Ultimate anti-spam guide: 11 products tested


Contents
Introduction
 BitDefender
 Clearswift
 CA eTrust
 GFI
 IronPort
 MailGuard
 McAfee
 MessageLabs
 NetIQ
 Network Box
 Symantec Brightmail
 Editor's Choice
 About RMIT
 How we tested
Editor's Choice Editor's Choice: Symantec Brightmail, Network Box, and Iron Port

We have split the Editor's Choice into the three separate anti-spam technology categories; software, managed service and appliance. Because there are so many e-mail environments out there, most administrators looking to deploy an anti-spam solution should by now have a fair idea which type of technology would suit their requirements.

Software winner: Symantec Brightmail, for ease of installation, configuration and administration as well as an excellent user interface and detailed -live" graphical reporting it would be hard to surpass these features.

Managed Service winner: Network Box, if security is a concern then Network Box has the bases covered, if availability and redundancy are your preferred choice then a trial of either MailGuard or MessageLabs may be on the cards.

Appliance winner: IronPort, strong security, redundancy and recently developed ease of installation with the new GUI make this appliance the choice in this review. For those with a tighter budget then perhaps one of the McAfee WebShield appliances may be considered and are still very worthy contenders.

Please note that these decisions were not based on accuracy testing. Given the Labs' extensive anti-spam testing experience, when being initially trialled/evaluated we would expect most anti-spam applications to run around 65 percent to 70 percent spam catch accuracy with very low to zero false positives in "default" or "out of the box" configurations.

Then, once given the benefit of being "tuned" or "tweaked" and having localised white and black lists applied they should run at about 85 percent to 92 percent. Remember each e-mail server environment and organisation's requirements are different therefore it would not be fair to try and compare the results based on limited tests and scenarios it's far beyond the scope of this review.

Product & version BitDefender v1.9 for MS Exchange 2003 MIMEsweeper for SMTP 5.0 eTrust Secure Content Manager 1.1 GFI MailEssentials for Exchange/SMTP V10.1 NetIQ MailMarshal 6.0.3. 8 Symantec Brightmail anti spam version 6.01
Company Softwin / NetFreighters Clearswift Computer Associates GFI Software NetIQSymantec
Price AU$315 for 10 users 50 users AU$3000 incl. 1 year support US$55 per node (for full suite) 25 users AU$550, 100 users AU$1075, unlimited users AU$2150. 25 users AU$1155, 50 users AU$1850, 100 users AU$3325, 250 users AU$6925, 500 users AU$12,000 AU$19 per user; volume discounts available
Warranty 30 days trial 90 days software CD / 30 days installed software 12 months N/A N/A N/A
Operating System   XP Professional, Win2k server/advanced server or Windows 2003 Windows 2003 Server Standard Edition, Windows XP Pro with SP1, Windows 2000 with SP2, SP3, or SP4 Any Windows 2000/2003/XP operating system. Windows 2000 or Above Microsoft 2000/2003 Server, Solaris 8 or 9, Linux RedHat ES/AS 3.0
E-mail server software Microsoft Exchange 2003 Server Any - Any. Extra functionality in AD environments. Any SMTP Mail Server Exchange / Notes Foldering agent
Network requirements   TCP/IP TCP/IP SMTP Hardware Sizing dependant on Email Volume minimum 100mbit lan
Support for address whitelists (Y/N) Y Y Y Y and Autowhites addresses based on recipient address of outbound email. Y Y
Support for address blacklists (Y/N) Y Y Y Y as well as DNS blacklists. Y Y
Support for keyword blocking (Y/N) Y Y Y Y Y Y
Support for embedded URL blocking (Y/N) Y Y Y Y Y Y
Support for attachment scanning (Y/N) Y Y Y N Y Y
Support for embedded image scanning (Y/N) N Y N Y N Y
Active HTML detection & blocking (Y/N) Y Y Y N Y Y
Integrated e-mail anti-virus (Y/N) Y N Y N Y Y
Type of scanning employed heuristic,w/b lists, charset filter, url filter, keyword filter N/A AV, spam, URL filtering, keyword, profanity, file type, virus hoaxes, activex and Java applets Bayesian, SPF, directory harversting, DNS Blacklist, blacklist, header checking and keyword checking. Lexical Analasys Reputation filters, URL filters, signature filters, heuristic filters, content filters, AV filters
Automated definition updates (Y/N) Y Y Y Y, for the Bayesian engine. Y Y

This article was first published in Technology & Business magazine.
Click here for subscription information.

Continued ...

< Prev 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Next >

Talkback 112 comments

    Why not just use the 300 produ ...Anonymous -- 07/12/04

    Why not just use the 300 products for Linux?

    I would have liked to see a re ...Anonymous -- 07/12/04

    I would have liked to see a review on Sophos PureMessage

    You guys don't cover Spamassas ...Anonymous -- 07/12/04

    You guys don't cover Spamassassin or any Open Source
    anti-spam technologies. Why not?

    Spamassassin was fully functional several years ago, before any of the other 11 products existed.

    What happened to Open Source s ...Anonymous -- 07/12/04

    What happened to Open Source solutions like SpamAssassin? Boo to payed reviews.

    One word, SpamAssassin. http:/ ...Anonymous -- 07/12/04

    One word, SpamAssassin. http://spamassassin.apache.org/

    Where's SpamAssassin? Where's ...Anonymous -- 07/12/04

    Where's SpamAssassin?
    Where's MailScanner?
    Where's ANY free and open source anti-spam product?

    How can this be called "ultimate anti-spam guide" when leading non-commercial solutions are excluded?

    no open source antispam produc ...Anonymous -- 07/12/04

    no open source antispam products? how useless

    amazing how could write a revi ...Anonymous -- 07/12/04

    amazing

    how could write a review about anti-spam without the leader : spamassassin !!!!

    just because they didn't pay you for that !

    pathetic

    Disappointily, it doesn't ment ...Anonymous -- 07/12/04

    Disappointily, it doesn't mention any of the
    Open Source anti-spam products.
    A very incomplete review.

    As I'm sure you've been told b ...Anonymous -- 07/12/04

    As I'm sure you've been told by hundreds others, this review misses several open-source products which apparently don't advertise on your server... =b

    Any response to this thread? ...Anonymous -- 07/12/04

    Any response to this thread? Several good alternative products are discussed at /.

    http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/12/06/2330204&tid=111&tid=218

    Is this a joke? You show the m ...Anonymous -- 07/12/04

    Is this a joke? You show the minor players rather than the majors. Spamassassin? SpamBayes? This review is useless.

    hrm.. Looks like all these pro ...Anonymous -- 07/12/04

    hrm.. Looks like all these products fail miserably when compared to http://crm114.sourceforge.net/
    which I run on my mail server.

    -Dirtbasg

    Why bother "reviewing&quo ...Anonymous -- 07/12/04

    Why bother "reviewing" products when you don't actually run spam archives through the filters to test their effectiveness? That's like saying "I'd buy this BMW over the Mercedes because it's red!"

    Totally useless review. Lots of popular (and effective) anti-spam products are not even reviewed here. The point of this article is to review spam solutions for users that don't know much about the subject. The author of the article is not supposed to be included in that group.

    A review of anti-spam products ...Anonymous -- 07/12/04

    A review of anti-spam products with no test of their effectiveness is worthless. I don't care how pretty the GUI is if it drops legitimate mail or doesn't catch a majority of the spam. How about a comparison of how these products actually WORK? While you're at it, throw in Spamassassin for comparison; I've found it to be exceedingly effective.

    well, I am sure that you reali ...Anonymous -- 07/12/04

    well, I am sure that you realize the article was slashdotted but I must point out some huge gaps. 80% of mail is served out of a unix based system. Wil may MTA choices why not cover some of the best options that actaully get used by people who know what they are doing. My favorite in postfix and the huge spamassign project. But I guess I wont be seeing any Apache foundation banners on ZdNet huh..

    Out of curiosity, why did you ...Anonymous -- 07/12/04

    Out of curiosity, why did you not include the Mailgate product from Tumbleweed?

    We have been using it at Finisar for over a year now with AMAZING results.

    Just wanted to know why they weren't included.

    Should be titled: Ultimate an ...Anonymous -- 07/12/04

    Should be titled:

    Ultimate anti-spam software advertisement. Please, don't try to claim your blatent advertisements as actual journalism like we couldn't tell the difference.

    it sucked, that looked like an ...Anonymous -- 07/12/04

    it sucked, that looked like an AD

    What is the point of your revi ...Anonymous -- 07/12/04

    What is the point of your review if you do not actually test the products' performance? Why would any IT manager spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars to license software when they do not know if it will actually work?

    How do you determine ROI? Wouldn't that require knowing how well the product works at reducing spam?

    Where are all the open source ...Anonymous -- 07/12/04

    Where are all the open source products?

    Interesting article, but it wo ...Anonymous -- 07/12/04

    Interesting article, but it would be interesting to see some open source solutions covered, like SpamBayes or Spam Assassin.

    Also, for those interested, Message Labs costs $1.00 per user per month. It's not hard to find that out. All one needs to do is ask them.

    One other product that I really like that would be cool to see reviewed is AVG from grisoft.

    SpamAssassin, guys, that's the ...Anonymous -- 07/12/04

    SpamAssassin, guys, that's the elephant-sized fly you've missed.
    I bet you've been told about that already, but nevertheless find it useful to reiterate: you MUST have reviewed SpamAssassin.

    I was reading your Ultimate a ...Anonymous -- 07/12/04

    I was reading your Ultimate anti-spam guide (http://www.zdnet.com.au/insight/software/0,39023769,39172027,00.htm) recently and noticed some omissions. The ommissions are the following:

    1) Lack of effectiveness testing of the products reviewed
    2) Lack of mention of SpamBayes which integrates with Outlook (free and available here http://spambayes.sourceforge.net/windows.html)
    3) Lack of mention of mail clients with integrated spam detection (such as Netscape, Thunderbird thou if this was outside of the scope and this guide was targeted solely at client plug-ins then perhaps mentioning that products with integrated detection are not mentioned in the analysis but that they are out there.

    Hopefully these comments will be useful in helping refine the review and future review.

    Thanks.

    This review is highly biased. ...Anonymous -- 07/12/04

    This review is highly biased. What about Mozilla Thunderbird for the client side? What about Spamassassin for the server side? What about FairUCE? This is NOT the ultimate anti-spam guide! At most it is just a spam guide. It is missing a lot of the big guns!!!! Waste of time reading this review.

    To add, it appears that RMIT is not very good at IT/Computer Science. Seems that I cannot rely on their test labs results and this report demonstrates this. They do not discuss the effectiveness of any of the products! Pretty sad.

    What kind of "review" ...Anonymous -- 07/12/04

    What kind of "review" is this? You looked at the box and the screenshots?
    What about how many spams were filtered, user configuration etc.

    This is the lamest review ZDNet has had in a long long time.

    It would have been nice if you ...Anonymous -- 07/12/04

    It would have been nice if you mentioned their effectiveness, otherwise what is the point?

    Not to appease advertisers I hope.

    good work leaving out all the ...Anonymous -- 07/12/04

    good work leaving out all the open source solutions !

    I wish that SpamAssassin has a ...Anonymous -- 07/12/04

    I wish that SpamAssassin has also been included.

    thanks for leaving out one of ...Anonymous -- 07/12/04

    thanks for leaving out one of the most widely used spam filters, Spam Assassin

    These products are nice and al ...Anonymous -- 07/12/04

    These products are nice and all, but there are other products on the market that are free, and support multiple OSs and I guarantee you are as good, if not better than the comercial products.

    You should evaluate POPFile at http://popfile.sourceforge.net/. It's It's free, open source, multi-platform, runs on perl and uses Bayesian.

    I hope to see you review this ASAP.

    Regards,

    Donald Polak

    What kind of article is this.. ...Anonymous -- 07/12/04

    What kind of article is this... no ratings on how many false positives/negatives each product gets?

    USELESS!

    Your article, frankly, sucked ...Anonymous -- 07/12/04

    Your article, frankly, sucked since it didn't touch on two of the more common (and free) open source spam filtering products such as Spambayes (which in my opinion blows any commercial offering away completely) and Spamassasin.

    Oh wait, they don't advertise on ZDNet... that probably explains it.

    What about spam assassin? We' ...Anonymous -- 07/12/04

    What about spam assassin? We've been using it and it rocks with 1,000+ users

    This sucked. Very little revie ...Anonymous -- 07/12/04

    This sucked. Very little review. I thought you were going to actually test the product.

    It appears that a serious flaw ...Anonymous -- 07/12/04

    It appears that a serious flaw in this article is it's failure to look at any Open Source projects like SpamAssassin. I'm a Network Administrator for a large corporation (>$1.6B) that uses SpamAssassin and we're very happy with it. Just because the Apache Foundation can't afford to send test kits doesn't mean that you can't review something that is freely available for download.

    The article sucked, guys. Like ...Anonymous -- 07/12/04

    The article sucked, guys. Like maybe it was written by a 3rd grader with little experience on the subject. Keep up with the advertising; it's working great.

    Your evaluation is ok, but now ...Anonymous -- 07/12/04

    Your evaluation is ok, but nowhere do you mention the EFFECTIVENESS of each anti-spam product. How reliable are they ? What are their false-positive/false-negative ratios ?

    If my CEO came to me and told me to implement an anti-spam solution, and I went back to him a week later, telling him that I chose the cheapest, easiest-to-install product, but didn't check to see how much spam actually got through (and, more importantly, how many genuine emails were filtered), I'd probably lose my job !!!

    By the way, there a lot of really good free open-source anti-spam products out there. We use a combination of Spamassassin and ClamAV here where I work, and I think they are every bit as effective as a commercial solution (if not more so). Perhaps you should consider these in a subsequent evaluation, along with a test of effectiveness using a test corpus of spam and non-spam emails.

    Useless article. Doesn't even ...Anonymous -- 07/12/04

    Useless article. Doesn't even include SpamAssassin...

    Seems you forgot to review the ...Anonymous -- 07/12/04

    Seems you forgot to review the effectiveness of the different products - quite possibly the worst review I've ever read.

    How about FREE POPFile? http:/ ...Anonymous -- 07/12/04

    How about FREE POPFile?
    http://getpopfile.org/

    I'm very disappointed that you ...Anonymous -- 07/12/04

    I'm very disappointed that you didn't test some of the best known SPAM filters in the world. The Open Source ones. Spam Assassin for example is a top level Apache product and is taken seriously by a number of large companies. There are a couple of others that might make it on the list as well. I say that because they should be above some of your commercial offerings given their popularity.

    You forgot one of the best app ...Anonymous -- 07/12/04

    You forgot one of the best appliances out there -- the Barracuda Networks stuff. www.barracudanetworks.com. Think "IronPort at about a third of the price". I've been using one, it's VERY good and well worth the money.

    Alright, I know you're getting ...Anonymous -- 07/12/04

    Alright, I know you're getting a ton of messages about this, so I'm not going to totally flame you about not using any open source solutions or products and blah blah blah.

    I would have liked though to have seen some more numbers though from the actual USE of the products you tested. I have seen enough articles like this where they are setup, configured, and thats it. I would very much like to see more.

    Also, I would honestly like to see something about an opensource solution, such as SpamAssain. My corporation uses it, and we have been met with sucess that I doubt could be duplicated very easily. We have had a minimum of 75% reduction in spam in our user's e-mail with just some very simple, very light setup on one of our aging Sun SPARC systems that was destined for replacement, and debating on renewing support. Now that it has a home doing this, we keep it around and on support.

    I would very much encourage you anyways to please include some more information on these systems, and please also consider offering more open source solutions.
    Thank you.
    Erik Helgestad
    System Administrator
    Commericial Communications Inc.

    No open source software review ...Anonymous -- 07/12/04

    No open source software reviewed? It performs better than any of these commercial solutions.

    But, the little problem is that since they don't advertise with ZDNet, they don't get reviewed.

    It is ALWAYS about money.

    Someone please review spambayes, spamassassin, dspam and others.

    Worthless review. All spam fil ...Anonymous -- 07/12/04

    Worthless review.
    All spam filters are not created equal. Some have a MUCH higher accuracy rate than others.
    Why are SpamAssassin, POPfile, and SpamBayes (to mention a few) not in this ultimate review?

    Thank you for an up-to-date re ...Anonymous -- 07/12/04

    Thank you for an up-to-date review on this market.

    However, as I actually work as a systems ****yst of an ISP, I do wonder why Spam********in and other products like it were not even mentioned? Many of them are among the best in performance, and being free their ROI is unbeatable.

    Please, do not include only products whose manufacturers pay for advertisement. It does jeopardize the quality of your articles.

    Would have been great to test ...Anonymous -- 07/12/04

    Would have been great to test their functionality. Ease of installation and interface is great. But many antispam products require serious configuration and administration to either block spam, or allow emails that are incorrectly being detected.

    Sophos PureMessage seems to be ...Anonymous -- 07/12/04

    Sophos PureMessage seems to be the best technical solution at the moment. Why was it omitted?

    Notably absent from the review ...Anonymous -- 07/12/04

    Notably absent from the review is Spam********in.

    http://spam********in.apache.org/

    I think if you tested it, you would find that it works as well if not better then the tested software.

    Um did anyone test these produ ...Anonymous -- 07/12/04

    Um did anyone test these products to see if they stopped spam, filtered real mail, or worked at all?

    I hope you don't review anti-virus software this way.

    This was not a review it was a produce placement ad.

    "Fluff anti-spam filler, ...Anonymous -- 07/12/04

    "Fluff anti-spam filler, cursory glance at 11 products" would have been a better title.

    Any reasonable definition of "guide" would actually include testing of the products to see which ones work better than others, rather than a cursory overview of how they appear.

    Any reasonable expection of "ultimate" would at least include a review of the products which are widely used and widely reputed to be the best, most notably Spam********in version 3.

    Pretty good review, no OSS sol ...Anonymous -- 07/12/04

    Pretty good review, no OSS solutions, pretty much who advertises with you. Flawed review, you cant say spam ********in isnt heard of.

    Where is the best anti-spam so ...Anonymous -- 07/12/04

    Where is the best anti-spam software ever : SPAM********IN ?

    Spam********in and DSpam are q ...Anonymous -- 07/12/04

    Spam********in and DSpam are quite good open-source alternatives. No need for any payed commercial products in this "Ultimate" scope.

    How come you didn't test Spam* ...Anonymous -- 07/12/04

    How come you didn't test Spam********in ?
    Is it true that companies pay you to get their products into tests ? Most commonly buying adds in your magazines. It is really sad to see that the magazine I pay for is just a paid advertisement!

    How come you didn't test Spam* ...Anonymous -- 07/12/04

    How come you didn't test Spam********in ?
    Is it true that companies pay you to get their products into tests ? Most commonly buying adds in your magazines. It is really sad to see that the magazine I pay for is just a paid advertisement!

    How come you didn't test Spam* ...Anonymous -- 07/12/04

    How come you didn't test Spam********in ?
    Is it true that companies pay you to get their products into tests ? Most commonly buying adds in your magazines. It is really sad to see that the magazine I pay for is just a paid advertisement!

    This article cannot be the &qu ...Anonymous -- 07/12/04

    This article cannot be the "Ultimate" anti-spam
    guide if it ignores all the very, very good open
    source products which would blow away many of the
    products featured in your article.

    Of specific interest to you should be Spam********in
    which is close to the top of the heap. I'd put
    Spam********in against any of the products mentioned
    in this article.

    Next time test dspam and spam* ...Anonymous -- 07/12/04

    Next time test dspam and spam********in! Also, why do I HAVE to fill in location and occupation?

    poor review, guys. you only co ...Anonymous -- 07/12/04

    poor review, guys. you only considered products that advertise on your site...sad.

    ps. the vast majority of /.'rs have adblock (or similiar) installed ... so even though you were /.'ed, you won't be seeing the expected revenues.
    even more sad!

    In all tests, Spam****asin is ...Anonymous -- 07/12/04

    In all tests, Spam****asin is the Best. So your test has no value. But it's not a surprise on ZDNet.
    You words are : "Where Technology Means Business"
    The fact is that the best technology (easy and effective) is offently not the best business.
    It should be : "Where Technology Means Solutions"
    And it will be, if you want or not.

    you forgot spamprobe. It filte ...Anonymous -- 07/12/04

    you forgot spamprobe. It filters 99.9% of the spam and costs no more than occasionally reading the manual by a unix-geek who can do a lot of other usefull cost-saving things for your organisation. And all you have to endure is that he won't keep his mouth shut when he thinks something.

    You guys are so oversensitive to social engineering by salesmen. And you refuse to learn new things or actually read a manual. You will be robbed blind by these expert salesmen!

    What about the major spam filt ...Anonymous -- 07/12/04

    What about the major spam filters that the internet service providers use?
    There are several free spam filters. Both for the mail clients and the mail servers.

    Server:
    http://spam********in.apache.org/
    http://dspam.nuclearelephant.com/

    Client:
    http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/
    " Our tools ****yze your e-mail and identify those that are most likely to be junk. You can automatically have your junk mail deleted or you can put it in a folder you specify, just in case you like reading junk mail."

    http://www.novell.com/products/desktop/features/evolution.html
    "integration with Spam********in enables client-side junk-mail filtering".

    Thunderbird is for several operating systems. Evolution is for *nix operating systems like Linux, *BSD, Solaris, etc..

    I am running all these spamfilters myself everyday. They just works.

    -martin

    You're doing a *disservice* to ...Anonymous -- 07/12/04

    You're doing a *disservice* to your readers. Most of them are non-advanced sysadmins, or "advanced users". When they read your article they're going to think that these are the best products to fight spam. You are hiding from them the facts that any competent sysadmin knows, that the leading Free Software products (Spam********in, SpamBayes, etc) beat the crap out of all these so-called solutions.

    As for the real solution, any competent sysadmin knows that filtering at the *server*, and before the email even gets swallowed, is really the best first line of defense. Yes, I'm talking judiciously used RBLs, greylisting, and even tarpitting. Then use Spam ****asin after that.

    Forget any of this proprietary stuff, it's still years ahead of the competition (Free Soft).

    Spam********in is ultimate, po ...Anonymous -- 07/12/04

    Spam********in is ultimate, poor review.

    I'm suprised and in the meanti ...Anonymous -- 07/12/04

    I'm suprised and in the meantime also astonished to see that there are no Open Source initiatives included in this review....

    - DSPAM
    - Spam********in
    - CRM114

    are just a few of very good and very clever programs used by administrators all over the world. Not to exclude the home-users wich have set these tools up to prevent spam from messing their inboxes up.

    I thought that ZDNet could do a better job than just list some commercial crap without going into depth for the sake of a good anti-spam war.

    This articles is completelly f ...Anonymous -- 07/12/04

    This articles is completelly focused on pay/no free solutions and MS platform. Do you KNOW that 80% or more of ALL the internet email traffic goes through *NIX servers? If you don't, maybe you are on the wrong business, since ALL IT professionals known that.

    You left out the best anti spa ...Anonymous -- 08/12/04

    You left out the best anti spam tool of all - - POPFILE

    What about the best (and free) ...Anonymous -- 08/12/04

    What about the best (and free) solution; Spam********in?

    What a pathetic review. You do ...Anonymous -- 08/12/04

    What a pathetic review. You don't consider the State of the Art or the real market of spam filters, only a few comercial products choosen for you own purpose and agenda. Booo!

    So what happened to thunderbir ...Anonymous -- 08/12/04

    So what happened to thunderbird?
    Spam********in?
    SpamBayes?
    Bogofilter?

    that's all I use for spam avoidance, as do my customers 500+ mailboxes.

    Far from being "ultimate", this is,on my account, an extermely poor (biased?) market survey, especially considered that all the products I mentioned are free - and at least Thunderbird and SpamBayes are extremely user friendly as far as installation and operation is concerned.

    Cheers,
    alf

    And even more amusing...... Ho ...Anonymous -- 08/12/04

    And even more amusing......

    How's about a "software" application that bowdlerizes

    Spam********in

    but not

    Spam********in....

    Just reading the talkback subject lineup is a riot.

    What definition of "ultim ...Anonymous -- 08/12/04

    What definition of "ultimate" are you using?

    If you mean "greatest", then you have fallen far short. Any comparison of software, be it spam filters or text editors, is useless unless you test how the software performs. It does not matter how easy it is to install software if it does not perform the task at hand. The excuse that individual organisations have differing requirements is invalid: if you worry that much, use a number of different corpii and scenarios to test each product, but at least do one accuracy test.

    This article is a review of the interface for each product, not a comprehensive product comparison. To claim your guide is the "ultimate" is shoddy journalism, and belittles the work your testers did within their remit.

    Also, where are the many free and open-source products in this review? You imply the eleven tested products are the only viable options. This is not so.

    Of course, if by "ultimate" you mean "last", then I apologise for what I said above, and thank you for recognising the worthlessness of your anti=spam guide.

    I found the article very super ...Anonymous -- 08/12/04

    I found the article very superficial -- mainly a light installation run-through. C'mon, you can't compare anti-spam products without measuring their effectiveness. Who cares about installation, as it's only done once, but if it works, it works every minute of every day. Also, I was very disappointed not the see any opensource solutions "tested", as I've yet to come across a proprietary solution that has such a good "hitrate" as a properly configured/trained Spam********in (with Bayes and Razor/Pyzor, etc). But then again, OpenSourceSoftware doesn't advertise on your website, right?

    You didn't include freeware an ...Anonymous -- 08/12/04

    You didn't include freeware and open-source products, and still call it "Ultimate" guide? :-(

    "Ultimate anti-spam guide ...Anonymous -- 08/12/04

    "Ultimate anti-spam guide" without mention of ANYTHING GPL including postfix, amavisd-new, clamav, spam********in, razor or dcc...."great" guide

    you forgot K9, which is free, ...Anonymous -- 08/12/04

    you forgot K9, which is free, I am using it for more than a year and it is a wonderful program, only 82Kb, fast, accurate, etc

    Where is Sybari Anti-Gen? Th ...Anonymous -- 08/12/04

    Where is Sybari Anti-Gen? This is one of the top products for Anti-virus and Spam, yet it is not listed here. There are other products for exchange, i guess they didn't spend enough in advertising to be including.

    what a load, where's SpamA$$aS ...Anonymous -- 08/12/04

    what a load, where's SpamA$$aSin? poor work

    what a load, where's SpamA$$aS ...Anonymous -- 08/12/04

    what a load, where's SpamA$$aSin? poor work

    Without reviewing the Open Sou ...Anonymous -- 08/12/04

    Without reviewing the Open Source offerings, your spam software review was very lame. Spam********in is perhaps the best product out for defeating spam, and it's not even mentioned. It would seem that if they do not have the dollars to advertise on your sites, you just discount them.

    This article is total crap. 2 ...Anonymous -- 08/12/04

    This article is total crap.

    2 suggestions for a better article:

    First, actually discuss how well these applications work. Send identical emails to each of them and discuss how well they do.

    Second, to beat this dead horse a little further, why not review Spam********in? Because they don't advertise with you? This is why ZD consistently loses credit. Are you objective, or do you just want to sell us crap?

    Was this a "free" ed ...Anonymous -- 08/12/04

    Was this a "free" editorial for your paid advertisers? Using a ****tail of open source solutions would wipe the floor with your biased list.

    Was this a "free" ed ...Anonymous -- 08/12/04

    Was this a "free" editorial for your paid advertisers? Using a ****tail of open source solutions would wipe the floor with your biased list.

    We've been using spambayes for ...Anonymous -- 08/12/04

    We've been using spambayes for over a year. I spend about 10 seconds a day checking my "unsure" folder. I typically get about 200 spams a day.

    Not only did you "forget& ...Anonymous -- 08/12/04

    Not only did you "forget" to test the spam filters' *effectiveness* (you know, the point of the product?) but you completely neglected far better solutions such as Spam********in, DSPAM, etc. Funny how they don't advertise on ZDnet.

    Barracuda baby. Forget all th ...Anonymous -- 08/12/04

    Barracuda baby. Forget all that software crap and get a good Anti Spam device for your organization. Cheap and it works very well
    http://www.barracudanetworks.com/?track=asg

    "Ultimate" (sic) gui ...Anonymous -- 08/12/04

    "Ultimate" (sic) guide does not provide the key test - DID you test the actual anti-spam features? Looks like this "review" was more about testing the pretty looks than actual functionality. ZDNET/CNET is becoming an online adware day by day.

    Why haven't you reviewed SPAM ...Anonymous -- 08/12/04

    Why haven't you reviewed

    SPAM ****ASIN?

    it is BETTER than ALL of the above commercial software that you have reviewed.

    This article was at best selec ...Anonymous -- 08/12/04

    This article was at best selective advertising, due to the lack of benchmarks. I cannot believe that an actual reviewer would review products without actually benchmarking their effectiveness against spam.

    Is this even a review or a par ...Anonymous -- 08/12/04

    Is this even a review or a parade of spam products advertised in the magazine?

    Uhm? SpamPal, SpamBag, Spam*** ...Anonymous -- 08/12/04

    Uhm? SpamPal, SpamBag, Spam********in... Why didn't you review the products that the technical users use, and know filter spam, cost little to no money, are updated more frequently, and run on multiple OS's and Email clients, and servers?

    SublimeMail.com Free 30 Day Tr ...Anonymous -- 08/12/04

    SublimeMail.com

    Free 30 Day Trial

    Ever hear of Cloudmark SpamNet ...Anonymous -- 08/12/04

    Ever hear of Cloudmark SpamNet, guys? PCMagazine has... They seem to have liked it enough to give it their editor's choice award: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1473816,00.asp. You seem to have managed to review only the products of businesses which are falling apart at the seams. Great going.

    You forgot OpenSource solution ...Anonymous -- 08/12/04

    You forgot OpenSource solutions. These products are often better than commercial alternatives, and they are widely used by ISPs.

    No Stop-Sign? "Ultimate& ...Anonymous -- 08/12/04

    No Stop-Sign? "Ultimate" review - r-i-i-ight.

    Two things: 1. How well do the ...Anonymous -- 08/12/04

    Two things:

    1. How well do these actually work? I cannot believe that anybody would consider reviewing a piece of software without actually evaluating how well said software does the job it claims to do! What if Consumer Reports started reviewing cars based soley on color and texture of the interior?

    2. How about a couple of other well-known and highly effective filters out there. I've been using SpamBayes (http://spambayes.sf.net) with Outlook at work and Popfile (http://popfile.sf.net) for my home email for quite some time, with very good results. They both catch 98-99% of the spam I recieve, and have only had 1 false positive (a non-spam cl****ified as spam) between the two of them EVER! I did try the McAfee solution a few months ago to see how much better a paid-for package is, and even after a month of training, it still only caught about 90%, with a very large number of false positives (2-3 per day). To contrast, Spambayes and popfile were up to about 96% by the end of one week of training, and hit their current level of efficiency after about 3-4 weeks.

    Your testing did not include a ...Anonymous -- 08/12/04

    Your testing did not include a few key players in the space. I guess ZDNet is not a reputable publication as it seems to cater to its advertisers rather than its readers. Shameful.

    Where is Spambayes? Where is S ...Anonymous -- 08/12/04

    Where is Spambayes? Where is Spam********in? Some review. This is why I visit /. and not zdnet for tech news.

    Why isn't Spam********in menti ...Anonymous -- 08/12/04

    Why isn't Spam********in mentioned in this article? It's very popular and a great piece of software.

    why didn't you incude Open Sou ...Anonymous -- 08/12/04

    why didn't you incude Open Source products like Spam********in ?
    Is it only because they didn't advertize on your site ?

    What a terrible article, not r ...Anonymous -- 08/12/04

    What a terrible article, not really useful at all. Where was Spam ********in?

    What about the excellent freew ...Anonymous -- 09/12/04

    What about the excellent freeware out there like SpamBayes? This wasn't really much of a review, no conclusions were drawn. I can do a simple search and gather the same info.

    And there is no mention of Clo ...Anonymous -- 09/12/04

    And there is no mention of Cloudmark Safety Bar - In my view one of the best products for Outlook available currently. http://www.cloudmark.com/products/safetybar/

    Great review.Spot on. Clearly ...Anonymous -- 10/12/04

    Great review.Spot on. Clearly a few of your readers do not understand the difference between enterprise scalable solutions versus freeware for the desktop. Wake up people!!, there is no comparison - unless that is you enjoy spending your day and nights trying to keep updating your anti-spam software becuause you have no life!!!

    Quite Correct! Samuel Richor -- 02/03/06 (in reply to #120111168)

    So true. While OpenSource softwear is free and flexible the time and resource taken to mantain is totally pointless. Also SpamAss has a dreadful catch rate 60-70% hardly quality for large corporates with 100s of thousands of emails per day. Pity Sophos was late to the table would of liked to see the PureMessage results.

    best antispam is spamjadoo.com dani -- 05/11/06

    i downloaded trial the software... simply great work... these indians are great.

    Another solution with no software Eric Colar -- 19/11/06

    Great review. We use Intomic IAS antispam managed services developed by a New Zealand company. Nothing to do beside registered to their service and not even changing the MX/no software...

    Anti Spam Grey Listing Bob Smith -- 22/06/07

    Hi,
    We are using the SecPoint Protector.
    It gives us Grey Listing that blocks a huge amount of spam.
    You can see it at http://www.secpoint.com/

    I won't Bother to Anonymous -- 26/02/09

    I won't Bother to open the report and read it after all these comments, must be a waste of sceen space

Add your opinion

Back to top

Featured