Does Archiving Emails Save Space?

Email is a vital part of communication for businesses of all sizes. However, it can also take up a lot of space. In fact, the average business email user receives over 120 emails per day. That's a lot of data to store!

In this article we’ll look at whether archiving email saves space, or not. We’ll review it from an end-user perspective, and, more importantly, we’ll look at how archiving email impacts large organizations.

Table of Contents:

• Let's Save Space?!
• Make it Scale!
• How Email Archiving Works for Large Businesses
• Create an Email Archiving Strategy
• It's So Much More Than Saving Space

Let’s Save Space?!

One way to save space in your mailbox is to archive old emails.

Archiving in this context means moving emails to a separate location, such as a cloud storage service. Moving old emails (based on age) or old emails from projects which have completed can frees up space in your inbox, making it easier to find the emails you need and potentially reducing storage space.

Does archiving email save space? The answer is yes, it can.

In fact, a study by the Radicati Group found that businesses can save an average of 25% of their email storage costs by archiving old emails.

Of course, the amount of space you save will depend on how many emails you archive. If you only archive a few old emails, you may not see a significant savings. However, if you archive a large number of emails, you could save a significant amount of space especially if you encounter messages with multiple, large attachments.

Make it Scale!

What we’ve just talked about is specific to end-users. Large organizations don’t rely on end-users alone to archive emails, they implement an email archiving solution to assist end-users.

In addition to saving space, archiving email can also provide other benefits for businesses:

• Comply with government and industry regulations
• Protect your data from loss or theft
• Improve your email search capabilities, particular helpful for eDiscovery situations
• Reduce the risk of data breaches

We’ve written more about the benefits of email archiving in this article.

If you're looking for ways to save space and improve your email management, archiving is a great option. With a few simple steps, you can easily archive your old emails and free up space in your inbox.

How Email Archiving Works for Large Businesses

Large businesses generate a lot of email data. This data can be valuable for compliance, legal, and business purposes. However, it can also be a burden to store and manage, especially when the data has to be kept for a considerable time due to the need to meet regulatory requirements.

Email archiving is a solution that can help large businesses manage their email data more effectively. Email archiving solutions typically store email data in a centralized location, where it can be easily accessed and managed. This can free up space in regular employee mailboxes, and it can make it easier to find and retrieve email messages.

Email archiving solutions also offer a number of features that can help large businesses comply with government regulations. For example, many solutions offer features that allow businesses to search for and retain specific types of email messages, such as messages that contain sensitive information. Several solutions on the market capture a copy of every message sent and received within and incoming/outgoing to the organization in order to maintain a de-facto record of all email communication. (This is usually referred to as email journaling).

In addition to helping businesses comply with regulations, email archiving solutions can also help businesses protect their data from loss or theft. By storing email data in a secure location, businesses can reduce the risk of unauthorized access to their data.

Finally, email archiving solutions can help businesses improve their email search capabilities. By indexing email data, businesses can make it easier to find and retrieve specific messages. This can save time and improve productivity, and help greatly when it comes to eDiscovery requests or internal investigations.

Here are some of the benefits of email archiving for large businesses:

• Reduced storage costs: Email archiving can help businesses reduce their storage costs by moving old emails to a more cost-effective storage location.
• Improved compliance: Email archiving can help businesses comply with government regulations by providing a way to store and manage email data in a secure and compliant manner.
• Reduced risk of data loss: Email archiving can help businesses reduce the risk of data loss by providing a way to back up email data to a secure location.
• Improved productivity: Email archiving can help businesses improve productivity by providing a way to find and retrieve email messages more easily.

Create an Email Archiving Strategy

If you’re a decision maker in a large organization we highly recommend creating a robust email archiving strategy to map out what your intentions are in relation to email communication.

At a high level your strategy should cover:

• Compliance requirements
• Storage requirements
• Accessibility features
• Integration capabilities with other enterprise applications
• Data protection and security

It’s So Much More Than Saving Space

If you're a large business, email archiving is a valuable tool that can help you save money, improve compliance, reduce risk, and improve productivity.

Yes, it can help save space in an end-users mailbox, but the real benefits to your organization go along way beyond that.

Create a great strategy and start email archiving today!