Mailbox Space Limits are a necessary feature of email systems these days and have been around for over 20 years now. I’ve been an email administrator since 1995 and it surprises me to no end the number of companies that don’t (both intentionally and unintentionally) enable this setting.
In almost all of the cases, it comes down to people in positions of power that do not understand technology or the costs of allowing email to exist without managing it. They also typically bow to pressure from other employees below them that are also not tech-savvy or just plain afraid of technology. I’ll get to some of the common arguments later.
These are also the same people who are constantly running out of space in their mailbox and asking IT for more. They are unorganized disasters waiting to happen in most cases. They can’t manage their time or responsibilities, let alone organize their email. And they love to lash out at everyone for their short-comings, blaming everyone else for their problems. These same people don’t believe there are actual limits to how big a mailbox can be but all software has physical limits that it can support.
There are limits to the system
Every mail system has a limit as to how big mailboxes can get. In the early 2000s, that was around 2GB for many systems. Anything larger just invited corruption to the database. At the time that was more than sufficient since most emails were less than 100KB in size including attachments.
These days, the databases are more robust but still have limits. For Microsoft Outlook, it is 20GB per mailbox if using Exchange mail on premise (local server). If using Microsoft’s 365 cloud services, depending on your plan, it can vary at 50GB or 100GB max per mailbox. These are the absolute maximums. That is still not enough for some that are incapable of managing or refuse to manage their mailbox but that doesn’t mean mailbox space limits are not necessary.
Why limits are smart business
Any smart company has long ago realized the issues of constantly growing mailbox sizes:
- Cost of storage continually increases as the mail size increases.
- The amount of time needed to back up the data continually gets longer.
- The cost of constantly increasing backup sizes grows exponentially.
- Downtime lasts longer as maintenance of the databases takes longer to complete
- System performance suffers the larger the databases grow.
- The risk of corruption requiring restoration from backup increases exponentially as size grows.
- The amount of time it takes and cost of restoration from backups when necessary gets longer and longer.
- The amount of time and cost of litigation against the company becomes untenable and cost prohibitive.
Time is money
Disorganized and tech-avoidant employees and executives lack of organization and refusal to use the features of the software costs companies thousands to millions of extra dollars (based on size of the organization) each year in storage, backup and litigation costs.
If your company is involved in a legal case it can seriously extend the time (thereby cost) to sort through all that extra junk to look for information relevant to the case.
The old adage ‘Time is Money’ is literally true in all these cases. The cost in time is usually higher than the physical costs but when combined is truly detrimental to a company’s bottom line. Companies that recognize this and attempt to mitigate the effects typically limit mailboxes to between 10GB-20GB regardless of the systems limits. Many will place an automatic expiration date between 1 and 3 years on old emails unless the user manually applies a specific retention policy that overrides the default setting.
Complaints against limits
Over my 32 year IT career as an email administrator, I have heard more than my fair share of excuses when it comes to managing your email. Here are the most common phrases mentioned and their underlying reasons:
“I don’t have the time” ends up being:
I’m not organized or in control of my mailbox because I…
- Don’t know how to use the software properly
- Am afraid to learn how to use the software properly
- Cannot effectively manage my time
- Am a disorganized mess in general
- All of the above
“There are regulations the require me to keep things for a specific length of time” means:
I’m just using this as an excuse not to cleanup or organize anything. I really don’t know what the statute or requirement is but it sounds good and…
- I don’t have the time (see above) option e.
“I can search for whatever I need”
- True, but only if you remember you have it. You can’t search or find what you don’t know you kept. Especially if you can’t remember the subject.
- Are you really going to search for that bake sale or chili cookoff email from last year? How about the email about the car in the parking lot with its lights on or leftovers in the kitchen? Why are you saving those?
“Storage is cheap, just buy more”
- This statement is made by someone that clearly has no understanding of the financial, legal and operational costs to the business.
Companies need to teach how to manage email
One of the observations that stands out for me is that companies just expect people to know how to use email. They don’t train employees on this critical communication skill because many times the people in charge also don’t know the features, capabilities or limits of email.
Learn what the email client can do
A lot of the resistance I get when informing a user about their space use comes down to a lack of training. Sure they can create, send and reply to all, but they don’t know what other features the software typically has to help them manage the volumes of email most of us get.
A little one-on-one training and demonstration usually goes a long way in breaking down the hostility and resentment of mailbox space limits. Explaining the system limitations, showing them the tools available to them to help them manage their mailbox in most cases solves the problem.
Outlook’s Conversation Cleanup feature is a huge help
If you use Outlook, this amazing feature allows you to keep the full conversation history of a discussion but eliminate the duplication (and triplication, quadruplication, etc) that happens with a back and forth conversation that includes all previous content when you hit reply. It’s just one of many features available to easily help you keep your mailbox organized and within mailbox space limits. I wrote a full post on this feature in February 2022. You can read it here.
Mailbox Cleanup quickly locates large and old files for deletion
Another great tool in Outlook is the Maibox Cleanup feature that lets you see your mailbox size, find emails older than so many days or bigger than a specified size to quickly delete.
Learn the applicable regulations/statutes
Additionally you need to know exactly what the applicable statutes or regulations are for your industry or function. There should be annual training for employees on these to make sure they are regularly reminded of what those requirements are. Especially since they can change without any notice.
Stop using your work email for personal business
I still don’t understand why people think using their work email is appropriate for personal business. How hard is it to check your personal email through an app on your phone or using the web-access client in a browser? Both Outlook and Gmail provide free email accounts with plenty of storage so you have no excuse to not have a personal email account.
Do you realize that any personal information in your work email is the property of the business and is legally discoverable? I have seen dozens of people fired from their jobs because of personal communications and dealings being conducted through their company’s systems were discovered during the course of a legal investigation. In almost all cases, these were accidental finds not related to the legal investigation that discovered it. Why would you risk your livelihood for doing something this stupid?
Litigation is expensive
Speaking of litigation, we live in a litigious society. More so now than any other point in history. As soon as someone disagrees with someone, else; BAM – lawsuit. My European colleagues were always astounded by this as their countries are not like this. This is all I have known in the US corporate world.
Many employees believe that by keeping everything they are protecting themselves or their company in the event of a lawsuit. I can attest as a former employee of a major labor law firm that this is big mistake.
LESS IS MORE
Companies that have a strict document retention policy and follow it are much less likely to have the proverbial ‘smoking gun’ hiding in their electronic files proving the case against the company. Mailbox space limits are one tool to assist with this.
Sure there have been rare instances where it did prove their innocence of the charge labeled against them, but more times than not, evidence is found to support the complaint(s) against the company. If that email had been deleted, there would be no evidence to support the charge.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating that you do this to get away with anything nefarious, just that more often than not, email has been the downfall in a company’s defense against a complaint. With the increasing use of instant messaging and teams apps those records of communication are also finding their way to the courtroom.
So what should you do?
- Have a serious and frank discussion over email retention at all levels of the business.
- Know what statutes or regulations your email may be subject to and exactly how long certain emails must be kept.
- Create retention policies that can be applied to emails for automatic deletion after the time is expired.
- Set concrete mailbox space limits: 10-20 GB is more than adequate for 99% of people. Hold firm against the 1%.
- Have mandatory training for ALL employees (yes executives, I’m talking to you) on the mail system features for managing their email. This needs to be an ongoing process not a one-time thing.
- Don’t allow excuses to put your company in legal or financial jeopardy because of laziness and/or stupidity.
With a little effort and a culture of accountability from the top down, this becomes a non-issue so your company can focus on what its core mission is. If your company doesn’t use mailbox space limits, it’s time to take a long hard look at them.
Last Updated on October 22, 2022
