The inbox is not dead: the role of e-mail in business communication
E-mail complements collaboration platforms. How useful it is depends on configuring, protecting and retaining messages properly.
Aity · 26 Mar 2025
Originally published in Romanian in 2025. Revised on 26 September 2026 and translated into English on 27 September 2026.
Chat and collaboration platforms are useful for quick discussions inside a team. E-mail remains an important channel for communicating with partners and customers, without them having to use the same application or the same provider.
What e-mail offers
- Addresses on the organisation's domain and communication between different providers.
- A history that can be searched, retained and exported, within the limits of retention policies.
- Integration with calendars, business applications and workflows.
Common standards do not guarantee perfect compatibility. Formatting, attachments, invitations and rules need testing when you change your e-mail provider or client.
Authentication is not encryption
SPF, DKIM and DMARC help authenticate the sending domain and handle messages that fail the checks. These mechanisms do not encrypt the content and do not, on their own, stop phishing.
TLS protects the connection between two systems when it is used. It is not, by itself, end-to-end encryption from sender to recipient: intermediate servers can process the message in clear text. S/MIME can sign and encrypt the content, but it needs compatible clients, certificates and key management by the participants.
Protecting a mailbox also takes multi-factor authentication, updates, filters and procedures for recovering access. No mechanism guarantees that incidents will not happen.
History, archiving and evidential value
A message can help document a discussion, but its value as evidence depends on context, authenticity and integrity. Ordinary e-mail is not automatically equivalent to a qualified electronic signature or a registered electronic delivery service.
Archiving and backup serve different purposes. Define what you keep, for how long, who has access and how you test a restore. Messages sitting in an inbox are not, by that fact alone, a compliant archive.
E-mail and collaboration, not e-mail or collaboration
Choose the channel by purpose: chat for quick coordination, shared documents for joint work, e-mail for correspondence. Before a migration, take stock of messages, calendars, contacts and integrations, then check what carries over and what has to be rebuilt.