KatharionAfter the last IT Discussion IT Discussion call, we decided to move forward on a hosted anti-spam service for our email. Today, we started a 30 day trial with Katharion. I know that Chris257 (sorry Chris, not sure of your full name) mentioned they were using them on the call and Travis Kensil blogged that they were switching as well.   We are debating between Katharion, SpamStopsHere and Postini. I know that Jason gives rave reviews to Postini, but they are pricier and make smaller shops jump through hoops with a reseller. I emailed SpamStopsHere about non-profit pricing but I have not received a reply. Katharion gives 25% off their normal pricing for non-profits. Network Computing has a review that mentions all three here, but grades only available on SpamStopsHere B and Katharion B- (apparently Postini’s transport heuristics wouldn’t work with their tests).

We decided to go ahead and try Katharion out, I submitted a request online and I was immediately contacted by Tim Kidder, they provided clear documentation to get up and running, and after 30 minutes of copying over email addresses we were good to go. Tim was great at answering any questions and is very easily accessible via phone or email. I’ll provide updates on how it goes as we get deeper into the trial.

Katharion Features:

  • Spam and Virus protection
  • Per-user settings
  • Message Digest and whitelisting
  • Message Continuity (server back-up and webmail access)
  • LDAP synchronization -we’ll try to sync up with AD later on

Here are defaults we setup for our users:

  • Weekly message digest on Mondays
  • Aggressiveness set on medium
  • Detected spam will be redirected to junk mail quarantine
  • Non-existent users will be bounced

I’ll block all other mail servers on port 25 in a couple of days, giving time for the DNS change to fully propagate.