Open Archiver Enterprise review
A capable open-source archive for teams that can manage their own infrastructure.
Reviewed by iTechGuides Editors · Editorial team · Updated Oct 2026
Open Archiver Enterprise is a self-hosted email archiving system for organizations that need searchable, controlled retention of business mail. It supports Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, IMAP/IMAPS, SMTP mail servers, and imports from PST, EML, and MBOX files. The free Self-hosted plan is an open-source edition with full-text search across email and attachments, while the Enterprise Edition adds controls for compliance-oriented archiving. Its fit is strongest for technical teams that want to keep archived mail on infrastructure they control.
The published plans show a Self-hosted option priced at €0 per deployment. The Enterprise Edition is a perpetual one-time license priced at €14 per seat, with the lowest listed tier applying to 500+ seats. Enterprise adds retention policies and labels, legal holds with bulk preservation by search query, eDiscovery search with EML export, real-time SMTP journaling, an immutable hash-chained audit log, AES-256 encryption at rest, and OIDC and SAML single sign-on. The pricing structure suits organizations that prefer a one-time license over a subscription, while the feature split makes the free edition more appropriate for core archiving and search than for formal compliance workflows.
Its standout strength is the combination of broad ingestion and governance features in a self-hosted model. OCR supports searching email attachments, and S3-compatible object storage provides an additional storage integration. The tradeoff is operational: customer teams are responsible for deployment and infrastructure, rather than handing archive administration to a hosted provider. Choose Open Archiver Enterprise when control, open-source access, journaling, retention, and eDiscovery matter more than a managed service experience. Choose an alternative when your priority is minimizing infrastructure ownership or selecting a hosted archive with less technical administration.
Open Archiver Enterprise pros and cons
- Where it wins
- Free self-hosted edition with search and broad ingestion options
- Enterprise adds legal holds, eDiscovery, journaling, and audit logging
- Supports Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, IMAP, SMTP, and mail-file imports
- Where it doesn't
- Self-hosted deployment puts infrastructure administration on the customer
- Retention, legal holds, and SSO require Enterprise Edition
- The product is better suited to technical teams than turnkey SaaS buyers
Open Archiver Enterprise fact sheet, pricing and score →
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