More and more customers are looking for ways to quickly and easily archive their emails in the cloud, rather than building their own email archiving solution. Why set up hardware and software, take care of operations, data backup, etc., when mail archiving in the cloud is available as a ready-made solution, worry-free, like electricity from the socket?

No commercial enterprise and no entrepreneur can avoid the obligation to archive emails in the company, at the latest since the final entry into force of the GoBD at the beginning of 2017. The demand for email archiving is constantly increasing. For many hosters and Internet Service Providers (ISPs), this offers great opportunities and potential for new and additional business. They are faced with the question of how they can successfully use this development for themselves.

Email archiving in the cloud

In the following, we show what opportunities email archiving in the cloud offers for hosters and ISPs and what options arise for you as a cloud provider.

What options are available to you as a provider of hosting and cloud solutions?

Option 1: You do nothing and wait.

This is undoubtedly the simplest option. But certainly also the worst of all the possibilities offered.

As a hoster or ISP, you are very likely to already operate hundreds, thousands or even tens of thousands of email mailboxes for your customers today. Email hosting is virtually part of your core business. You already have the competence to handle emails and mailboxes of your customers in-house.
Mail archiving now offers you the opportunity to offer additional functionality to your existing customers. You generate additional business with existing customers. Your commercial or entrepreneurial customers are legally obliged to archive their emails in accordance with the relevant requirements of GoBD, HGB and AO anyway. And you already operate the mailboxes of your customers.
Wouldn't it then be logical and consistent to also offer the corresponding archiving of your customers' emails? You have the opportunity to offer your customers the entire thematic spectrum of "email" directly and from a single source.

Of course, archiving emails requires permanent resources. In addition to the infrastructure, the existing know-how must also be expanded. Therefore, mail archiving may not be particularly close to you. This is understandable. However, archiving your customers' mailboxes is comparatively easy to implement. And you profile yourself to your customers as an "all-in-one" provider, solving their problem and challenge ("How do I do this with mail archiving?"). Furthermore, there is always the risk that your customers will switch to providers that offer mail archiving as an addition to their hosting packages, thus providing their customers with an all-inclusive package.

Option 2: You let the matter be handled

This is certainly better than doing nothing at all.

You look for a provider that operates mail archiving for you in hosting. You basically don't have to worry about anything. The setup and operation are not their concern. You participate via a brokerage commission, but otherwise have nothing to do with it. You may even be able to bring your own branding to a white-label-capable provider. At first glance, everything looks great.

But basically, you don't really have the matter in your own hands. You are dependent on your archiving provider. And you're also giving your customers a bit out of your hands.

What should stop your partner, i.e. the hoster of the mail archiving solution that you resell to your customers, from convincing your customers to switch to their own offers at some point? Email mailboxes are quickly migrated... What is the added value you then offer to your customers? What is special about your offer that distinguishes you from others, so that your customers remain your customers even then?

Option 3: You do it yourself!

This is the royal road!

The Benno MailArchiv Hosting Edition is the tool with which you can quickly and easily set up and implement mail archiving for your customers. You can flexibly adapt Benno MailArchiv to your needs and your infrastructure. With Benno MailArchiv, you can run thousands of tenants in parallel with any number of mailboxes to be archived per tenant on a single host. Via plugin-capable interfaces, you can easily integrate the administration and authentication of users into any provisioning or identity management system. LDAP & Co. are just a few of the numerous options available to you for provisioning.

As your infrastructure grows, Benno MailArchiv simply grows with it. Scale as needed in large and very large environments to meet your individual needs. Use Benno MailArchiv's white-label capabilities to provide your customers with a user experience in the colors of their own corporate identity (CI). Or, as a hoster, apply the colors and logo of your CI to present the mail archive to the customer as a seamless part of your hosting and cloud solutions.

Of course, the Benno MailArchiv REST API is also available to you in the hosting operation, with which you can search, find and display archived e-mails independently of the Benno MailArchiv WebApp and seamlessly integrate them into your own web applications (or those of the customer). Thanks to the right information at the right time in the right place, your customers' business processes can be optimized simply and specifically.

Location independence is indispensable today. With the fully responsive Benno MailArchiv WebApp, your customers can access their archived e-mails from anywhere in the world simply via smartphones, tablets, notebooks or PCs and find what they are looking for in seconds. Valuable information from the archived e-mails is thus available to your customers at any time and anywhere.

Access to the WebApp or the REST-API is naturally always and everywhere secured with SSL encryption.

Start your download of Benno MailArchiv and test all functions and features for 60 days free of charge, without obligation and without any restrictions.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Benno MailArchiv – securely archived, quickly found.