MailStore Server: E-mail Archiving Options

MailStore Server offers various options for archiving e-mails. You can automatically archive all incoming and outgoing e-mails, as well as archive e-mails from e-mail server mailboxes, e-mail clients, and files. Choosing the right archiving strategy depends on one hand, the e-mail infrastructure (e.g., e-mail servers and e-mail clients) and on the other hand, company goals.

MailStore Server offers various options for archiving e-mails.

Technical Tip: Choosing the Right Archiving Strategy

Automatically Archive All Incoming and Outgoing E-mails

With this archiving method, all e-mails are archived before they are delivered to the user's mailboxes.

Advantages

• Completeness of the archive
• E-mails cannot be manipulated or deleted before being archived
• This helps to meet increasing compliance requirements

Disadvantages

• If the company allows private e-mails, this archiving method may cause difficulties with the privacy laws of some countries. In this case, it would be necessary to prohibit all private e-mail communication company-wide, require a contract with employees, or obtain approval from the employee organization.
• The workload and data volume of the e-mail server are not reduced because all e-mails are still delivered and stored in mailboxes.
• E-mails can only be assigned to users as sent or received items; it is not possible to recreate the mailbox folder structure.

Application

• By archiving the journal mailbox with Microsoft Exchange
• By archiving the journal mailbox with Microsoft 365 and Hybrid environments
• By archiving multipdrop mailboxes (also known as catchall mailboxes) with IMAP-compliant e-mail servers such as MDaemon, Kerio Connect or IceWarp Server
• By using MailStore Gateway for free in all other cases and companies without their own e-mail server

Archiving Individual Mailboxes

With this archiving method, e-mails are archived from users' individual mailboxes. This can be achieved by directly archiving the mailboxes from the e-mail server or, if that is not possible, by archiving e-mail clients.

Advantages

• The folder structure of the archived mailboxes, e-mail clients or PST files is applied to the archives, making access to the archives easier
• Archived e-mails can be deleted from mailboxes according to predefined rules, permanently reducing the workload of the e-mail server

Disadvantages

• Even if the archiving intervals are very short, e-mails can be deleted or manipulated before they are archived
• Compliance with legal requirements may be difficult or only possible with difficulty

Scheduling Archiving Tasks

Archiving e-mail servers is a continuous task in MailStore Server and is performed in the background on the server side when an archiving profile is set to Automatic. Administrators have full control over the automatic archiving process by defining a period between executions and a period in which the archiving profile is not executed at all.

Archiving e-mail clients and e-mail files generally depends on the current Windows user, and therefore is usually executed manually on the client (see One-Time Archiving of Existing E-mails). MailStore allows client-side archiving tasks to be automated by creating scheduled tasks in the Windows Task Scheduler. This should be considered if there are no other options - server-side archiving is always preferred.

One-Time Archiving of Existing E-mails

In addition to archiving future e-mails, existing e-mails should also be archived and permanently made available to your company. This one-time process should include e-mails stored in non-central locations (e.g., PST files or users' e-mail clients). At the same time, old e-mails (e.g., those older than two years) can be automatically deleted from mailboxes after they have been archived. This frees up storage space on the e-mail server and simplifies backup processes. All e-mails remain accessible to users through the MailStore archive.

Source: Choosing the Right Archiving Strategy - MailStore Server Help