Is your data legally defensible?
You’re juggling ever-growing data volumes while trying to meet strict regulatory standards like GDPR. It’s a constant, high-stakes balancing act.
The real challenge is that failing to archive data properly exposes your company to massive fines and serious legal risks that can cripple your budget.
According to Research and Markets, global data usage will hit 175 zettabytes by 2025. This data explosion makes manual archiving practically impossible and far too risky.
But the right software helps you automate defensible data storage. You can finally meet every compliance requirement without the constant stress and oversight.
If you’re dealing with diverse regulatory demands, my guide on best crypto compliance software can help.
In this guide, I’ll walk you through my picks for the best archiving software. These tools are specifically built to simplify compliance and reduce your storage costs.
You will discover a solution that fits your budget, secures your data for legal discovery, and frees up your valuable IT team resources.
Let’s get started.
Quick Summary:
| # | Software | Rating | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mimecast → | IT directors, enterprise | |
| 2 | Proofpoint → | IT directors, enterprise | |
| 3 | Barracuda Networks → | Mid-market IT directors | |
| 4 | Smarsh → | Mid-market companies | |
| 5 | Global Relay → | Regulated industries |
1. Mimecast
Struggling with data defensibility and spiraling costs?
Mimecast offers an Email Archive product to ensure email works and data is never lost, supporting regulatory compliance.
This means you can proactively support regulatory and corporate standards, addressing challenges like growing data volumes and compliance with standards such as GDPR or HIPAA. You’ll simplify data management with real-time insights.
It’s time for proactive data governance.
Mimecast’s Data Compliance & Governance solution helps you maintain defensible compliance. This includes an Email Archive product to ensure data is never lost, and an Aware Governance & Compliance Suite to simplify data management with real-time insights. You can manage internal and external data, addressing regulatory compliance use cases.
Additionally, Mimecast helps protect critical data and accelerate your response to insider threats with their Incydr Data Protection product, which addresses all forms of insider threats including IP loss and theft. This ensures your organization can meet crucial regulatory needs while reducing manual oversight.
The result: peace of mind and lower costs.
Key features:
- Email Archive: Ensures your email works and critical data is never lost, simplifying data management with real-time insights for your organization.
- Data Compliance & Governance: Proactively supports your regulatory and corporate standards, offering tools to manage internal and external data effectively.
- Incydr Data Protection: Protects your critical data and accelerates response to insider threats, addressing all forms of insider threats like IP loss and theft.
Learn more about Mimecast features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Mimecast stands out as a strong candidate for the best archiving software, offering robust solutions for data compliance and insider threat protection. Its Email Archive and Data Compliance & Governance features are ideal for IT directors needing to ensure defensible data and reduce costs by proactively meeting regulatory standards.
2. Proofpoint
Is your data defensible and cost-effective?
Proofpoint provides modern compliance and archiving solutions to manage risk and address your data retention needs effectively. This means you can confidently replace outdated systems.
You’ll gain comprehensive data security and governance to safeguard information and digital communications. This directly addresses your pain point of assessing whether solutions meet specific regulatory standards.
You can truly modernize your compliance and archiving.
Proofpoint helps you combat data loss and insider risk by preventing data loss from careless, malicious, or compromised users. This solution transforms your information protection with a human-centric, omni-channel approach, ensuring audit-ready storage for defensible compliance. It also scans over 21 trillion URLs per year and analyzes 3.4 trillion email messages annually, including stopping 124 million BEC attacks per month, which reduces manual oversight. Additionally, it contains SaaS and identity sprawl, allowing you to respond to account takeovers and understand your risk posture.
Protecting your people and data.
While we’re discussing data security and retention, if you’re also involved in gathering information, my guide on electronic data capture software might be useful.
Key features:
- Data Security & Governance: Safeguard your information and digital communications with a human-centric approach that addresses careless, malicious, or compromised user actions.
- Modern Compliance & Archiving: Manage risk and data retention needs effectively, providing a comprehensive solution to help you meet regulatory standards.
- Data & SaaS Security Posture: Contain identity sprawl and respond to account takeovers, helping you understand and improve your overall risk posture.
Learn more about Proofpoint features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Proofpoint offers a comprehensive human-centric security platform, making it a strong contender for the best archiving software. Its focus on data security, governance, and modern compliance capabilities directly addresses IT directors’ challenges in ensuring defensible data and reducing costs.
3. Barracuda Networks
Struggling with data compliance and overwhelming storage?
Barracuda Networks offers Cloud Archiving and Microsoft 365 Backup, directly addressing your escalating data volumes and regulatory needs. This means you can confidently tackle strict compliance requirements like GDPR or HIPAA, knowing your data is secured and easily retrievable. You can truly ensure defensible data and reduce costs.
What if compliance felt effortless?
BarracudaONE, their cybersecurity platform, provides comprehensive data protection. You can protect data on-site and in the cloud from accidental or malicious loss, including ransomware. This includes unlimited storage for Microsoft 365 and Entra ID backups, which directly supports your expanding email and data volumes. Their Data Inspector also scans your Microsoft 365 for sensitive data and malware, helping you reduce manual oversight and free up IT resources. This makes it easy to buy, deploy, and use.
Protect your data, on-site and in the cloud.
Key features:
- Cloud Archiving: Offers secure, audit-ready storage for your email and other critical data, simplifying compliance with various regulatory standards.
- Microsoft 365 Backup with Unlimited Storage: Provides comprehensive SaaS backup for Microsoft 365 and Entra ID, ensuring business continuity and preventing data loss.
- Data Inspector: Scans your Microsoft 365 environment for sensitive data and malware, helping you identify and mitigate risks to maintain data integrity.
Learn more about Barracuda Networks features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Barracuda Networks stands out as a strong contender for the best archiving software, particularly for mid-market IT directors. Its Cloud Archiving and Microsoft 365 Backup with unlimited storage directly resolve pain points like escalating data volumes and compliance burdens, making data defensible and reducing costs.
4. Smarsh
Are you struggling with data retention and compliance?
Smarsh helps you capture all your communications data in one centralized place, tackling the growing volume of digital interactions.
This means you can securely preserve data for critical business insights and meet your regulatory obligations, freeing up valuable IT resources.
It’s time to conquer your governance challenges.
Smarsh helps you realize the full power of your communications data with AI-driven innovation. You can respond with agility to conquer your digital communications governance challenges, identifying red flags across your organization’s vast communications data.
Their purpose-built solutions are designed for today’s variety of communication tools, unlike older archives. You can also search e-communications data and produce reports in real-time for litigation, early case assessment, or investigations. Additionally, Smarsh monitors employee conduct, intents, and actions using battle-tested AI and machine learning to safeguard your performance and reputation.
The result is confidence in your compliance.
If you’re also optimizing complex operational systems, my guide on Advanced Distribution Management System covers essential strategies for robust infrastructure.
Key features:
- Capture all communications: Securely captures communications across diverse channels, including mobile, social, and collaboration platforms, reducing the risk of missing critical data for compliance.
- AI-driven supervision: Leverages AI and machine learning to spot risks and identify red flags in vast communication data, helping you proactively manage compliance and conduct issues.
- Real-time discovery: Provides robust discovery tools that enable rapid searching of e-communications data and real-time report generation for legal, audit, and investigative purposes.
Learn more about Smarsh features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Smarsh stands out as a leading contender for the best archiving software, especially for mid-market companies navigating complex compliance. Its ability to capture billions of messages monthly across diverse channels, coupled with AI-driven supervision and real-time discovery, ensures defensible compliance and reduces the burden on your IT team.
5. Global Relay
Is your data truly defensible for compliance?
Global Relay helps you achieve compliance without compromise, offering a trusted archive to enrich, store, and manage your data effectively.
This means you can mitigate risk and stay ahead of evolving regulation with solutions that put compliance at the heart of your business communications.
It’s time for compliant communication.
Global Relay is an end-to-end solution for compliant communications, from a collaborative messaging app to a powerful cloud archive. They offer connectors to capture communications from any channel, integrating diverse data sources.
Their AI-powered, cloud archive is designed to meet the strict record-keeping requirements of heavily regulated industries. Plus, their surveillance features provide proactive supervision and risk management, leveraging AI-assisted data classification and full escalation workflows.
Additionally, Global Relay simplifies the process of getting compliant communications right the first time, consolidating third-party reliance. You can also securely migrate your existing data to their private cloud archive with their data migration services, ensuring a smooth transition.
The result: a secure, reliable solution for your data.
While we’re discussing data, understanding how to illuminate your data for growth, like with ecommerce analytics tools, is equally important.
Key features:
- Comprehensive Data Capture: Connectors capture data from any communication channel, including mobile, voice, and trade data, ensuring full compliance.
- AI-Powered Archiving: Their cloud archive uses AI and machine learning to enrich, store, and manage your data, meeting stringent record-keeping needs.
- Proactive Surveillance: Intelligent surveillance capabilities with AI-assisted data classification and audit reports help you detect risks across all communications.
Learn more about Global Relay features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Global Relay stands out as a strong contender for the best archiving software, particularly for regulated industries like finance and government. With its AI-powered archive, comprehensive data connectors, and 24/7 support for over 20,000 customers, it ensures defensible data and streamlined compliance for your organization.
6. ZL Tech
Struggling with unmanageable enterprise data and compliance?
ZL Tech offers a singular platform for eDiscovery, Compliance, and Information Governance, helping you regain control.
This enables your organization to effectively manage vast amounts of unstructured data, uncovering its true business value.
Here’s a better way to manage enterprise data.
ZL Tech introduces a unified platform, bringing unstructured data under control for real-time business intelligence.
You can search, identify, and cull emails, files, and Microsoft ecosystem data for eDiscovery and privacy regulations, while enforcing retention and compliance policies to defensibly delete documents.
Additionally, the platform captures key insights into your workforce and business through on-the-fly analytics of enterprise communications and documents, allowing you to govern data by aligning policies for all functions using both in-place and selective archiving.
You can truly leverage your enterprise data.
Key features:
- Unified Information Governance: Delivers a singular platform for eDiscovery, compliance, and information governance, ensuring control over electronic communications and documents.
- Comprehensive Data Management: Offers the ability to search, enforce retention policies, and capture insights across various data sources, including Microsoft Office 365, Teams, and email.
- In-Place and Cloud Versatility: Provides flexible deployment options via cloud, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments, analyzing data at high speeds without needing to copy or move it.
Learn more about ZL Tech features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: ZL Tech stands out as a strong contender for the best archiving software, particularly for mid-market companies facing complex compliance and data management challenges. Its unified platform, robust analytics, and multi-petabyte deployment capabilities, trusted by Fortune 500 companies, address your critical needs for defensible data, reduced costs, and streamlined information governance.
7. Jatheon
Struggling with data compliance and overwhelming regulatory demands?
Jatheon offers AI-enabled data archiving to simplify compliance, supervision, and ediscovery. This means you can easily safeguard critical communications.
With Jatheon, you can automate data retention policies to improve information governance, preventing data loss or corruption, which is vital for defensible data.
It’s time to simplify your archiving strategy.
Jatheon offers both cloud and on-premise solutions, giving you flexible deployment options to fit your organization’s specific needs, regardless of size or industry. Their platform captures email, social media, text messages, chat applications like WhatsApp and Microsoft Teams, and even files, all from a single interface. This helps you maintain full HIPAA, FINRA, SEC, and other regulatory compliance, ensuring all your data is securely stored in a WORM-compliant format for legal defensibility. Additionally, you can monitor keywords to proactively detect company policy violations and simplify responding to ediscovery and FOIA requests, saving valuable time and resources.
The result is streamlined data management.
Before diving deeper, you might find my analysis of best data mining tools helpful for leveraging your archived data.
Key features:
- Comprehensive Data Capture: Archives diverse communication types including email, social media, text messages, chat apps, and files from a single, unified interface.
- Automated Compliance & Governance: Enables defining retention policies, setting deletion schedules, and monitoring communications to ensure adherence to industry regulations and prevent data leakage.
- Simplified Ediscovery & Retrieval: Provides powerful advanced search capabilities, legal hold application, and audit logs to quickly retrieve information and prove data authenticity for legal cases.
Learn more about Jatheon features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Jatheon stands out as a leading contender for best archiving software, particularly for mid-market companies in regulated industries like healthcare and finance. Its robust AI-enabled archiving capabilities, flexible deployment, and comprehensive compliance features streamline operations, as evidenced by user testimonials highlighting quick data retrieval for legal requests and strong customer support.
8. Archive360
Struggling with scattered data and compliance headaches?
Archive360 offers a cloud-based modern archiving platform designed to integrate with your existing data ecosystem. This means you can compliantly capture all data types from a wide range of sources.
The platform provides robust data onboarding, classification, and organization capabilities. You’ll gain policy-driven management of data lifecycle risk and value, which helps automate retention and deletion.
Here’s how Archive360 helps you take control.
You can onboard, classify, and organize your data with powerful automation for retention and deletion processes, all while maintaining a full audit trail. Additionally, Archive360’s native interfaces make it easy to search, retrieve, and export data. This includes policy-driven access controls at the file and field-level.
Plus, the platform strengthens and simplifies compliance by providing a single solution for various data requirements, from ingestion to storage. The result is a detailed audit trail and trustworthy data for AI and analytics, ensuring efficiency, security, and compliance.
Your archive, your advantage.
Key features:
- Unified Data Governance: Provides consistent legal, regulatory, and operational data compliance across all data types and multiple systems, simplifying adherence to complex requirements.
- AI-Ready Data Management: Categorizes and verifies trusted data at scale, ensuring your AI and analytics initiatives are fueled by reliable, secure, and previously inaccessible information.
- Automated Data Lifecycle: Offers policy-based management for data retention and retirement, reducing storage costs, bolstering security, and ensuring compliance for inactive data.
Learn more about Archive360 features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Archive360 provides a defensible approach to data governance, making it a strong contender for the best archiving software. Its unified compliance, AI-ready data capabilities, and automated policy-driven management directly address IT directors’ needs for regulatory adherence and cost reduction.
9. Commvault
Struggling with data compliance and overwhelming storage?
You need a solution that simplifies data retention tasks and secures your data across all environments, including cloud and SaaS. This means you can easily manage growing email and data volumes.
Commvault offers a platform for continuous data security, readiness, and recovery, helping you safeguard sensitive information and meet regulatory requirements.
Achieve total cyber resilience.
Commvault helps you secure your data, wherever it lives, across enterprise, cloud, and SaaS. Its platform offers continuous data security, including risk scanning, threat hunting, and compliance features, ensuring your data is always protected and audit-ready.
You can also recover your business up to 10x faster with automated recovery and rebuilding of cloud applications and environments. Plus, it offers cleanroom recovery for testing and forensics, ensuring you can restore clean data from anywhere to anywhere. Commvault also handles high-risk data for regulated industries like government and healthcare, providing robust solutions for compliance and data management.
This gives you the confidence to restore critical operations quickly.
Key features:
- Continuous Data Security: Gain capabilities like risk scanning, threat hunting, and compliance checks to find, classify, and protect sensitive data across your entire data estate.
- Rapid Cloud Recovery: Automate the full recovery and rebuilding of cloud applications and environments, enabling you to get back up and running up to 10x faster with Cloud Rewind.
- Identity Resilience: Automatically recover Active Directory and granular Entra ID in minutes, ensuring identity infrastructure resilience and maintaining business continuity.
Learn more about Commvault features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Commvault provides a robust solution for IT directors seeking the best archiving software, offering comprehensive data protection, rapid recovery, and continuous compliance. Its ability to automate full cloud restores and secure diverse workloads makes it ideal for maintaining defensible data and reducing operational costs for growing organizations.
Conclusion
Data compliance shouldn’t be a constant battle.
I know choosing the right tool is tough. You’re balancing complex regulatory demands with tight budgets while trying to replace outdated, risky systems.
Making the wrong choice isn’t just an IT headache. It exposes your entire company to massive fines and serious legal risks, putting a major strain on your resources and reputation.
Here is what I would recommend.
From my experience reviewing these platforms, Mimecast provides the most complete solution for ensuring your data is always defensible and compliant under pressure.
What I love is how their Email Archive ensures data is never lost, simplifying governance. The best archiving software like this one removes the guesswork from your compliance strategy.
I suggest you visit the Mimecast website to see how its platform can secure your organization’s most critical communication data.
You’ll finally achieve peace of mind.
