Hosted Anti-Spam Email Filters

posted on 18 December 2007 | posted in Hosting General

Hosted Anti-Spam Email Filters Spam isn't worth wasting your time on. We wasted our time trying out various anti-spam software packages for our own servers - all promising to be quick and easy to set-up. Oh yeah, apart from the 20 steps where we're setting up Active Perl, downloading nmake from Microsoft, registering the perl scripts, blah blah blah. If you think I'm exaggerating look here:-

Spam Assassin Instructions

To be fair to spam assassin, this is typical of the anti-spam software packages available.

Our help articles on this site are focussing on web developers who don't want to spend hours tweaking their servers - they want the results without the hassle. When it comes to spam, WE don't want to waste a single minute if we don't need to. I feel a bit unclean even talking about spam - but I do so because I think this article might save you a lot of time with your own spam issues.

To cut to the chase, I recommend hosted anti-spam filters - i.e. the spam filter resides on a 3rd party dedicated server. This lets you get on with things and you don't need to waste hours trying to install your own filter on your own servers.

The advantages of using a hosted anti-spam service:-
  • It's truly easy - just sign up to one, and you point all of your website's MX records to the anti-spam server. End of story.
  • No need to get lost in the theory of spam filtering - heuristic filters, bayesian filters etc - leave it to the guys who deal with this day in day out - you just get on with your development
  • You don't use up your server's resources processing spam and even storing it

Like I say, spam is something you should spend as little time as possible on. We use the Easy Antispam hosted service. They're real easy to set-up an account with, and they only cost $29.95 per server per month! I don't want to be accused of shilling one company, so here are more hosted services for anti-spam:-

http://www.spamhelp.org/services/listings/managed-anti-spam/

Conclusion

I hope you found this article right at the beginning of your search for a spam filter - it could save you hours of grief!
 

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