Email is the most popular communication tool in the business world. Hence, businesses need to have an effective tool to track communication. One of the best practices is to take advantage of the email archiving benefits.
Since email archiving can cost your business thousands of dollars, you must determine if you really need it. Let’s find out what is the point of archiving emails. And, more importantly, whether you should consider it for your business.
10 Email Archiving Benefits
Email archiving is widely used in the corporate world. So what is the benefit of email archiving?
Generally, email archiving system offer many features that may reduce costs and enhance business security while following the latest legal regulations. But this is only “the tip of the iceberg”.
Email archiving has many advantages, but here are the ten most important.
Saves storage
86% of US and UK workers use email for business communication. In fact, it is estimated that 333.2 billion emails were sent daily in 2022, and the average size of an email is 75 KB.
So the question is, who has enough storage to keep all those emails?
Yes, you can use a free email provider, and they typically have between 5 GB and 65 GB of free storage. But what will happen when you use all of their free email storage?
When the server storage gets full, you will start facing difficulties using your email because it will have reduced performance. That’s when email archiving comes in handy.
One of the email archiving benefits is that it will free up space on your server, making it work up to speed. Don’t worry; once you archive the email, you can safely delete it from your inbox and retrieve them when you need to.
The emails are typically archived on secure off-site servers or cloud storage. Some email archiving softwares even offer email compression and deduplication. That’s why it is possible for them to reduce the required disk space by 50%.
By using email archiving, you are also reducing your server costs. You won’t need to buy additional space on your server because you can free up the space by archiving.
Faster email restoring
Did you know that your business performance can be improved by 21% on average if you access data on time? Email archiving solutions make restoring faster for both archived and non-archived emails.
In addition, having email archiving software will save you a huge headache from potential data loss or ransomware attacks. By setting automatic email archiving on a secure server, you won’t have to worry about losing all of your electronic communications if something unexpected happens.
Compliance
So are there any benefits of email archiving from a legal perspective? Actually, aside from the practical email archiving benefits, in most industries, businesses are obligated to keep their email communication.
Emails are considered electronic data records that businesses are required to keep. The regulations regarding email archiving depend on the industry. In most cases, businesses must keep their electronic communication for seven years. Using email archiving, your organization is prepared for legal questioning or investigations.
The solution is not only beneficial when your business has issues with regulatory bodies. The eDiscovery features are an effective way to deal with customers and clients who require recovering email communication for legal reasons.
Enhanced security
Only in the first quarter of 2023, over 6 million data sets were exposed through data breaches. As one of the benefits of email archiving software, your business can leverage enhanced data protection.
Your organization can have its data protected from security issues like data breaches, accidental message deletion, phishing attempts, and email server malfunctions. Whether it is a natural or man-made disaster, you will still have uninterrupted access to your electronic communication data.
When looking for email archiving software, check its reliability and availability and ensure it has a 99.9% uptime. The best solutions also have a financially backed service level agreement.
Ultimately, email archiving services offer audit trails, meaning you can get a list of people with access to the archive when there is a security incident.
Improved productivity
When you are running a business, you want your employees to be productive. You can wave the time-consuming email converting to PSTs goodbye.
Thanks to the ease of use of email archiving solutions, employees can clear out their inboxes, recover old emails and find files and attachments they need in no time. Plus, moving and organizing the emails can also be done in a few clicks.
Employees will spend more time doing productive activities instead of browsing through their email.
What’s more, email archiving solutions take off the burden from the IT department. The volume of work they need to handle will be reduced. There won’t be a need for them to deal with the frequent requests for backing up and finding lost emails.
Another feature of email archiving that increases productivity is the usage outside of corporate networks. Both in-office and remote employees can use email archiving. No matter from which network they are working, they can still use the email archiving solution to archive and access emails.
Integrability
Generally, email archiving softwares can be integrated no matter the email platform your company uses. Some even offer a similar interface to the email platform, so your employees can navigate the software more easily.
In addition, email archiving solutions support other communication channels, meaning you can archive communications from social media, mobile, and website. Another advantage of this is that you will additionally reduce the cost by eliminating the necessity to purchase archiving softwares for each channel separately.
Knowledgeable departments
The more insights each department has, the higher the performance of the employees. One of the less-known email archiving benefits is that it can quickly provide all company levels with valuable information.
Since most of the communication within the company and with customers is via email, everyone can find what they need with a simple search. This type of benefits of email archiving software will mostly be used by the HR department, upper management, and the company’s legal team.
Protecting intellectual property
Intellectual property-related emails are of significant importance when running a business. Hence, you can use email archiving solutions to protect intellectual property like insights, ideas, and valuable knowledge.
This email archiving benefit is especially important when an employee leaves your company for some reason. By having their emails archived, you can give access to their work.
Even when you lose a valuable employee, you won’t sacrifice the performance of your business and ongoing projects. Plus, the new employee can easily adapt to the new position by going through the work of the person they are replacing.
Do You Need Email Archiving for Your Business?
Search capability
Email archiving software offers excellent search features. Generally, email archiving offers two basic types of searches – quick and advanced.
Quick search is for simple searches within the employee’s mailbox. It is typically for people with basic permissions. The purpose is to make their daily tasks easier.
On the other hand, advanced searches are more used by administrators and compliance officers. This email archiving feature is for browsing through a large volume of data.
If you want an even more effective way of looking for an email, you can utilize other types of searches, including:
- Boolean search – combining keywords with operators (for instance, AND, OR)
- Wildcard search – searching for keywords and their variations
- Fuzzy logic – browsing through emails even if they have a misspelled word
- Proximity search – searching for phrases but also its alternatives
- Attachment search – browsing for emails with attachments by size, email header, and message bodies
- Search within a search – doing a sub-search to filter previous search results
- Saved searches – going through emails from searches you have saved
Competitive advantage
Lastly, by using the benefits of email archiving software, you will be one step ahead of your competitors. Access to advanced email archiving and management tools will improve your business decision and strategy-making process.
How to Choose an Email Archiving Software
To enjoy the benefits of email archiving, you must pick the right service provider. Nowadays, there are many email archiving solutions on the market. Understandably it can be a daunting task to pick the right one.
Luckily for you, we made a comprehensive list of the most important features an email archiving software should have. Some of the basic features are:
- Flexible storage management with deduplication and compression features
- Easy and fast to install, maintain, and use
- Option to archive emails already archived in individual and shared mailboxes and public folders
- Working standards compliant with the GDPR and other government mandates
- High redundancy levels so you can lower the risks of losing your data when a natural disaster happens
- Compatibility with your email provider
On the other hand, some of the top email archiving software has additional features like:
- Customizable email archiving software according to the needs of the business
- Search features like fast and advanced searches through your archives
- Open-format email archiving
- Multiple copies of different storage types
- Embedded certification of every archived email so they have legal validity
- Support of ingestion methods like SMTP journaling, IMAP, POP3, Exchange connectors, native O365, and SMTP forwarding
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Best Email Archiving Solutions for Business
In case you don’t know where to start, we found the top 10 best email archiving solutions for businesses that are worth trying out. To narrow down your search and make your decision even easier, we have listed the five most important features of each software.
ArcTitan
- Office 365-integrated
- Fast email search speeds
- Easy to set up
- eDiscovery and GDPR compliance
- Cloud-based solution
Arcserve Email Archiving
- On-premises, private, and public cloud records
- Straightforward user interface
- Quick and accurate searches
- Easily implementable legal holds
- Automatic email retaining as encrypted records
Dropsuite
- Seamless integration
- Secure public and private cloud platform
- Responsive technical support
- Journaling, eDiscovery, Retention, and Legal Hold policies
- Advanced search
Mailmeter
- Simple design
- ComplyKEY for fast searches
- Suitable for most industries
- Enchanted Office 365 email storage and search functionality
- eDiscovery
Barracuda Archiving
- Secure data storing
- Uses granular retention policies
- Access to the stored data at any time and from anywhere
- Physical appliances and integrated virtual solutions are available
- Supports complex audit and eDiscovery
Libraesva Email Archiver
- Integration with Office 365 and Microsoft Exchange
- On-premise and cloud versions available
- Multiple storage support
- Folder structure reproduction
- MSP and ISP ready
Proofpoint
- Automatic email preservation
- Quick and extensive searches
- Easy access to email
- Meeting regulatory requirements
- Reducing data storage
Mimecast Cloud Archiving
- Simplified email retention and eDiscovery
- Powerful data migration tools
- Granular litigation hold
- Tamper-resistant email
- Quick recovery
Jatheon Enterprise Data Archiving Solution
- Suitable for every industry
- On-premise and cloud archiving available
- Compatible with all email platforms
- Social media and text archiving
- Solution for compliance and legal support
Zix
- Unified archiving
- Increased efficiency
- Streamlined employee communications
- Archiving available for 50+ sources
- Policy-based retention
Conclusion
The email archiving benefits are for organizations and employees alike. Paying for email archiving solutions has a fast return on investment because it reduces storage costs and the workload of the IT department.
Email archiving is an important practice because it helps businesses meet regulatory requirements while enhancing productivity, data management, and protection. Always tend to store your email data wisely by using our tips for choosing an email archiving provider.