Sponsored Post: SpamAid
Well, I’m somewhat surprised but pleasantly so that I’ve received another order for a review through ReviewMe. Given the vast number of bloggers out there that are likely to be willing to try to earn some money from their writing, I figured the likelihood of actually receiving another review offer would be very low. As I plan always to do, here’s my disclaimer before I get into the review:
I only accept reviews for products that I find interesting enough to write about genuinely. Since ReviewMe does not put any restrictions on the opinions expressed, I also plan to be completely honest about what I do or don’t like about the products I review.
Having written about software for quite some time, I’m always amazed that there can be really quality software software out there that seems to be flying under the radar, or at least flying under my radar. For me, it makes testing new software fun, since there’s always a decent chance that you’ll happen upon a real gem.
In my two days of using SpamAid, I’m already ready to call this one a gem. The offer for this review couldn’t have been more timely; I have been beta testing Microsoft’s Office 2007 suite, which includes Outlook 2007. Since the shipping version of Office 2007 has now been released, it doesn’t appear that any more Microsoft Updates are forthcoming to the beta version (which will expire any day now), and that includes updates to their relatively simple Junk Mail filter.
In the past month or so, I’d been experiencing more and more spam in my inbox; that is, spam that wasn’t getting caught by the Junk Mail filter. To be honest, I know that I’ve been getting lucky for quite some time now. In my experience the Junk Mail filter is nowhere near in the same class as a full-featured spam filter, but I was making do with it. I had finally come to the conclusion that I was wasting too much time manually filtering out the spam in my inbox and that I ought to find a better solution, when this review offer came my way.
At first I was hesitant; I knew nothing about SpamAid or the company that makes it, and I noticed that officially SpamAid is only currently supported under Microsoft Outlook 2000/XP/2003 while I’m currently running Outlook 2007. From what I know about Outlook and the various add-ons I’ve tried, I felt relatively comfortable testing SpamAid on Outlook 2007, and I have to say I haven’t experienced a single issue or bug that I could attribute to the unsupported setup I’m using. In fact, I haven’t seen a single issue or bug with the software whatsoever. I should be clear that I’m not suggesting using this software with an unsupported version of Outlook, but rather I’m impressed that SpamAid handled it better than I had any right to expect.
To fully test the spam filtering functionality SpamAid offers, I decided to turn off Outlook’s Junk Mail filter, as well as the various rules I’d manually set up to handle certain predictable types of spam that I happen to get. So far, the success rate has been extremely high. In the past two days, SpamAid has caught 72 spam messages, while only 3 slipped through into my inbox. This number stays fairly consistent with the claim of detecting spam with an accuracy of no less than 97%, and spam filters that make use of Bayesian algorithms as SpamAid does only get better the more they’re used. But far more important than the few that slipped through is the fact that none of the messages that have been caught by SpamAid have been false positives. That means that none of my real email was accidentally caught by SpamAid. Unfortunately, using Microsoft’s Junk Mail filter, I found that once every couple of days a legitimate email ended up in my Junk Mail folder.
Although there are lots of spam filtering products available, as I said earlier I think SpamAid is a bit of a gem. This is a hard thing to describe, but it just feels right in an intangible way. For example, the program offers settings to allow you to customize some of its behavior. The settings are practical and useful, and the developer has shown restraint in the sense that they’re not overwhelming. There are enough settings to allow the user to control crucial aspects of the software’s use, but not too many. In the world of spam filtering, the potential for exposing settings to the user is almost limitless, so the ability to only show the most needed options can make the difference between an okay user experience, and a fantastic one.
So far I’ve found nothing to dislike about SpamAid, and a whole lot to like. If you’re interested, SpamAid is available for a 30 day trial period, and a single user license costs $29 USD.
