So how much email space do you need to work? Because it is you and your work. And in this day and age, people want to archive all their emails and have no time for backup. Of course, realistically speaking from a techie or IT person's point of view, it is hard to empathize since an IT person would rather deal with tickets and is afraid of emails. So much so that it gives us great pleasure, almost a feeling of pure bliss to delete an email. To see zero unread messages on our screen and to see the number of emails we have in total in the hundreds and preferably the tens.
This is difficult to achieve but in the case of an unimportant staff that is scared of responsibility in the IT department, it is not uncommon. So it is hard for an IT person to empathize since they do not understand what the other staff members do in their daily deals and briefing. We googled to find out and came across a weird article that wrote 100MB is more than enough and 350 MB email space is plenty. Based on words and size of words and number of words.
Real-world application
How much email storage do you need for work?
But this is the real world, not an ideal world. In the real world, we work with clients and with leads and plenty of marketing emails. We have spam marketing emails, emails from clients, prospective client emails, the first building, sales generation, quotation emails. And to assume that emails are emails and we forget about attachments or visuals is ridiculous. 100MB per person limit? Depending on the email server, like Google, for example, the limit of one email is 25 MB. So technically speaking, if a client was lazy to send a link and attached a small video file to the email and sent it to you. Just replying to them a few times or them sending you an email over and over again with the said attachment would easily exceed that 100MB size limit.
So where is this number of 100 MB to 350 MB, it comes from an old blog post if you google this title that published in 2005 https://searchwindowsserver.techtarget.com/answer/Determining-the-best-mailbox-quota-size-for-your-users. So the information is outdated, and IT staff around the world in 2019 are trying to play this information as the bible. Which is religious and not very scholarly or scientific? If you ask our opinion if you are asking that is.
NATURE OF EMAILS
How much email storage do you need for work?
Of course, if emails are used with words, just words sending to one another. That would be enough. And maybe in the future emails (in fact there already is an attachment server option) like from Gmail where you can attach a file uploaded in google drive. Which does not add on to the space or size of the email sent out, but allows you to send a large file with your email as a download link allowing you to download the file quickly and not affect your email server space. And that is if emails are with attachments. But attachments which are a thing of the past in the face of cloud storage based attachments, it cant solve or reduce the size of the problem. Emails are going to become more and more pretty. Meaning emails may have a design or coding element to them. An email becomes like a website. A mini website, meaning you would be able to code an entire website easily as an email, an interactive email of sorts and send it to your clients who click on a snowman and Santa jumps out with gift vouchers or a mini-game within an email.
The possibilities are endless, and this is the future. But what about now. Emails have images attached to them, pdfs, excels, words, contracts that are too secure to store in a shared server etc. One email can easily exceed 10 MB, even a simple email: quotations, templates, data, stats, specs, and other types of attachments. But there are also emails attached within emails. Signatures with GIF files where you can see animations in the signature take up space.
IT DEPARTMENTS
How much email storage do you need for work?
We are sure your IT department or team or person in your company has reminded you that you do not need more than one GB of space for email. And to a certain extent, they are right. You don't need it. And they don't need a screen or a computer to do IT support. Nor a chair to work. Or a table for their desktop. Does the IT department need air conditioning? Do they need money or their pay? Can they not just work out of the goodness of their heart. Can they get by with a reduction in wages, right? Or maybe their lunch hour break is redundant, and they do not need it right.
So yes. Based on that logic, you do not need more than one GB of space for email. They are correct. Tell them that you concur with them as we do, IT BLOCK IT experts concur with them. But yes IT departments are qualified people with certificates given by the companies that make the software they are using. That is a foolproof design; just like a government that needs company money to campaign and lobby, however, there is no way compromise the interests of these companies who donate millions of dollars to their campaign in an ideal world of course. We have not complicated creatures, but if you understand sarcasm, you get this section in the IT department. And if you do not understand sarcasm, ignore what you read from the " IT DEPARTMENTS" title to here. Thanks.
HOW MUCH SPACE IS ENOUGH
How much email storage do you need for work?
A good gauge to go with is your free email account. You have Gmail or Yahoo or AOL or whatever it is that your country uses typically. So look around the interface and try and find the size of storage that bestows to you for free. I mean if you are using AOL you are enjoying 25 GB of free space, Outlook and Gmail you have free 15 GB and if you have yahoo, I think you may have about 1 TB of space.
So yeah, hire an IT team of 5 people from 5 different roles starting from maybe a maintenance technician on the starting role up to IT manager as the head of the department. Just 5 people cost between 500,000-700,000 dollars in wages. So to calculate how much space is enough, what you need to do is balance the cost. 1 GB of email space per user cost $500,000.00, whereas 15 GB of free Gmail per user in your company costs about roughly $0.00 give or take $0.
It is much easier to compare when you break it down this way as you can put the numbers together. Please show this to your IT department and tell them to take their time with their reply. Also, tell them you have CC'ed the head of the company in your email query to them to be fair to all parties. They should be able to revert to you with a better figure than 1 GB per user or staff in the company.
THE REAL NUMBER
How much email storage do you need for work?
Of course, realistically, the best limit to put on how much space you need is none. No limit is the best. If you are a sales staff working on many important emails with 3D aided design and images sent to and fro your client, say you are designing an airport terminal sending over scanned pdfs of drawings for example. To your client for construction. These emails bounce to and fro need much space. And if your client accidentally loses an email and asks you to forward them the email they accidentally deleted, they are not going to be happy if they hear "oh our IT department does not allow us to store more than 100 MB of mail in our server". Of course, it is understandable from your IT department's point of view. Empathize with your client, who has possibly paid you as their vendor amounts in the tens of millions. And your only answer to that large account is that you did not think them important enough to store an email thread because it exceeds the space decided by your IT team.
Thank you for reading 'IT Support 101: How much email storage do you need for work?' and we hope you have a great day ahead.
