[Reelin]

I attempted to use SMS Gate (a fork) to do backups from the stock messaging app to the SD card. It didn't work.

> I did hear of some folks using their own IMAP server ...

I ended up syncing to a Dovecot IMAP server on my local Linux desktop, which seemed to work just fine. I was apprehensive about the complexity of setting an IMAP server up, but that turned out to be misguided - Dovecot was incredibly simple to get up and running. I assume SMSBackup+ would work just as well as SMS Gate did here.

I eventually ended up moving from the stock messaging app to QKSMS (GPLv3, Github, Google Play, F-Droid) because it has built in backup functionality.