Give Every File A Lifecycle, Not A Liability
Decide how long files live, when they get archived, whether they can be overwritten or deleted, and how many old versions to keep. You set it folder by folder, with no custom cron jobs and no retention premium on the storage bill. Set nothing and files just sit there. Turn the controls on where you need them and Files.com enforces your policy automatically, even on storage it does not host.
Retention Rules You Already Have, Enforced Automatically
Most teams already know what their retention rules are supposed to be. HIPAA wants six years of audit records, SOX wants seven years of financial records, GDPR wants old personal data minimized and disposed of. The hard part has always been making the platform actually do it without someone manually archiving folders or babysitting a cleanup script. Files.com does that work for you, and only the work you switch on.
None of this is a UI-only toggle. Every control is exposed through the web admin, the REST API, CLI, and SDKs, and Terraform, so you can manage retention policy as code alongside the rest of your infrastructure, or click it on in the admin UI. Whichever fits how your team works.
The Controls You Switch On
Each one is optional and set per folder. Turn on only the controls a folder needs, and leave the rest off.
Per-Folder Expiration
Turn it on for a folder and files automatically get deleted, archived, or moved to cheaper storage once they hit an age you set. Subfolders inherit the rule unless you override them. Because each folder runs on its own clock, one site can hold tax records for seven years, invoices for two, and marketing drafts for thirty days.
Version History
Keep prior versions of files that get overwritten, in the folders where you want them. It is a control you switch on where it matters, not something forced on every folder on the site.
Archive Removed Files
When this is on, a deleted file goes into an archive area for a window you set. It does not matter what removed it: a person, an automation, or an expiration rule. Deletion stays reversible until that window closes, so an accidental delete is a click to recover, not a support ticket and a restore from backup.
Archive-Only Mode (WORM)
Mark a folder Archive-Only and it becomes write once, read many. Files written into it cannot be deleted, modified, or overwritten by anyone, so it holds up as a legal hold and as a tamper-proof backup destination.
Overwrite And Naming Rules
Decide what happens when an upload’s name collides with an existing file. Keep both, overwrite in place, or reject it. You can also restrict which filenames and extensions a folder will accept, so a job expecting a .csv never chokes when someone drops in a .xlsx. The rule keeps the bad file out before it reaches the automation.
Checksum Verification
Files.com can compute and verify SHA-256, SHA-1, MD5, and CRC checksums on transfer. You get proof a file arrived exactly as it left, which is the integrity record a compliance review expects.
Govern Storage You Don’t Even Host
Here is the part most teams do not expect: Files.com can add retention and lifecycle management to storage it does not store. Mount an S3 bucket, an Azure Blob container, a SharePoint library, OneDrive, Google Drive, Box, Dropbox, or an on-prem source through the Files.com Agent and Remote Server Mounts, and the same per-folder expiration, archival, and overwrite rules apply to that data. The bytes stay in the other system. The policy does not care where the data physically sits, so you can finally put lifecycle rules on years of un-governed S3 or SharePoint without moving any of it.
And retained data is not a profit center. Archived and versioned data is billed as ordinary stored data, with no compliance-storage surcharge, and you can route archives to cheaper external targets. For point-in-time immutable copies of a specific set of files, the kind a legal hold or an external-storage backup needs, pair this with Snapshots.
Data Retention Questions
What teams ask about turning controls on, governing external storage, what it costs, and how legal holds work.
Put Your Files On A Clock
Start a free trial, set an expiration rule on a folder, and watch Files.com enforce it automatically. Govern native storage and your mounted S3, Azure, and SharePoint data from the same place.
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