They Sound Similar—But Serve Different Purposes
Cloud archiving is designed for long-term, unalterable storage that supports compliance, discovery, and audit-readiness.
Email backup, on the other hand, is intended for short-term recovery in the event of data loss, corruption, or ransomware.
Both are essential—but for very different reasons.
What Archiving Protects You From
Email archiving ensures that all communications are captured in real time, stored securely, and remain searchable. This is critical for industries subject to regulatory requirements, legal discovery, or client data preservation mandates.
It’s not just about storage—it’s about retention policies, searchability, and defensibility.
What Backup Protects You From
Backups are your insurance policy against accidental deletion, account compromise, and disaster scenarios. If an employee deletes an inbox, or a ransomware attack encrypts mailboxes, backup allows you to restore data quickly and fully.
Without it, recovery becomes expensive—or impossible.
One Doesn’t Replace the Other
Some organizations assume that if they have a backup, they don’t need archiving—or vice versa. That’s a costly mistake. Backups don’t meet compliance standards for record immutability. Archives don’t offer full mailbox restoration.
You need both systems working in tandem to ensure both recoverability and accountability.
Microsoft 365 Doesn’t Cover This Automatically
Many companies using Microsoft 365 believe their email is fully protected out of the box. It isn’t. While Microsoft offers some built-in options, they are often not configured, limited in scope, or difficult to manage at scale.
Cloudstar offers managed Microsoft 365 protection that includes both archiving and backup options tailored to your business.
Not Sure What You Have? We’ll Tell You—Free.
Cloudstar offers a no-cost review of your current email infrastructure. We’ll help you identify what you have, what you need, and how to close the gaps before they become liabilities.
Schedule your free review today.