Spam Filters for Your Mac: Six Choices

April 3, 2007
By

Joe Kissell

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Price: $40 (includes one-year subscription to filter updates; renewal costs range from $10 for one year to $35 for a permanent subscription).

Works with: Apple Mail, Entourage, Eudora, Mailsmith, Mozilla, PowerMail (automatic setup); most other clients (manual setup).

Pros: Automated setup for most clients works well; good configuration options.

Cons: Weak IMAP support; poor integration with email clients; ongoing subscription cost is a drag.

Spamfire is reasonably accurate, has a respectable range of configuration options, and has been acceptably stable in my testing. But despite dramatic improvements since its initial release, it’s still clumsy to use. For POP accounts, it functions as a proxy that stands between your client and mail server (as does Em@ilCRX), which works fairly well. But for IMAP accounts it checks your mail independently, which means you end up downloading most messages twice, and your email client might fetch some spam before Spamfire gets to it.

In either case, because Spamfire is poorly integrated with email clients, fixing mistakes is harder than it should be. The program can optionally report spam to several different authorities, though as I mentioned in connection with Em@ilCRX, I’m not convinced of the usefulness of such tactics (so I consider that neither a pro nor a con). For the price, you can get SpamSieve and a sandwich, a much better deal in my opinion.

SIX CHOICES: