iHateSpam Server Edition 1.1.87 By Larry J. Seltzer November 11, 2003

• Product: iHateSpam Server Edition 1.1.87
• Direct Price: $493.75 for 25 users
• Company Info: Sunbelt Software USA, 888-688-8457, www.sunbelt-software.com

Editor Rating:

iHateSpam is the only Microsoft Exchange add-in we tested. This means it requires Exchange Server and operates on the server itself, deeply integrated with it, with corresponding administrative convenience. For example, the Exchange user directory is the iHateSpam directory, so there are no synchronization issues for administrators to worry about.

The administration capabilities are nicely done and will feel natural to any Exchange administrators. We performed filtering by creating policies and assigning these policies to users and groups, overriding global policies where necessary. Policy options include whitelists and blacklists, a custom rule builder, and the ability to call a "filter plug-in" through a COM interface.

iHateSpam also lets you globally block character sets, which is a real help for nonmultinational companies. Alternatively, you can choose such blocking only to specific groups of users who never would deal with international customers.

iHateSpam chooses to allow, quarantine, or delete a message based on a score the program calculates for it. This score is based partly on the policies set and partly on filtering rules, which Sunbelt Software updates continuously. The administrator can set thresholds beyond which a message will be quarantined or, higher still, deleted.

This degree of customization argues that Exchange shops should still consider iHateSpam, despite our performance numbers, which were disappointing. The program showed a false-positive rate of 2.9 percent—which is high considering that four of the six players came in under 1 percent. Granted, most of these instances were automated notifications of a posting in a Web forum, so whitelisting the address or domain would solve this specific problem, but the other products were able to handle this scenario with no such intervention.

If you're an Exchange administrator looking for a familiar solution, don't dismiss iHateSpam based on our performance numbers. It is the perfect example of a product that an experienced administrator with a knowledge of company specifics can tweak to achieve much better results.