Starting next week, we’re making our Email Filtering easier to deploy and more intuitive for users. The change is quite simple–instead of delivering mail to a webmail-based Spam Quarantine by default, we’re instead making it possible to tag the spam, add an optional and configurable header, and then deliver the spam through to the users’ regular inbox (filtered into a spam folder, either server side, or in the client).

Making things easier

We looked at how a lot of software anti-spam solutions worked and decided that if we wanted to allow you to get rid of the headache of operating something like Spam Assassin on you own email server, then we shouldn’t create any additional headaches for you to make the switch.

So, we set out to replicate the setup of many of these self-run solutions with the anti-spam software in our data center, maintained by us. That meant allowing you to configure a specific header to add to messages flagged as spam and allowing you to tag the messages as spam in the email subject line.

The net result is an Email Filtering service that is effectively “hot swappable” with your existing setup. To your users, the change can be invisible – they don’t need to change their email client, or be retrained to visit a Spam Quarantine to view spam email. They can continue to receive their email, and messages flagged as spam as they are today, using your own setup.

Fewer hassles

Of course, you get the benefit of not having to maintain those spam filters or worry about things like blacklists, or other abuse issues.

Here’s a graphical representation of the new email flow. You can see on the left, with the Spam Quarantine, users have to deal with two interfaces to email. On the right, with “pass through” enabled, it’s a single point of contact with both wanted email, and spam (tagged and delivered to the spam folder).

Email Filtering starts at just $0.10/mailbox per month. Consider the time spent maintaining your current setup, including downloading and applying rules changes, or modifying settings, and we think you’ll agree that having us filter your users’ mail is the best way to go.

Learn more about OpenSRS Email Filtering.

Great news if you use the standalone email filtering option in OpenSRS Email Service. Effective May 1, 2010, we are dropping the price to 10 cents/mailbox per month.

But wait, there’s more (I’ve been waiting for the chance to use that line for a long time).

We’ve also added outbound filtering to the service at no additional cost. All the benefits of using OpenSRS to filter your incoming mail are now available outbound as well.

Let us handle outbound spam and virus filtering and you won’t have to worry about abusive users getting your servers blacklisted.

If you are already using email filtering, your May bill will reflect the price reduction. Consult the documentation or speak to your Account Manager to find out how to add outbound filtering for yor users.