Use Gmail Backup to Save Your Emails from Oblivion

We all know how awesome Gmail is. It, however is not without downtime, as with all online services.

What if you need your email on one of those downtimes? Are you afraid that one day Gmail might crash and take all your emails with you? Or maybe the 7 gigabytes that Gmail offers is not really enough for you? Afraid that you might forget your password or you might somehow get locked out of your account? Or maybe you just like to download your email from your Gmail account so it’ll be safely stored on your hard drive?

Gmail Backup might be the perfect program for you.

It can save and and restore the complete archive of your Gmail email account via Gmail’s built-in IMAP capability. It’s available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, but only the Windows version comes with a graphical interface. You just need to enter your complete Gmail address and password, and you just need to click the backup button. You should be done.

Gmail Backup saves your emails, complete with attachments, in Microsoft’s EML format. However, the Linux and OSX version is command line only, which is something I don’t like. Linux users won’t have a problem with command line interfaces, I think, but not all Mac OS X users would like having to deal without a user interface. A user interface isn’t something hard to make within the next few releases, though.

But the great thing about Gmail backup is that it doesn’t only backup your emails. It also enables offline access to your Gmail account, plus it also has the capability to upload your emails to your current or to another account, making a second account as a storage for old emails. I can’t think up of enough uses for this; maybe you could think up of more.

Gmail Backup supports regular Gmail accounts as well as Google Mail in Germany and Apps For Your Domain email accounts, as long as POP/IMAP access is enabled under Settings.

Have you downloaded Gmail Backup? Is it any good? Or are you not happy with it? Tell me what you think.