Hello SmarterMail Team,
I would like to suggest a feature that would greatly improve user experience and reduce accidental data loss.
Many mail platforms, including Rackspace Email, provide a feature called something similar to “Recover Deleted Emails”. The way it works is:
When a user deletes an email from their Inbox, it moves to Deleted Items.
If the user then deletes the email from Deleted Items (or empties the folder), the message is not immediately destroyed permanently.
Instead, the email is retained in a hidden recovery area for a configurable retention period, for example 7, 14, or 30 days.
During that retention period, the user or administrator can restore the deleted message.
This feature is extremely useful in real-world situations because users frequently:
accidentally empty Deleted Items
delete the wrong email
misunderstand how permanent deletion works
need to recover important business communications shortly afterwards
As I understand it currently in SmarterMail, once an email is permanently deleted, it is immediately removed and cannot be recovered unless external backups or archiving systems exist.
Suggested implementation ideas:
Global retention policy (example: 14 days)
Per-domain or per-user override
User-accessible “Recover Deleted Emails” interface in Webmail
Admin recovery tools
Automatic purge after retention period expires
Storage quota awareness / limits
Optional disablement for environments where storage is critical
This would be a very valuable feature for business environments and would significantly reduce support requests related to accidental deletion.
Thank you for considering this feature request.