TextExhibit vs ScribeHold
TextExhibit needs a backup before it starts. ScribeHold makes one.
Both products turn iPhone messages into a document you can file. The difference is what happens before that: TextExhibit reads a copy of your phone that you produced with Apple Devices or Finder first, and ScribeHold reads the phone.
Where TextExhibit is genuinely better
Four of them, and they are not small.
- It is cheaper for one job. If you need one production, once, and then never open the tool again, TextExhibit costs less than ScribeHold does in year one. The figures are in the table below.
- It runs on macOS. ScribeHold is Windows-only and will stay that way. If you work on a Mac, this comparison ends here.
- It covers Android. TextExhibit ships an Android app that exports on the handset. ScribeHold reads iPhone and iPad only.
- It recovers content ScribeHold cannot. Version 2.3.3 surfaces edit history, Undo Send, and recently deleted message text with timestamps where the backup still holds them *. ScribeHold reads what is on the phone when it connects; if a message was already gone, ScribeHold cannot get it back.
ScribeHold also has no WhatsApp support, and neither product handles third-party messaging apps. Both keep every file on your own machine, so that is table stakes here rather than a reason to pick either one.
Step one of three
TextExhibit's own documentation opens its iPhone workflow like this: “You will first need to create a full device backup using your computer and Apple's officially supported method” *. On Windows that means installing the Apple Devices app from the Microsoft Store, waiting for it to finish, and knowing where it wrote the result. TextExhibit reads what Apple produced; it never talks to the handset.
ScribeHold drives that conversation itself. Plug the iPhone into your PC over USB, tap your passcode (Apple requires this on iOS 16.1+), and a Windows Service does the reading, the copying and the indexing. iMazing does its own reading too, so this is not a claim to be alone in it — what is unusual is the Service that picks up where it left off every time you connect, without you opening anything.
ScribeHold is not a backup tool and cannot restore a phone. It copies messages, attachments and contacts and discards the rest. Keep using iCloud or Finder to back up the device itself.
Side by side
| What you need | TextExhibit 2.3.3 | ScribeHold |
|---|---|---|
| Getting the messages off the phone | No. Reads a folder Apple Devices or Finder wrote earlier; making that copy is documented as step 1 of 3 * | Yes. Reads the iPhone over USB on Windows and keeps reading it in the background |
| An affidavit page a signer can swear to | No. No such template anywhere in the product or its documentation * | Yes. An affidavit cover page, plus an unsigned FRE 902(14) template awaiting your signer |
| Blacking out what should not be produced | No. The only redacting it does is to its own trial output, as copy protection * | Yes. Redaction you control, message by message or span by span, applied at render time |
| An archival file format and matter-bound pages | No. Ordinary PDF output; no archival conformance and no case caption bound into it * | Yes. PDF/A on the merged transcript, with Matter binding and Exhibit numbering derived from your case number |
| Numbering the production | Yes. Sequential numbering with a prefix and start number you choose, continuous across files * | Yes. Bates-numbered across the production |
| Hashes over the output files | Yes. A verification report carrying SHA-256 and MD5 over the source and every exported file, with timestamps and number ranges * | Yes. A separate SHA-256 manifest over the transcript content and each attachment, with an MD5 sibling for eDiscovery tools |
| A written record of who touched the evidence, and when | Partial. The verification report, offered as custody documentation. It fixes what the files were, not who handled them * | Partial. Also a hash record rather than a custody log. Read the paragraph below the table before you rely on either |
| Structured message data you can sort and filter | Yes. An Excel workbook with message events, local and UTC times, per-attachment hashes and any EXIF or GPS the file carries * | Yes. A metadata CSV, one row per in-window message, masked to match the redactions in the PDF |
| Recovering edited or recently deleted text | Yes. Edit history, Undo Send and recently deleted content, with timestamps, where the source still holds it * | No. ScribeHold reads what the phone still holds when it connects. Anything already deleted is gone |
| Working on a Mac | Yes. macOS 10.15 and later, alongside Windows 10 and 11 * | No. Windows-only by design |
| Android handsets | Yes. An Android app that exports on the handset, with hashing and numbering built in * | No. iPhone and iPad only |
| Trying it before you pay | Partial. A trial that watermarks its PDFs, blanks some message text, and stops after three exports * | Yes. Free searches everything and opens and exports the last 30 days, with no watermark and no export cap |
| What it costs | Yes. $19.99 once for one iPhone on up to three computers, or $14.99/month or $99.99/year for each computer seat * | Partial. $4.99/month or $49/year ScribeHold Complete ($39/year on renewal) · $149/year Legal Export Pack ($119/year on renewal) |
Every TextExhibit claim above was read from the vendor's own pages on 6 September 2026 and is cited to the page it came from. Version 2.3.3. Source: textexhibit.com. TextExhibit publishes no release dates, so we make no claim about how current the product is.
Two rows that deserve a longer answer
The custody row. TextExhibit markets its hash report as custody documentation and gives it a section heading of its own, so anyone who tells you the product has no custody story is wrong and you will find that out in one click. What it does not ship is a custody log: a record of who took possession of the evidence and when, and what happened to it in between. A hash proves a file is the same file. It does not say whose hands it passed through. Neither product produces that log; it is written by the people handling the evidence, and both tools give you the digest that makes it worth writing.
The structured-data row. TextExhibit ships no metadata CSV, and it would be easy to leave that as the whole story. It is not. Their Excel workbook now carries per-attachment SHA-256, EXIF and GPS where the file has it, and both local and UTC times — richer, on those axes, than what ScribeHold writes. ScribeHold's advantage in that row is narrower than it looks: our CSV is masked to match the redactions in the PDF, so the structured file cannot leak what the transcript hides. That matters when you produce. It does not make our columns wider than theirs.
The price gap, stated plainly
ScribeHold costs more, and it costs more every year. TextExhibit's one-time iPhone licence is a single payment; ScribeHold Complete is $49 in the first year and $39 on each renewal. That is about 2.4 times TextExhibit in year one. By the end of year three you have paid $127 against their one payment — roughly six and a half times. If you also take the Legal Export Pack at $149 a year, the gap is far larger again. Anyone comparing the two products on a spreadsheet will find these numbers, so here they are first.
The argument for paying it is not that the multiple is smaller than it looks. It is that the two products are being bought for different lengths of time. A one-time licence buys a converter: you make the export, you close the tool, and the work you did is finished. What ScribeHold's subscription pays for is a Windows Service that keeps running — every time the phone is plugged in, the new messages land in the archive and are indexed, without anyone opening an application or remembering to make a copy of anything. Six months later the record is current, and the export you produce reflects the phone as it is rather than as it was on the day you last thought about it.
The subscription also pays for keeping up with Apple. Every iOS release moves the message store, the protocol, or the rules for reading either; that work does not stop, and it is not covered by a payment made once. If your matter is one production and then nothing, TextExhibit is the cheaper answer and we would rather you knew that before you paid us. If the archive has to stay true for as long as the case runs, that is the thing the subscription is buying.
Pricing for both products as published on 6 September 2026. See ScribeHold pricing, the export a matter needs, or how ScribeHold compares to the other tools.
Free searches your entire history; opening and exporting cover the last 30 days.