Top 5 Drawbacks of Google Vault Archiving

  author
Rollins Duke   
Published: December 5th, 2023 • 4 Min Read

Google Apps Vault is a suitable add-on for the users of Google Apps to permit for archiving as well as eDiscovery of emails. eDiscovery refers to discovery in lawsuits or investigations that deals with the information in electronic format such as Gmail Messages, Drive files, etc.   The products such as Google Apps Vault can maintain the original electronic data if anyone tries to delete the message.

All the Archiving, as well as eDiscovery products such as Google Apps Vault, can also be utilized to impose all the deletion policies.   For example, if any company policy is to terminate complete records after 2 years. Then Apps Vault can be configured to remove or permanently delete the messages based on the retention policy.

Google Apps customers must be aware of some limitations of Google Vault. In case, they get the false sense of data security that their data is being conserved or deleted according to the corporate policy. In the following segment, few drawbacks of Google Vault Archiving are discussed that makes easy to understand before making usage.

Recommended: Export Google Vault Emails to PDF Format

Shortcomings of Google Vault Archiving

  • Hangout Messages Not Archive Properly

Google touts the flexibility of Hangouts for users to chat easily with other users and share their data as well.  When it comes to Google Vault, the Hangouts messages may take to 30 days to look at and be accessible in Vault. Google titles this only occurs occasionally that infrequently is not tolerable in legal matters. There may be instances when postponed messages are not part of the original conversation thread. Therefore, not subject to similar retention rules.

  • Cost of Google Vault

The cost of Google Vault per month per user is $5.00. That is mutual cost of $120 dollars for per user and per year. Therefore, if you are having 500 employees in your organization then, it is about $60,000 per year. This is quiet costly for the organization to afford all the time.

  • No Archive Control

Google Vault provides no control over the place where data is stored. Even Google identify will not the exact storage location of data. Moreover, there is no one to clarify who has utilized your data. By this alone fact, it means that the organizations of state or federal government cannot utilize Gmail or Google Vault as there is viable email solution as well as an archiving system.

  • Fails to Restore all Messages to Inbox

Google Vault cannot restore all the messages to the Inbox of the account. It creates a hurdle for users if they need to get back all their data on their account Inbox. You cannot restore Google Vault message back to Gmail Inbox unless you utilize any third-party tool or unless you get any help from MS Exchange.

  • Not the Complete Data Archiving

Google Vault only archives the email messages that are present in the Inbox folder. However, the emails that are present in the Spam folder are not archived with this. It seems to be a major drawback as many times the messages are stored in the Spam folder.

What to do if you are having the data in Google Vault and want to access your complete data? Read on to know more.

Instant Solution

There is a software namely BitRecover Google Vault to Outlook. The application is programmed in such a way that it makes easy for users to access the complete Google Vault data in MS Outlook platform easily. Not only this, the tool also offers an option to save Google Vault data in another file format as well such as Mozilla Thunderbird, Windows Live Mail, MS Office 365, Zimbra, MS Exchange etc.  The utility comes up with the simple and user-friendly interface to execute the conversion process. The software does not require any external utility to execute the conversion process.

Prominent Features of Tool

  • Offers dual mode of data conversion- Selective & Batch
  • Provides advance-searching option to find the relevant mail.
  • Compatible with all Outlook and Windows versions.
  • Completely safe from Virus, Worms and Trojans.
  • No external utility is required for execution of the process.

Summing Up

The high cost of Google Vault per user as well as the lack of functionalities of archiving fail to make it the best as well as the preferred choice as enterprise-level email archiving solution. The procedure, which can be simple like restoring, e-discovery, exporting, etc. requires difficult workarounds or any third-party solution.  Moreover, the usage of data without providing the proper control for data means the lack of data security.