDF, Excel, CSV, TXT, and RSMF for e discovery. RSMF requires the Business tier. |
| Ongoing archive | Built around an archive that keeps accumulating. History stays in the vault after the Mac and the phone have pruned themselves, and coverage shows which date ranges are actually held. | Built around backups and exports. Backups mirror the current state of the device, so a message the phone has deleted is not in the next backup. |
| Hashing of exports | Every export is hashed with SHA-256 and the hash is recorded as part of the seal. | Yes. iMazing computes SHA-256 backup checksums and can display that hash in the footer of exported messages when signing a PDF. |
| Signature on the export | A seal issued by our seal service, checkable by anyone at the verify page with no account. | PDF signing with a digital certificate, where in their own words you can select an existing certificate or create a new one. A certificate you create yourself attests to your own identity. |
| Independent timestamp | An RFC 3161 token from DigiCert, an independent timestamp authority. The time claim does not rest on your computer’s clock, and the token can be checked with OpenSSL against DigiCert’s own certificate without trusting us. | No trusted timestamp authority or RFC 3161 support is described in their documentation. The export date recorded in the footer is the date reported by the machine doing the export. |
| Cost for the other side to verify | Nothing. A web page, no account, no download, and the file is never uploaded. | Checking a signed PDF means checking the certificate it was signed with. Verifying a backup checksum is a manual comparison of hashes using separate tools. |
| Signing tier | Sealing is included at $47 per year. There is no higher tier. | PDF signing is presented as part of the Business offering rather than Personal. |
| Free trial | A trial that archives and searches, with sealing available so you can test the seal. | A free tier with no time limit and per category caps, including a limit of 25 messages. |
Choose iMazing if
- You want one tool that manages the whole device, not just messages.
- You are on Windows. We are macOS only.
- You need RSMF export for an e discovery platform.
- You need to restore a phone, move data between devices, or manage devices for an organisation.
- You need WhatsApp history, which we do not read.
Choose Message Archive if
- You want messages to keep accumulating in one place, rather than exporting when you happen to remember.
- You want an export whose integrity a stranger can check without trusting you, us, or a certificate you made yourself.
- You want the timestamp on that check to come from an independent authority rather than from your own computer’s clock.
- You want the verification step to cost the other side nothing and require no account.
- You want a single Mac licence at a lower price than a subscription that meters devices.
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 Message Archive a replacement for iMazing?
- For most jobs, no. iMazing manages an entire device and Message Archive only handles messages. If you need to back up or restore a phone, move data between devices, extract photos, or read WhatsApp, iMazing does those things and we do not. The case for us is narrow: an ongoing message archive, and an export whose integrity somebody else can check independently.
- Does iMazing sign its exports?
- Yes. iMazing can sign exported PDFs with a digital certificate and can display a SHA-256 backup checksum in the export footer. It is worth being accurate about this, because comparisons that claim otherwise are wrong. The difference is what stands behind the signature: their documentation says you can select an existing certificate or create a new one, and a certificate you created yourself vouches for your own identity, with no independent timestamp involved.
- What does an RFC 3161 timestamp add?
- It moves the time claim off your own machine. An independent timestamp authority receives the fingerprint of your file and returns a signed token stating that this exact fingerprint existed at that time. Because the authority is a public one, the token can be checked with standard tools against the authority’s own certificate, so the other side does not have to trust the software vendor or you.
- Which is cheaper?
- They are close and they meter different things. Message Archive is $47 per year per Mac. iMazing Personal is $49.99 per year and covers up to 5 Apple mobile devices with unlimited computer installs. If you have several phones to read and one Mac, iMazing counts that better. If you have one Mac and want sealing included rather than on a business tier, we do.
- Can I use both?
- Yes, and it is a reasonable setup. iMazing is a capable device manager and backup tool, and the backups it makes on your Mac are readable by Message Archive as a source. Using one to manage the device and the other to keep and seal the message history is not a conflict.
- Does either one guarantee a court will accept the export?
- No, and neither should say so. Admissibility depends on the rules where a matter is heard and on the person deciding it. What software can honestly offer is a record that is tamper evident and, in our case, independently timestamped. Whether that record is accepted is not a decision any vendor gets to make.
Sources
- iMazing store, prices as rendered
- iMazing licences FAQ
- iMazing licensing policy
- Exporting messages for legal purposes
- iMazing for forensics and e discovery
- iMazing business phone evidence
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.