Email cleaning software built for years of backlog

What should email cleaning software do that a simple cleaner app doesn’t?

It should run unattended and be auditable. That means a rules engine with real conditions and operators, scheduling, an activity log of every action, reversible defaults, connections through official provider APIs, and ideally a way to self-host. A tool that only does one-off bulk deletes is a utility; software keeps enforcing policy afterwards.

The test is simple: could you leave it running for six months and then explain, from its own records, every message it touched? ClearInbox is built to pass that test, whether you use the hosted app or deploy it on your own server.

What conditions and actions can ClearInbox rules use?

Auto Clean rules combine conditions on sender, domain, subject, folder, label, category, List-Id, read and starred state, automated-sender detection, attachments, age and size, using operators from “is” to regex. Actions range from archive and move to retention policies like keep newest N and delete after N days.

Conditions can be combined with match all or match any, so a single rule can express “from this domain and older than 30 days and not starred” without nesting. The full set:

How do email cleanup rules run, and in what order?

ClearInbox rules run on two triggers: on a schedule against existing mail, and on newly synced mail as it arrives. Each rule has a priority, so specific rules can act before broad ones, and each targets one account or all of them. Pinned messages are always skipped, whatever a rule says.

That combination covers what provider filters miss. Gmail filters act on arriving mail with actions such as label, archive, delete, star and forward, and Sieve (RFC 5228) gives server-side filtering on servers that support it, but both live inside a single account and neither offers keep-newest-N retention. ClearInbox rules run above the provider, across accounts, and can express retention directly.

A practical habit for power users: express the rule’s conditions as a saved search first, check what it matches, then turn it into a rule. Regex is the operator most likely to surprise you, so anchor your patterns.

What does the activity log record?

The activity log records every action ClearInbox takes, whether you clicked it or a rule did it on a schedule. Bulk archives, deletes, moves, labels, unsubscribes and automated rule runs all appear, so you can audit what changed and trace a missing message back to the action that moved it.

This is the feature that makes automation safe to leave running. If a rule is too broad, the log shows what it touched, and because deletes go to your provider’s Trash, you can restore the messages from there while the provider still holds them. Disconnecting an account is logged too.

How reversible is automated email cleanup?

Most of it is reversible for a while. Archive, move, label, star and read-state changes can be undone by hand at any time. Deletes go to your provider’s Trash, which Gmail and Outlook.com each purge after 30 days. Once Trash is emptied, the mail is gone, and an unsubscribe cannot be taken back by the tool.

So design for reversibility. Prefer archive over delete in new rules until you trust them, use Pause or Read Later instead of unsubscribing from lists you are unsure about (Pause auto-archives future mail; Read Later files it in its own folder), and pin anything that must never be touched. Unsubscribing uses the one-click RFC 8058 method where the sender supports it, which is a real request to the sender, so treat it as permanent.

Can I run a self-hosted email cleaner with Docker?

Yes. ClearInbox’s frontend and backend each ship with a Dockerfile and a Docker Compose file, so you can run the whole app on your own server. You supply the PostgreSQL database, and your mail metadata and encrypted credentials stay on infrastructure you control.

What a self-hosted email cleaner asks of you:

• A PostgreSQL instance of your own; the backend’s Compose file deliberately has no database service.
• Your own secrets, including the key that encrypts stored mailbox credentials. The defaults are for development only.
• Your own Google and Microsoft OAuth app credentials if you want to connect Gmail or Outlook accounts. Without them, IMAP accounts with app passwords still work.
• A Have I Been Pwned API key if you want the Privacy Monitor; it is optional.
• A reverse proxy and TLS in front of both containers, plus backups. The scheduler that runs Auto Clean rules can be switched on or off by environment variable.

Is this inbox management software or email management software?

Both, in the sense that matters: ClearInbox cleans and also handles day-to-day email. It includes a built-in client for compose, reply, forward, search, labels, stars and pins, plus a Screener that holds first-time senders until you approve them, so the rules and the reading happen in one place.

What it is not: a shared team inbox, a helpdesk, or a machine-learning sorter. Classification is deterministic and rule-based, working on sender domains, mailing-list headers, automated-sender signals, age, size and subject, which is exactly why its behavior is predictable enough to automate.