postini, spam and other options

[randynov]

andrew, i know this is more of a business decision, but would you consider offering postini protection for our domains as an additional fee? i think i've reached the limits of what spamassassin can effectively do and without other options, i've got to look at other options for filtering out spam.

i'm receiving hundreds of messages a day now and am getting reports of emails with their attachments stripped or even just disappearing completely. i've tested this and while i cannot find anything specific or consistent, it is noticable. i've seen postini used in a number of different companies to great affect and depending on their pricing model, i feel it would help an enormous amount, as well as simplify the mail management for you.

let me know what you think, or if there are other server-side options. a client side option is, unfortunately, not a possibility for me.

thanks!

randy

p.s. i am a very happy customer with everything else and won't be leaving any time soon.

[AndrewT]

I've yet to find a suitable solution. Mainly there are a few issues that this brings up:

1. Cost - such a service would likely be an additional cost per domain or something along those lines. If the price is too high I can't justify even offering it.

2. Server side solutions are not much of an option. E-mail is one of the biggest load producing services that we provide (ironically, this is because of spam). Adding further filtering/scanning to the servers would only create performance problems.

This essentially leaves us with solutions that would actually scan and filter the e-mail before it even reaches the actual cPanel server that the domain is hosted on. I've been looking into a few options that can handle this but so far I've not found anything that I am entirely satisfied with.

[Pedja]

Have you considered moving email service to separate server? That would allow you to concentrate all resources of that machine to handling mail withut bothering with other hosting services.

[randynov]

i'd agree that the filtering should be done before it reaches your mail-servers. the model you have setup here would seem to require either separate mail servers or external filtering / scanning. There are two ways to go with that, either get some appliances that live at the edge and process the mail there, or partner with a hosted solution and become a reseller.

I don't think that the appliance route is necessarily the way to go. I'd suggest that you need a more turnkey solution that doesn't require a lot of management overhead. As I said, I've seen Postini used to great affect with a number of companies, including where I work now. We're an IT outsourcing firm for small-businesses and it's become a trivial matter to setup a new company in postini with one catchall address for their entire company and grant access to just that account for admin to one person.

It could work in a similar fashion here. For those clients that want Postini, they can have a catchall account (all I'd need), or you can grant them the ability to add individual accounts. The cost would be minimal (<$2 / account / month).

There are similar services too, but anything's gotta be better than spamassassin right now.

Postini vs Others (costs)

Postini Reseller Partner Program

MessageLabs Partner Program

2003 pricing info

I've yet to find a suitable solution. Mainly there are a few issues that this brings up:

1. Cost - such a service would likely be an additional cost per domain or something along those lines. If the price is too high I can't justify even offering it.

2. Server side solutions are not much of an option. E-mail is one of the biggest load producing services that we provide (ironically, this is because of spam). Adding further filtering/scanning to the servers would only create performance problems.

This essentially leaves us with solutions that would actually scan and filter the e-mail before it even reaches the actual cPanel server that the domain is hosted on. I've been looking into a few options that can handle this but so far I've not found anything that I am entirely satisfied with.

[AndrewT]

Have you considered moving email service to separate server? That would allow you to concentrate all resources of that machine to handling mail withut bothering with other hosting services.

This is not easily feasible with cPanel. That's one thing that cPanel really falls short on - being able to host individual services on separate servers. This would be the ideal setup.

I will add Postini to my list of possible solutions.