Cheap Web Host with EMail Archiving?

[captainfepa]

I am new here but forum SEARCH shows no existing threads for email archiving. I am looking for an inexpensive web hosting service for my independent home-based business (simple, basically static web-presence site; no e-commerce etc) that is easy to use and which provides an option for email archiving. I am required to archive a copy of all incoming and all outgoing emails for at least three years. Email sent out should automatically be copied as well as incoming, and the archived copies must remain even though I delete them from my active in-box. I should be able to manage the archive by deleting all old emails in groups by age after some years, and the emails must be retrievable for audits. I do not want to trust my own systems to store this data. Although many commercial email archiving services exist - mostly oriented toward larger firms - I do not see this as a frequent service option for very inexpensive web hosting service providers. I would prefer a single vendor for my email archiving and web hosting. Is this an unlikely combination of services?

 

[Artashes]

Hi captainfepa, welcome to the forum.

Your problem is very much like mine was a few months ago. I do receive a lot of emails. In fact, I receive too many. Email is the blood of my business. So I was faced with the same problem. I was using Outlook, but it would be very inefficient and slow with lots of emails. So I switched to Gmail completely and ever since I did, life has become a lot easier. Not only you can check your email from anywhere, you can really take control of your communication by tagging emails, filtering, and, yes, ARCHIVING them. Over 7 GB of space and counting. That's the thing with email - you can use any application to work with it.

However, that leaves website hosting only which you can take up with ANY provider without limitation, as long as you get your specific bandwidth and space requirements.

 

[captainfepa]

Thanks, Artashes

Thank you, Artashes, for suggesting gmail.com as an e-mail provider with ample storage space. In fact, I do use gmail personally. Beyond copious storage, however, I want protection from accidental deletion. I think that I want two processing streams for e-mail: one would be under my control; I could move e-mail to subfolders and/or delete it as might seem best for my own utility, as one normally uses e-mail. The second processing stream should be entirely separate from my control and would simply archive all (incoming and outgoing) e-mail in a searchable manner for use primarily by auditors who might want to see all e-mail in and out on any given day. That archive would need only rudimentary control: deletion of groups of e-mail by date after some years, and search capability for auditors. The controlling need for the archive is auditability.

I understand that Google has an email service (Postini) which it promotes in part for archiving. I have requested information from them but not yet received it. I still would prefer a single provider for both web hosting and e-mail archiving, as this would possibly simplify things for my assistant when I am unavailable.

 

[AlexWooServer]

Gmail surely is the best email service providers till the time. They have good amount of storage with them, they can be used very easily as well. So, this is the preferred one for sure.