Anti-Spam SMTP Proxy Server Reviews

I never used this program before. I downloaded it. Thanks for description !

I loved it. Great works and no problems.

It is a great tool. Very useful.

Good work:)

Thanks! It' nice programm

Big follower of your website, a bundle of your ASSP have seriously helped me out. Awaiting improvements!

Very good, thanks for Developer!

Tnx for your projects!

Cool..... Thanks for Developer!

Seriously awesome spam protection!

We are using ASSP as our main spam filter for more than 18 months now and I'm quiet satisfied by this elegant and intelligent solution. My main concern about ASSP is about the changes (in a new release) that sometimes break the working configuration. But I certainly recommend it as the best anti spam solution I've ever deployed for a company. I invite everybody willing to install it, take the time to read the help and defnitions of every single variable. I also suggest you install it as a separate appliance and not on the same server (IP) as your mail server.

I've been using ASSP for the last 6 months to protect 2 domains. As others have said, ASSP is not perfect, but it's darn close. Yes, it took a while to configure. I'm protecting a Exchange server replacement (CommuniGate) which adds a level of complexity. Take your time, read, read, read. It's WELL worth the time and effort. Steve Z.

ASSP is the best spam filter we have used.

We use it and have no problems at all.

very good project

I have been a ASSP user for the last 6 months now and I can honestly say that while ASSP may not be perfect but it comes pretty damn close. I've read some of the reviews that claim all sort of things such as incomplete documentation, feature creep and buggy. Let me start by saying What ASSP is NOT? ASSP is not intented for the 'lazy' admin/audience that wants to implement a wizard based magic spam prevention patch. While the installation may be relatively easy, anything different from the vanilla configuration _can_ be complex. This anti spam appliance requires you to read, read and if you are done reading read some more. The quick win attitude won't make you a winner with this appliance. While some people may complain that the documentation is incomplete you can find pretty much everything you need in the description of the configuration settings. The terminology/methodology used in these descriptions already tells for the most part what they do if you have half a brain and if you can't figure it out Google together with the ASSP forum are still your best friends. Yes, feature creep is definitely one of the bigger downsides of this product but at the same time it is also one of its major strongpoints as it brings incredible granularity in what you can achieve with this gateway. As far as the bug claims go, the only 'buggy' behavior I have found myself so far was due to incorrect configuration and automated upgrades of the appliance. While this is annoying and I agree there should be a stable branch it shouldn't stop us 'users' from freezing the branch by simply configuring it that way. (I'm a firm believer of the 'rather being part of the solution than the problem' way of thinking). I'd like to think it is good practice to have a sandbox environment anyways. Anyway, as far as the effectiveness of this appliance goes, it is absolutely shocking. Once I've configured and tweaked the setup I am confident in saying that this is the one of the faster/most efficient/resource friendly spam filtering solutions I've worked with. Conclusion if you aren't afraid of investing some effort in configuring and learning about this appliance it's all for you... It will pay off. BIG TIME.

It's quite ok. Recommended.

Very good

Nice project www.lose-leg-fat-info.com/

good job

Nice but a bit complected

I have been using ASSP for over 5 years. I cannot say enough about how well the product works, and how dedicated to the project Fritz has been.

This review is for the 1.x version as the 2.x version requirements are too high for someone running a personal server. Wow, where can a begin. I'd like to say I thank the developers for their hard work and time, donating both for little or no return. Because they are not getting anything back, I don't want to say anything bad about them. But when the way they do things can cause such huge amounts of damage, it's difficult to be thankful. First, let me say a few things about the project as a whole. It is run very poorly. I've no idea if anyone involved has ever worked on a commercial software product but it appears that they haven't. For instance, there is no archive of released versions (it's called the "stable" trunk but it is anything but that). So when a bug appears at a certain point, no diffs can be done to the code to see what changed and caused the bug. It makes finding bugs near impossible, which is why ASSP is so full of bugs. The "stable" versions get released with nearly no testing, which can cause users to lose a lot of mail, but apparently that's not important enough to do a bit of testing before "release" or to keep old versions around... I thought that was a major point of sourceforge including access to CVS. The version numbering doesn't seem to mean much. Major changes will happen on a super minor version number increase, and sometimes a very large version numnber increase will have only a few lines of changes, or even just changes to descriptive text in the configuration console. How many version numbers do we really need? 1.8.1.7(1.0.04) is the number as of this review, but most other software projects get by with three digits (Firefox = 3.6.25). What used to seem like one possible numbering scheme, the first number after the parenthesis indicating 1=stable, 0=development, was negated when a stable version was released with a (0.0.06) version. Today a version without a closing parenthesis was released. Sure these all are minor examples, but they really show the sloppiness that leads to major nightmares and your mail being lost. The product itself has tons of configuration options. So many, and the result of "feature creep", that some of the features replicate the abilities of two or three already existing features with minor changes. Some changes are so minor that just the way you configure a newer version of a feature could easily take the place of the other similar features. The downside is that these features are so poorly (or not even) documented that the features just seem the same. Then there are the configuration options that don't even do anything. They are usually the ones with a variable and a single line description that is very cryptic. But if you search through the code you'll find they do nothing. Having to spend so much time maintaining the system, tweaking the configuration and checking to make sure it is not blocking good mail has ended up taking way more time than just letting all the spam through and deleting it manually. I gave ASSP a 9-month run and even now I still review all the spam I get to make sure it's nothing important, unfortunately I can't see mail that was lost by rejected connections. I think I've been more than fair in trying to get it working. I've MANY years of experience as a UNIX + mail admin and PERL programmer, as well as worked on several commercial software products, so my level of expertise and expectations is probably very high. It's too bad that at this time I have no other solution recommendations for those who may be evaluating a spam filtering solution. Maybe later on someone will take up the cause and produce a simple, powerful solution that is actually maintained in a useful manner, but in the meantime I suggest people look anywhere else for a solution.

ASSP is not perfect. Like some other reviewers, the configuration can be difficult, and is complicated by the fact that documentation is often incomplete, or non-existent. There are good strides that can certainly be made in this department. BUT, having used ASSP for several years now, I've never seen a more effective Spam Solution. I do not know of any other spam filter which reject the spam from even being delivered in the first place like ASSP does. They may be out there now adays, but the important aspect is the if a email is blocked, the sender knows that the recipient didn't receive it. You can even give them instructions on what to do next in your error message. There are several strategies that make it very effective, and also complicated, and I can't go into them all. But for the 500 users over 20 domains that we host, ASSP has reduced the 40 spams a day that 3rd party commercial software used to let thru, and reduced it an average of less than 20 a year for most users.

The configuration options can be daunting and may need some tuning, on the other hand ASSP is very powerful and can solve other problems with SMTP as well, like: catch-all mailboxes, anti-address harvesting, anti-relaying, front-line virus scanning, and, if configured aggressively, taking away a lot of the load of your inbound SMTP server(s). I've used several versions over the years to protect otherwise oblivious Exchange boxes from all the cruft that passes mail servers these days. Big kudos to all developers who have maintained the project over the years.