Alternative to Proofpoint Essentials Email Archive
Jennifer Marsh
Data protection laws and regulations have added stringent requirements mandating the holding of communication-based information. Legislation like FINRA, Sarbanes Oxley (SOX), and GDPR expect covered entities to maintain a secure record of all email communications. These regulatory requirements, including financial, legal, and health, impact many industries. However, the obligation to show evidence during a legal dispute means that all businesses should retain copies of messages. A cloud archiving solution, like ArcTitan and Proofpoint Essentials Email Archive, performs the secure archiving of emails. Email archiving solutions ensure that email records are retained for a specified time and that these records are retrievable. Cloud-based archive systems are available for organizations of all sizes, including even the smallest companies. These email archives are designed to meet regulatory compliance, respond to legal needs, reduce storage costs, and enhance data security.
As email and collaboration applications generate enormous amounts of sensitive corporate and personal data, choosing the right cloud-archiving solution is essential. Here, we look at Proofpoint Essentials Email Archive, an add-on to Proofpoint Essentials Pro email security solution. We compare its features and pricing against TitanHQ ArcTitan.
Get started with TitanHQ's robust Email Archiving Solution.
Did You Know?
search limits with ArcTitan
saving on email storage space
item export limit
emails sent and received daily by 2026
What is Cloud Archiving, and Why is it Important?
Cloud archiving provides a secure service for comprehensive archive functionality. Emails and often other communication data are held in a safe and secure place for a specified time. During this time, the archive can be searched to retrieve any relevant communications and emails required to deal with a legal dispute. Reports can be generated to demonstrate compliance with regulations like GDPR or FINRA. The cloud archive must perform accurate and fast search and retrieval while remaining secure. Cloud archive solutions must handle all data types, including unstructured data like emails and messages. Messages are typically automatically sent to a centralized data center where they are securely stored; accessing and retrieving these messages is a core function.
The centralization of a cloud archive service allows data from across multiple enterprise endpoints to be collated, making it easier to manage, maintain, and control access to the data.
Companies use cloud archiving for compliance or legal reasons. Regulations such as FINRA (Financial Industry Regulatory Authority) SEC Rule 17a-4, GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), and SOX (Sarbanes Oxley) require organizations to keep electronic communication archives.
A managed service provider (MSP) can deliver email archiving as a service on behalf of enterprise clients. This delivery model makes deployment, management, and maintenance easier and more cost-effective.
Core Features of Cloud Archiving
Unlimited Email and Other Communications Storage
Unlimited storage is a must-have requirement of an archiving solution. As such, a centralized archive database should scale to handle the vast number of emails and related data that organizations generate daily. This data must also be accessible anytime and from any location. However, searches must be secure and access controlled so that only authorized individuals are allowed access. Solutions like Exchange Server or Office 365 mailboxes have storage limits, and costs increase as more storage is required. Cloud archiving solutions like ArcTitan save up to 80% on email storage space.
Ease of Retrieval During Litigation
Legal disputes or regulatory requirements often require fast access to stored records, often within a specified timeframe. Email search and retrieval must be accurate but also quick. Cloud archiving allows data to be easily and quickly retrieved. Cloud archiving solutions, like ArcTitan, provide comprehensive and accurate eDiscovery.
Centralized Access and Management
Centralized access and management of a cloud archive service are why access to stored emails, attachments, and metadata is fast. The ability to generate reports is also an essential part of regulatory and legal compliance. A swath of regulations, like GDPR and FINRA, requires data records to be kept securely but be accessible under certain conditions (e.g., the GDPR right to erasure). Regulations may specify retention periods that email archive systems must adhere to. Centralized management provides capabilities like legal holds and adjustable retention times.
Scalability
Centralized cloud archiving solutions are highly scalable and require no on-premises hardware.
Security
Cloud archiving solutions must ensure that stored data is always accessible but secure. Encryption must be end-to-end (E2EE) and enforced during data transfer and storage. Secure access to the stored communications must be based on the principle of least privilege permissions. This is achieved by applying robust authentication and authorization policies.
Both ArcTitan and Proofpoint Essentials Email Archive provide these essential features, including cost, compatibility with varying environments, storage savings, and what experienced customers think about a product impact evaluation.
Proofpoint Essentials Email Archive and TitanHQ ArcTitan both provide archiving capabilities. However, your exact needs will determine which you choose.
Get started with TitanHQ's robust Email Archiving Solution.
At a Glance: Proofpoint Essentials Email Archive vs TitanHQ ArcTitan
Feature
Support for an extensive range of file formats/mail servers
Proofpoint Essentials Email Archive
Proofpoint supports Exchange 2010, 2013, and 2016 and Office 365. Integration is with MS Exchange only. Not suitable for Google Workspace.
TitanHQ ArcTitan
Yes, it is API-based to connect to apps. Channels, including emails, Microsoft Teams, Slack, Google Workspace, etc., can be used to search the archive. Search inside attachment types, including Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF, RTF, ZIP, tar, gz, etc
Feature
Import existing emails to archive
Proofpoint Essentials Email Archive
Legacy data can be self-imported into the archive at no added charge. Proofpoint supports zipped EML files up to 80Gb and Exchange-exported PST files up to 10Gb. Requires an import request ticket to be generated; it manages the import of existing emails.
TitanHQ ArcTitan
Automated import using the Mailbox Reader feature, which downloads existing emails and makes them available in your archive. No added charge. Can import existing archive data from MS Exchange, Google Apps, EML, MBOX, MSG, or PST.
Feature
Speed of archive, search, and retrieve
Proofpoint Essentials Email Archive
100-50,000 mailboxes/ 10 cases X 20 searches = 0.18 hours
TitanHQ ArcTitan
ArcTitan load performance is for more than 200 emails per second from the email server. Specific channels such as Email or Microsoft Teams can be searched by including or excluding certain keywords, recipients, and date ranges.
Feature
Export limits
Proofpoint Essentials Email Archive
Only 100K messages can be exported at a time. If your search results exceed 100,000 messages, additional search parameters are needed.
TitanHQ ArcTitan
There are no search limits, and 50,000 item export limits (can be exceeded via support)
Feature
Automated archiving of emails
Proofpoint Essentials Email Archive
Yes, it is an automated archive of emails through Microsoft Exchange.
TitanHQ ArcTitan
All sent and received mail is automatically archived
Feature
MSP delivery model supported
Proofpoint Essentials Email Archive
Yes
TitanHQ ArcTitan
Yes, including marketing support and rebranding
Feature
Encryption during transit and storage
Proofpoint Essentials Email Archive
Yes
TitanHQ ArcTitan
Yes
Feature
Dedicated data loss prevention protection layer
Proofpoint Essentials Email Archive
Yes
TitanHQ ArcTitan
Yes
Feature
Tamper-proof archiving
Proofpoint Essentials Email Archive
Tamper-proof archiving of emails.
TitanHQ ArcTitan
No content is editable, and deletion requires authorization by a data guardian. Encryption and hashing are used for protection.
Feature
PST files removed
Proofpoint Essentials Email Archive
Eliminates the need for PST files.
TitanHQ ArcTitan
Eliminates the need for PST files automatically. Reduces the load on your mail servers.
Feature
Storage space savings
Proofpoint Essentials Email Archive
Reduces storage costs, statistics unknown
TitanHQ ArcTitan
Saves up to 80% on email storage space. For example, reducing 1,000 GBs to 200 GBs Reduces storage costs. No limits on email storage.
Feature
White-label branding available for MSPs
Proofpoint Essentials Email Archive
Yes
TitanHQ ArcTitan
Yes, built for MSP requirements
Feature
Meets regulations
Proofpoint Essentials Email Archive
Yes, can be used to meet multiple regulations that impact data retention, security, and availability, including FINRA record compliance.
TitanHQ ArcTitan
Yes, can be used to meet multiple regulations that impact data retention, security, and availability, including FINRA record compliance.
Feature
On-site hardware required?
Proofpoint Essentials Email Archive
No
TitanHQ ArcTitan
No
Feature
Support
Proofpoint Essentials Email Archive
Included in the cost of a full Proofpoint Essentials Pro license.
TitanHQ ArcTitan
Included in the cost of the ArcTitan license.
Feature
Awards: Expert Insights
Proofpoint Essentials Email Archive
Number 9 ranked
TitanHQ ArcTitan
Number 1 ranked
Top Email Archiving Solution for businesses - Expert Insights.
Features of Proofpoint Essentials Email Archive and ArcTitan
The following core areas should be evaluated when choosing between Proofpoint Essentials Email Archive and ArcTitan.
Proofpoint Email Archive is not a dedicated archive solution and is only available as part of the Proofpoint Essentials Pro license package, which includes email security.
ArcTitan can be used as a standalone or unified solution alongside TitanHQ PhishTitan and SpamTitan for comprehensive email security and archiving.
Archiving and Retrieval
Proofpoint Essentials Email Archive
- Automated archive and backup - offsite
- Based on Microsoft Exchange Journaling
- Archives emails from supported email servers only (Microsoft)
- Reduces storage - statistics unknown
ArcTitan
- Scalable cloud data store
- Full journaling
- Archives email messages and attachments; archiving is automated so that all sent and received emails are instantly stored in the cloud repository.
- Provides a Microsoft Outlook 365 add-in
- Can be used to eliminate PST files.
- Reduces storage needs by 80%
eDiscovery and Search
Proofpoint Essentials Email Archive
- Granular retention policies to reflect compliance requirements.
- Legal hold requests.
- Search is fast and configurable. No stats are available on limits.
- Full audit trail and journaling
ArcTitan
- Retention policies are highly granular and customizable to reflect compliance requirements.
- Support customizable legal hold requests - vital for many legal disputes.
- Search is extremely fast and highly configurable. In a test to find 2000 items from 10 mailboxes, ArcTitan took less than one second to retrieve the emails.
- There are no search limits, and 50,000 item export limits (can be exceeded via support)
- Full audit trail and journaling
Security
Proofpoint Essentials Email Archive
- AES 256-bit encryption is used at rest, and TLS encryption is used for messages that are in transit.
- Users and groups can be synced via Active Directory (AD) Sync or Azure AD Sync tools.
- Windows single sign-on authentication
- Anti-virus scanning performed on email access.
- Disaster recovery.
ArcTitan
- AES 256-bit encryption is used at rest, and TLS encryption is used for messages that are in transit.
- Permission-based access to controls to enforce least privilege access to archived data.
- Data integrity assured: Content is not editable, and deletion requires authorization by a data guardian.
- Passwords are hashed and encrypted
- Handles certificate management
- Antivirus scanning performed on emails.
- Active Directory and basic authentication for remote browser access.
- LDAP, Google, and iMail authentication are supported.
- Windows single sign-on authentication (NTLM v2)
- Disaster recovery.
Management and Delivery
- Proofpoint Essentials Email Archive
- Cloud-based, so easy to deploy and manage.
- Integrates with Active Directory and LDAP
- Deliverable by an MSP.
ArcTitan
- Cloud-based, so easy to deploy and manage.
- Integrates with Active Directory and LDAP
- Ideal for delivery by an MSP.
Legal and Standards Compliant?
Proofpoint Essentials Email Archive
- Journaling to demonstrate completeness
- Tamper-proof storage and exports
- Legal hold
- Logging
- Meets email archiving regulations like GDPR, HIPAA, SOX, FINRA
- Potential to digitally sign an export of archived messages to the file system if the EML or MSG format is used.
- Modifiable retention policies.
ArcTitan
- Ensures you are GDPR, HIPAA, SOX, FINRA compliant for email retention and auditing.
- Define your retention policies to fit your regulatory and compliance needs
- Indexed journal envelopes are displayable
- Extensive journal reporting exportable as PDF or TIFF
- Use tags to group emails into sets and retrieve on-demand
- Prevent deletion of sensitive emails with your retention policies for your legal hold requirements
- Archives digitally signed and verified.
- Tamper-proof storage and retrieval.
- Modifiable retention policies.
Get started with TitanHQ's robust Email Archiving Solution.
Pricing
Proofpoint Essentials Email Archive Pricing
It must be purchased as part of the Proofpoint Essentials Pro Package, including other capabilities like email security.
- Professional PP-ESS-PRO Includes Advanced Package features and email archiving
- $5.86 per active user per month 100 users’ annual cost = $7,031
Additional charges for Proofpoint Essentials Pro Email Archive:
Archive Data Import PP-PST-ESS-AI Charge for all data imported. GB $3.00
Imported Data Management Fee PP-PST-ESSADMA Monthly charge for imported data over the 2 GB per user included with each import and charged from the date of import until the expiration of the retention period. GB per month $0.40.
ArcTitan Service Pricing
- For a medium-sized business with 100 users, the annual cost = is $4,800.00
- Pricing drops as the number of users purchased increases.
- Educational discounts available.
- ArcTitan pricing includes full technical support.
Proofpoint Essentials Email Archive
$5.86 per active user per month 100 users’ annual cost = $7,031
ArcTitan
For a medium-sized business with 100 users, the annual cost = is $4,800.00
Why Companies Choose ArcTitan
- ArcTitan was voted a top email archiving solution by Expert Insights.
- ArcTitan is one of the best six email archiving solutions by NameHero.
- Top five email archiving solutions 2024 by 6sense.
- ArcTitan is one of the best email archiving solutions by Geekflare.
- Best email archiving to try in 2024 by ShareArchiver.
Analysis of Proofpoint Essentials Email Archive and TitanHQ ArcTitan based on user reviews
G2.
Proofpoint Essentials Email Archive
Pros
It has made the lives of administrators and customers easy. The UI is very user-friendly and easy to use. Searches are very quick, and emails get archived without any issues. [1]
Cons
The interface isn
Pros
As an administrator tasked with managing archiving, our experience has been largely positive, albeit with a few areas of improvement. What has worked well has been their "Robust Archiving Capabilities," their "User-Friendly Interface,". [3]
Cons
Duplicates are visible in the archive. Sometimes support takes a long time to respond. Some users think it
Pros
Each user has access to their archives. It allows a user to find deleted emails without requiring IT to find them. The analytics part looks nice, but you have to pay extra for that. [5]
Cons
In the 7+ years that we have been using the system, several outages have prevented our clients from receiving email. In some cases, the email was not just delayed but permanently lost. Attachment scanning can take longer than expected… [6]
TitanHQ ArcTitan Email Archiving
Pros
Allows us to store our email securely. Easy to use and can be quickly set up. Can be used for business, education, and MSP
Cons
It was not straightforward to assign different email accounts to other users. Also, having to switch accounts to privileged to do a full archive search could be handled a little better. [2]
Pros
ArcTitan is Fast, scalable, and very easy to operate. It has all the email archiving requirements/features a company needs. ArcTitan email archive has been the most effective solution; there is no storage limitation. ArcTitan takes automatic backups. [3]
Cons
The setup took a little longer than we liked. [4]
Pros
ArcTitan has high data privacy and security standards, with encrypted copies of every email. The application is easy to set up and has amazing features, such as Automatic backup, Backup management, Microsoft Outlook integration, etc. [5]
Cons
The GUI is a bit dated. I think the search interface could do with a refresh, but apart from that, it
- [1] Testimonial, [2] Capterra, [3] G2, [4] Getapp, [5] Testimonial, [6] Sourceforge.
Get Started with ArcTitan Email Archiving Solution
ArcTitan is Easy to Set Up and Cost Effective! Our support team will work with your IT staff or service provider to get your email securely duplicating your emails to ArcTitan
- We provide step by step instructions for configuring your email server to duplicate your emails, or
- We can work with your IT department or email service provider directly to manage deployment for you.
- Set and forget - once your email server is configured there is nothing more to worry about.
- Free demo - so you can be sure that everything works as expected, and is easy to use.
To learn more about the type of email archiving needed for litigation, talk to a TitanHQ expert.
Jennifer Marsh
- DATA PROTECTION
- EMAIL ARCHIVING
- COMPLIANCE
Talk to our Team today
What is Proofpoint Essentials Email Archive?
Proofpoint Essentials Email Archive is an add-on solution to Proofpoint Essentials Pro mail security solution. The Proofpoint Archive is a dedicated Microsoft integration compatible with Exchange 2010, 2013, and 2016 and Office 365. The Proofpoint Archive is tightly integrated with Microsoft Exchange, leveraging its in-built journaling. Archiving of inbound and outbound emails is automated; existing emails can be archived manually in cooperation with Proofpoint. Retention policies are adjustable and granular, allowing alignment with regulatory requirements. Any company of any size can use Proofpoint Essentials Email Archive to achieve the data protection and accessibility requirements of various regulations like FINRA and GRDR.
What is ArcTitan Archive?
ArcTitan from TitanHQ is a cloud-based corporate communications archive. ArcTitan can be used with TitanHQ’s email security products, PhishTitan and SpamTitan, or can be purchased as a standalone product. ArcTitan can archive many communications, including email and Microsoft Teams messages, and works with Google Workspace. ArcTitan works across all common operating systems. The archive is secure and based on AES encryption and TLS (Transport Layer Security) to secure data as it is transferred to the archive, stored, and retrieved. Access controls are robust, and ArcTitan integrates with existing corporate directors like Active Directory. ArcTitan complies with various data security and privacy regulations, including FINRA, GDPR, and SOX. ArcTitan is built for delivery by an MSP.
Why Use an Email and Message Archive?
Many laws and regulations require email and other corporate messages to be secured and made available under certain circumstances. For example, the UK Data Protection Act (DPA) requires companies to retrieve data at an individual's request. In the EU, the GDPR has a requirement to quickly remove held data, including emails, under the “right to erasure.” Other regulations like FINRA and SEC Rule 17a-4 require financial services organizations to keep an archive of their electronic communications, including email.
Who Can Access a Cloud-Based Archive?
Only authorized persons may access a cloud-based archive. Robust authentication and authorization rules are enforced when anyone attempts to access the archive. In some advanced email archives, like ArcTitan, single-sign-on (SSO) can be deployed to help balance usability with security. Some cloud-based email archive services support highly granular access policies to ensure that the service's administration is secure and performed under the rules of least privilege permissions.
Is Email Archiving the Same as Data Backups?
Email archiving is different from backing up emails. Email archives and email backups have different use cases. The main difference between the two are:
Backups create duplicate copies of current data, such as emails, to facilitate recovery after an attack, such as a ransomware attack.
An email archive is designed for long-term storage of searchable and retrievable emails. It needs configurable search and retrieval policies and robust security to meet various data protection, legal, and accessibility regulations.
Email backups are essential for disaster recovery and business continuity. Emails stored in a backup repository are quickly restored if a system fails or data loss occurs.
Email archives are designed for long-term data retention (often many years), compliance, and record-keeping. They may need to be quickly and accurately queried and filtered to answer a legal dispute. The integrity of email in an archive is essential. Retention and security policies must align with regulatory requirements.
Both email backups and archive systems require security as a central consideration. Stored data is a potential target for cybercriminals. Encryption must be end-to-end and deployed during storage and transit to protect backed-up and archived emails. Access control measures for the store must be based on the principle of least privilege. Regular security audits must be carried out to align protection with the latest security threats.