Neil Murray and Peter Bauer founded Mimecast in 2003. Bauer was chief executive. Murray was chief technology officer.
Their idea was to move email work to the cloud. Companies were running their own mail servers and struggling to archive messages. Mimecast sold management, archiving and protection as a service for Microsoft Exchange, Office 365 and Google Workspace.
In June 2010 the company hired Dr Nathaniel Borenstein, co-creator of the MIME email standard, as chief scientist. It listed on Nasdaq in November 2015 under the ticker MIME.
Mimecast bought Ataata and Solebit in 2018 as it moved into security. In May 2022 Permira took it private in a deal worth about $5.8bn. In January 2024 Marc van Zadelhoff replaced Bauer as chief executive.