Web Hosting Experts - Any hosts offer better options than Spam Assassin?

[PTTed]

Here is the deal...

I don't do a lot, but I do a little bit of reselling hosting services.

I have found Spam Assassin to be quite inadequate at filtering spam. For my own email accounts, I don't really care so much. For the hosting that I am selling to other people, I do care.

I have looked around and it seems that most of the hosting companies I have come across also use Spam Assassin. This perplexes me. Are there no other really good server side mail filtering options that allow an almost completely hands off approach from my end?

I realize it might be hard to find spam filtering as good as Google perhaps, but are there no better options besides Spam Assassin that are also require no administration from my end?

 

[Hostlumina]

The other popular one is SpamExperts Inbound that some hosts do offer however you would most likely be looking at putting it as an "add-on" due to it's pricing per domain unless you can absorb the cost.

It is a good alternative however, just like any other strong filter legitimate emails will occasionally get flagged and sent to a spam folder within the settings requiring the end user to periodically check it. Your pretty much "train" it however I have ran into 1-2 occasions where the email is simply blocked with no warning, log, etc... within the app settings.

Spamassassin personally is good in the way that you can just make your own filters based on the spam you are receiving to a specific mailbox which is nice.

Other than that you can use blackhole lists/DNSBLs to filter.

 

[PTTed]

The other popular one is SpamExperts Inbound that some hosts do offer however you would most likely be looking at putting it as an "add-on" due to it's pricing per domain unless you can absorb the cost.

It is a good alternative however, just like any other strong filter legitimate emails will occasionally get flagged and sent to a spam folder within the settings requiring the end user to periodically check it. Your pretty much "train" it however I have ran into 1-2 occasions where the email is simply blocked with no warning, log, etc... within the app settings.

Spamassassin personally is good in the way that you can just make your own filters based on the spam you are receiving to a specific mailbox which is nice.

Other than that you can use blackhole lists/DNSBLs to filter.

In most of the cases, there will be one or two people in the company/domain that are getting a ridiculous amount of spam that Spam Assassin is letting through. One of those two people is usually the general manager or the business owner. So, it is a big deal to me because they are the ones who sign the checks. You have to keep them happy and cause them the least amount of grief possible.

My workaround solution, which has been working excellent by the way, is to setup each person with a GMAIL account. I forward all mail to the GMAIL account. Then I setup their workstations/mobile devices to access the GMAIL account and to send mail as (their corporate) email account. This basically eliminates the spam completely. And you get pretty much zero false positives.

I know Google bought out the best email spam filtering company a while back, but I am amazed at how much better they are at spam filtering compared to anything else I have seen.

So, one option I have is to migrate those clients over to Google hosting services which would take care of the issue as well. The problem with that solution is I can't make enough money from it. I would essentially be giving my customers away and saying goodbye to all future revenue from that source. And I obviously don't want to do that. I am seeking a better alternative that works close to as well as Google does. And I don't want to have to administer it constantly. I am looking more for a set it up and forget it solution similar to the GMAIL solution.

 

[Hostlumina]

What I have found with company CEOs, VPs, CFOs, etc... is that they blast their email address everywhere ending up getting scrapped by spammers. It's rather annoying.

As mentioned you can try to filter through using an RBL list using spamhaus zen or barracuda if you aren't and see if there is any improvement.

 

[RDO Servers]

Sadly, your right. Gmail does have the best spam filtering, and I have not found anything else on par with theirs.

I will say, be careful with the mail forwarding.

JoeSpammer send a spam message to [email protected]
SpamAssassin doesn't catch it, and forwards the message to your gmail.
Gmail catches it as spam, and keeps your inbox nice and clean.

The problem is, Gmail will think the spam message came from [email protected] because, technically, thats how it got to Gmail.
If Gmail keeps getting these spam messages, it will blacklist PTT.com IP, not JoeSpammers!

 

[PTTed]

Sadly, your right. Gmail does have the best spam filtering, and I have not found anything else on par with theirs.

I will say, be careful with the mail forwarding.

JoeSpammer send a spam message to [email protected]
SpamAssassin doesn't catch it, and forwards the message to your gmail.
Gmail catches it as spam, and keeps your inbox nice and clean.

The problem is, Gmail will think the spam message came from [email protected] because, technically, thats how it got to Gmail.
If Gmail keeps getting these spam messages, it will blacklist PTT.com IP, not JoeSpammers!

Thanks for the tip!

This hasn't been an issue so far. I have been doing this for a few years now hoping eventually the hosting industry would solve this need.

 

[ElixantTechnology]

Additionally, at the same time while your email account is forwarding emails to GMail, the inbox is filling up on the server and using up inodes, which depending on your hosting provider, can result in your account being suspended over time for abuse. What I recommend to my customers is that their business emails don't be used for signing up for accounts online and such, as a lot of websites sell their email lists for a profit.... Beyond that, be careful how emails are listed on websites as well...