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I'm looking for a 3rd party hosted software-as-a-service (saas) email archiving service that does not require me to host my email with them.

Is anyone aware of any?

Howiecamp
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    How, then, would the email _get_ there? – Michael Hampton Feb 14 '13 at 20:49
  • So basically you want a backup? – Lucas Kauffman Feb 14 '13 at 20:50
  • And logically, what legal relevance would that have if you could just suppress messages? Seriously, this is a case of "think about what you ask for". Archive Services are often used for / due to SOX (Sarbanes Oxley) and MUST be legally failsave. I.e. you can proove you did not manipulate them. – TomTom Feb 14 '13 at 20:50
  • @MichaelHampton - Inbound email would get there by having your MX records point to the provider. Spam services do it this way. Outbound email would get there by you specifying a smart host in your smtp server configuration. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_host, "A smart host is a type of email message transfer agent which allows an SMTP server to route email to an intermediate mailserver rather than directly to the recipient’s server." – Howiecamp Feb 14 '13 at 20:52
  • @LucasKauffman - I want features such as provided by http://www.rackspace.com/apps/email_hosting/email_archiving/ and many others. – Howiecamp Feb 14 '13 at 20:53
  • @TomTom - Your comment is completely irrelevant and off topic. A core tenet of this site is answer the question, don't pass value judgements on the question or make assumptions. There are many services out there that provide archiving and many companies that use archiving services for all the right reasons, so I am not understanding your point about manipulating them. That's pretty obvious. – Howiecamp Feb 14 '13 at 20:55
  • To those voting up Michael's question, I've provided the answer. – Howiecamp Feb 14 '13 at 20:57
  • @Howiecamp While you're telling people they're off-topic, note that shopping questions are too. – ceejayoz Feb 14 '13 at 20:58
  • @ceejayoz - What does shopping questions mean? – Emilio Feb 14 '13 at 20:59
  • Lucas: He wants archiving. Backup and archiving are different. – Emilio Feb 14 '13 at 21:01
  • Both Symantec and McAfee offer such an SaaS if you run Exchange on-premise – TheCleaner Feb 14 '13 at 21:01
  • All - The OP's question seems perfectly legit to me. – Emilio Feb 14 '13 at 21:03
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    @Emilio - except that shopping questions are against the rules and will be closed as "Not Constructive". – TheCleaner Feb 14 '13 at 21:05
  • @TheCleaner - ah ok. Well at least he got his answer. – Emilio Feb 14 '13 at 21:07

1 Answers1

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Yes, there are.

It works exactly the same way as hosted spam filtering. You change your MX record to point to their servers, and give them the IP address(es) of your real mail servers.

Mail from the internet goes to them, gets archived/filtered, and is sent on to your mail server.

Outgoing mail can be archived the same way, by using their servers as a smarthost in your mail server.

However, typically a setup like this will only cover external email, not mail sent to other users on your mail system. Some mail systems have ways to set up sending all local email to an external server first, or sending a copy there. The specifics will very depending on what platform your email is hosted on.

As to who provides such a service - that's a shopping question and off topic. But it can be done.

Grant
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