Ask HN:Alternative to archiving email on Gmail

3 points·isaacsu··3 comments

I've got my email setup in such a way that all my email gets sent to an everyday email account, as well as a "backup/archive" Gmail account where nothing gets deleted.

Gmail's search has been the one thing that's kept my email archive useful vs. a stack of mail files in a folder.

My question is, what email archive/backup setups to HN'ers have?

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I use gmail accounts so all my mail gets sent there first. Then I use POP3 to retrieve new messages as they arrive. I save the important downloaded messages in kmail on my desktop computer and I delete the rest locally. If I ever accidentally delete an important email locally I just login to the gmail web interface and retrieve a new copy.

It's a good system because it archives all my email on the gmail server first, saves copies of the important messages locally, and eliminates more than 99% of my SPAM so I never have to deal with it.

I'm interested in this too. The setup I'm running at the moment isn't optimal, and I've got a client that would like to have all of their email archived for compliance / contractual purposes, but can't use Postini or other third parties.

I've been playing with the idea of setting up a back-to-back email server rig, which should do the trick, but it's really inelegant.

IMAP or POP3 download into a desktop client, with rules to filter messages into local folders.

Do it in Thunderbird or another client that saves message folders in a decent format (IIRC, Thunderbird uses mbox, which is quite a common text format).

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