Why archive mailboxes?

[#1]

If someone is teetering on the edge and pushes the warnings to the limit and then does a massive housekeeping job (pushes loads into the trash can) the automated clean up needs at least 8 days to empty the trash can. That window is enough to be caught on the enough is enough last chance archive.

Returning to your question - another alternative is to apply the hard limit strategy used on the legacy brands. No archiving but when the mailbox is full you cannot receive nor send until action is taken.

[#2]

OK, I accept that it may be possible to be close to the limit and trash hasn't yet been emptied.

Stopping the receipt of more mails seems a better option to me.

By archiving the mailbox you simply prevent the user from deleting e-mails for a couple of days until the mailbox is restored - it is then still as large as it was before it was archived until they delete stuff.

At the end of the day it doesn't matter to me - I don't use it. I was just interested in learning something of the rationale that made it seem like a good idea.

[#3]

Not sure it’s a good idea in the slightest - I suspect that someone thought it pragmatic. I doubt that anything is moved offline to tape theses days … but I can imagine that backs might be held on slower near online platforms allowing the limited better performing storage to be shared amongst the user base.

Whatever I doubt we will see changes anytime soon. If there were capacity for change, I’d prefer that the effort were put into sorting the SPAM management challenges.