Smarsh

Enterprise archiving and compliance platform for capturing and supervising business communications.

Pricing Enterprise custom pricing

Category Compliance & Security

Quick take

Smarsh is the incumbent in communications archiving. Its meeting support is one channel among many, not the primary use case. For organizations already using Smarsh for email and chat archiving, adding meeting recording to the same archive is natural. For organizations that only need meeting compliance, Theta Lake is more focused and purpose-built.

Overview

Smarsh is a communications archiving platform that captures, stores, and supervises electronic communications for compliance. In the meeting context, Smarsh archives Zoom, Teams, and Webex recordings alongside email, chat, social media, and other channels. The platform serves regulated industries (financial services, government, healthcare) that must retain and supervise all business communications. Smarsh has been in the compliance archiving space for over 20 years.

Key strengths

Multi-channel archiving is the strength. Smarsh captures meetings alongside 80+ other communication channels in a unified, searchable archive. For compliance officers who need to supervise and search across email, Slack, Teams, Zoom, Bloomberg, WhatsApp, and WeChat, Smarsh is one of the few platforms that covers all channels. The archive is tamper-proof and meets SEC 17a-4, FINRA, and MiFID II retention requirements. Litigation hold and eDiscovery capabilities are built in.

Limitations

Smarsh is expensive and complex to implement. Pricing is custom and typically runs $15-40/user/month. The platform is designed for compliance teams, not end users; the interface reflects this. Meeting-specific features (transcription quality, AI summaries) are weaker than dedicated meeting tools. For organizations that only need meeting archiving (not multi-channel), simpler solutions exist.

Pricing breakdown

Custom enterprise pricing. Market estimates: $15-40/user/month. Volume and channel count affect pricing. Annual contracts.

Who should use Smarsh

Compliance teams at financial services firms, government agencies, and healthcare organizations that must archive business communications across multiple channels. Legal teams needing eDiscovery across meeting recordings. Not for companies that only need meeting recording or transcription.