Spam Filtering

Accurately identifying and blocking spam is becoming very tricky these days and I'm constantly on the lookout for tools at the server level to stop the annoying infiltration. This year I was introduced to a fascinating service called AppRiver that very effectively filters all of your domain's incoming mail for spam and viruses. Mail bound for your organization is first routed to AppRiver's servers, filtered and then they push it to your mail server's IP address. Because they filter a huge amount of mail for many companies, their up-to-the-minute accuracy in identifying bad mail is pretty good. For a 100 mailbox subscription, AppRiver charges around $1,000.00 per year and has 10% discounts for non-profits. For a "set it and forget it" solution, that's very reasonable cost in my mind.

Recently, though, I had a church approach me who were trying to cut costs on all fronts and asked if I knew of a lower-cost solution. Well, there is, although it's only spam filtering and requires more of your on-site intervention (because it's installed on your mail server), but it happens to be my personal favorite. The tool is MailEssentials by GFI. It comes with multiple fully-configurable ways of identifying junk mail, but the most intriguing method uses a logic algorithm called Bayesian Analysis. Basically, the system learns what is good mail from your users' sent mail stream and mixes it with universally known spam from a central downloadable spam list and spam that your users can report. Then it applies the Bayesian algorithm that actually identifies present and future spam tactics with remarkable accuracy. MailEssentials can also create a database of incoming and outgoing mail that lets you create custom reports to tell you how you're doing. The first year cost is $675.00 for 100 mailboxes and the annual subscription thereafter is $135.00 (10% discount for non-profits also applies).

AppRiver has a 30-day free trial.
MailEssentials will give you a 90-day trial if you request it.