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Email archiving has evolved over the years and today there are a host of vendors now offer products to meet this need. However all products are not the same. Some focus on vertical markets, while others are married closely to specific applications. Still others offer sophisticated search tools, while some vendors go for lightweight and inexpensive approaches.
Mail Archive Servers are programs which receive incoming mail messages, interpret them, and take action based on them. A large number of email servers support mail archiving. Some of the servers that are compatible with archiving purposes of emails are:
- Apple Internet Mail Server (formerly MailShare) (Version 1.0): a combination SMTP and POP server in a single package. It's small, free, works pretty well, and there is a mailing list that is fairly good at supporting email archiving.
- Almanac – Version 1.5.1b: This requires sendmail and gdbm facilities and can split files on user-defined size limit. Almanac also has good user & admin documentation.
- Clarkson: Clarkson has extremely good load-limiting properties. It is also nicely flexible with options for archiving, compressing, encoding and slicing messages. However, it cannot return several requested items, one item per mail message.
- DECWRL: Extremely easy to install, this is one of the best servers available. It is written with many shell scripts and a few AWK scripts and seldom overloads the server machine.
- Deliver (Version 2.1, patch level 10): Although this is not a full-fledged email archive server, it does support mail archiving. It uses a specific program to reroute incoming mail.
- Ftpmail (Version 1.23): It supports the HP/UX, SunOS, BSD 4.3, AIX (RS 6000), System 5.4 platforms and uses the Perl implementation language. It supports uuencode, mime, user selectable splitting, atob and is extremely easy for installing.
- KISS (Version 1.0): KISS is a 1 shell script, with a program that is user-supplied. It uses the BourneShell implementation language.
- ListProcessor (Version 6.0c): It uses the C language for implementation, along with some UNIX-kind shell scripts. It probably supports only the UNIX platform.
- Logix (Version 1.01): It uses the C implementation language and supports optional uuencoding that uses Dumas uuencode and this enables it to run the uudecode (Dumas version) on a multi-part complete mail file.
- MailServ (Version 1.4): It allows many users depending on the list. MailServ comes with the request server – this ensures that the users can access any files that are available for them; it also uses C as its implementation language.
- MailShare (Version 1.0b7): This software has been acquired by Apple and supports the Macintosh platform.
- Mailagent (Version 3.0): Being a mailagent program, it takes care of all incoming mails by applying a set of pre-defined rules.
- Majordomo (Version 1.92): Majordomo is more of a mailing-list manager than an archive server. Perl and C are its implementation languages, while it is supported by the UNIX platform.
- MReply (Version 1.6): Developed under SunOS 4.1.3, MReply uses the C language for implementation and is supported by UNIX. It has built-in uudecode, uuencode, shar, and splitmail functionalities and can be easily configured.
- NETLIB: This is rather hard to install since site-specific stuff not centralized in a configuration file.
- Procmail (Version 3.03): Generic UNIX (or any posix compliant OS) supports this software, with C (along with some UNIX-style shell scripts) as languages for implementation.
- Qdms (Version 1.0): It has certain shell functionalities, and uses the BourneShell implementation language. Qdms is a mailserver for cramped disks.
- Relcom (Version 1.2): Another rather simple archive server, Relcom uses the C implementation language.
- RNALIB (Version 2.2 beta-3): It is completely implemented in one bourne shell script apart from several data files. It has the BourneShell implementation language.
- The ServiceMail Toolkit, by Enterprise Integration: Supported by SunOS, Ultrix, (along with probably anything that supports Tcl), this uses the C and Tcl implementation languages.
- SmartList (Version 3.03): It uses C along with some UNIX-style shell scripts.
- Squirrel Mail Server (Version 3.1B): Squirrel Mail Server is a mail response program and uses the perl implementation language.
Servers used for archiving can also support multiple email systems. This feature could prove critical if a company has a number of email systems in use or more than one email server is present. Not every email archiving application is capable of handling multiple email servers. In this scenario, archives that use a messaging gateway should be opted for. In such a heterogeneous company environment, are far more flexible than those integrating directly with the mail system.
Organisations created as the result of corporate mergers generally require this type of archiving systems. However, historical reasons also play a part in their choice.
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