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Rafik Kattoum - PeerSpot reviewer
Infra manager at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Real User
Users can access their quarantines and decide to whitelist, block, or blacklist emails, which frees up our service desk team
Pros and Cons
  • "The standout features include the anti-phishing feature, which is particularly advantageous as far as our clients are concerned; it was a very welcome addition for many of them."
  • "The quarantine report frequency could be better."

What is our primary use case?

We're an MSP providing IT services and we host mail servers in Switzerland and the United Arab Emirates.

We host SpamTitan behind a firewall, and the SpamTitan appliances talk to a first load balancer. The load balancer directs the traffic to our mail servers which are still in the DMZ. After the Edge servers, they redirect the mail flow to our internal firewalls. From these firewalls, we go to another load balancer and the backend infrastructure, where we have our mailboxes.

How has it helped my organization?

As a SpamTitan MSP, several aspects of TitanHQ's technology help us acquire new customers and add value to our services and product offerings. These include the anti-spam efficiency, the efficiency of the antivirus engine included in the product, and the self-service user quarantine. Since deploying the tool, we have had almost no viruses, and the malware detection is excellent. 

TitanHQ works hard to provide the best service, which can be challenging as client service is an art, but they have made many improvements recently. They're always seeking client feedback regarding support services, which we appreciate. They're constantly developing new features, some become premium, and some they offer for free, such as anti-phishing features. TitanHQ recently developed a new feature called Link Lock, which our clients appreciated and even convinced some prospective clients to join, as that's a selling point for us as an anti-spam product.    

The most significant benefit of being a TitanHQ partner is that they care about how they provide:

  • Services.
  • The efficiency of their services.
  • The quality of the client experience.

In terms of real, tangible benefits for our clients, by upgrading to SpamTitan, we were able to reverse the trend of dissatisfaction in our customer base. It changed the quality of our services for the better.   

SpamTitan spares a significant amount of employee time and effort by not having to sort through spam and junk emails. The end-user quarantine mailbox and the self-service portal offered to every end-user through a web portal are convenient and time-saving features. Users can access their quarantines and decide to whitelist, block, or blacklist emails, which frees up our service desk team. The time we spend going through junk and spam emails dramatically decreased by around 40-50% compared to our old solution, and our service desk team is now happy with our infrastructure services. It used to be a nightmare with our old provider. 

We've also seen a dramatic improvement in our spam catch rate and a reduction in false positives since implementing SpamTitan. Our clients' main criticism of us was the lack of flexibility in the previous anti-spam solution we used. Now we have flexibility, transparency, and efficiency, which all matter to our clients and us.

What is most valuable?

All the features are valuable; mail security isn't about one feature but rather a collection of features. The good thing about SpamTitan is its versatility because it offers every feature we need. They're not always easy to implement, but we have access to the entire suite required by an MSP like us to provide the best service possible to our clients. We appreciate that, and everything we could wish for regarding email security is included in the product.

The standout features include the anti-phishing feature, which is particularly advantageous as far as our clients are concerned; it was a very welcome addition for many of them. 

The ability to do mail sandboxing before delivering and receiving emails for antivirus and anti-malware detection is excellent.

The double antivirus and anti-malware engine utilizing Clam AntiVirus and Bitdefender, plus all the standard security processes, including anti-spoofing detection, DKIM, and business email compromise (BEC) features, make for a robust security profile. We appreciate these features, and they all work very well.

What needs improvement?

The quarantine report frequency could be better. 

Sometimes we have specific concerns and requests for TitanHQ that their product can't currently cater to because it's not designed for it. We are often told this will be included in the roadmap. Still, we need visibility on when it will be deployed, when a requested feature will become available, or even tested. More transparency on this front would be a big plus.

Buyer's Guide
TitanHQ SpamTitan
November 2024
Learn what your peers think about TitanHQ SpamTitan. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: November 2024.
824,067 professionals have used our research since 2012.

For how long have I used the solution?

We've been using SpamTitan for a little over three years. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution is stable and reliable; we never had an issue regarding operational stability and service access. We only had third-party issues or problems related to our infrastructure services.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The solution is scalable; we run it as a virtual machine, so we have the associated flexibility. As long as we pay for them, we can add as many nodes as we need. We never had to worry about scaling the product.

We currently have around 1,500 end users. 

How are customer service and support?

The technical support is responsive and client-oriented; they care about the client. They listen to client complaints and continually work to improve their services, so we are very satisfied. The support isn't ideal or perfect, and in some cases, we weren't completely satisfied, but TitanHQ always tries to do better based on our feedback.

Comparing SpamTitan's customer support team versus our previous solution, it's night and day, which is one of the reasons we switched to them. SpamTitan changed our lives as an MSP in terms of mail security.  

When we open tickets with them, we know they will help us in a timely and efficient way, which gives us peace of mind. This wasn't the case with our previous solution; we always chased technicians for a working solution and feedback. With TitanHQ, it's the other way around; they chase us for feedback, and they're concerned with the quality and relevance of their support. They care about the client experience, and that's great.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We previously used Broadcom SMG and switched because we were unsatisfied with the product. We had a lot of false positives and spam getting through, so we wanted to improve our situation significantly. We met with a SpamTitan sales team, who were very convincing. We agreed that we needed their product and implemented the on-prem solution.

How was the initial setup?

As I'm the Infrastructure Manager, I was involved in the deployment, and we were surprised by how easy the deployment was. TitanHQ has a very well-done online wiki, which made the setup elementary. The initial deployment took a few days, and the most challenging part was to cut over from our old solution without impacting our clients and end users. Aside from that, the deployment was a breeze.

We finalized the agreement on the licensing, downloaded the SpamTitan images as we were running VMware as a hypervisor, deployed the images, made the network configurations, and double-checked that they were correctly done. We then started testing the mail flow, and when this was conclusive, we started the client migration. I carried out the deployment alone for the most part, with one other employee to double-check the setup, which is our company policy for deploying a new product.

The only maintenance required is part of a lifecycle management process we have as a company, in which we're required to check for obsolete hardware and software revisions regularly. SpamTitan is no exception, and it's very straightforward; we check if there's a software update available through a GUI, and if there is, we take a snapshot as we're running a virtual machine. We back up with our backup solution as an additional safety layer and go through the upgrade; it's an ideal process.

What was our ROI?

We have a considerable ROI; we lost clients with our previous tool, whereas now we have expanded our client base and are getting prospective clients because we have a reliable solution.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The price is quite advantageous; we were initially surprised at the pricing compared to other solutions, which made us doubt if this was the solution for us. Then, we discovered SpamTitan's features and how cost-effective it is. The sales team does an excellent job making our life easier in terms of pricing, which is another significant advantage of this product.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We evaluated MailCleaner and a more expensive solution, Cisco Secure Email, which we didn't find cost-effective. We made a product comparison and decided to go with SpamTitan, and we don't regret our choice.

What other advice do I have?

I rate the solution eight out of ten. 

TitanHQ's key differentiator for its partners is the level of support services; they're fast, responsive, efficient, and care about client satisfaction. That's the main differentiator, plus the fact that their product is constantly evolving with new features.   

We don't use the solution's geo-blocking feature because we are not convinced by IP-based blocking instead of location-based. We know geolocation based on a GPS location is challenging, and very few providers offer it, but the current state of IP-based geolocation features is not a requirement for us or our client base.

TitanHQ needs to continue surveying us for client satisfaction regarding their support services, as that's important to us. We appreciate it when they send us emails from time to time asking about our opinion or satisfaction. We also appreciate how they get back to us when a new feature becomes available that could help us improve our services, so we want them to keep this up.

My advice to others evaluating SpamTitan is to refer to the excellent wiki hosted on the solution's website or contact the amazing, client-focused L2 and L3 staff, who are happy to answer any query.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor. The reviewer's company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: MSP
PeerSpot user
Igor Kim - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Systems Manager at a transportation company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Geo-blocking has reduced our spam by a lot
Pros and Cons
  • "Another good feature, related to geo-blocking, is the ability to specify exemptions. We discovered that some of our customers, even though they are located in Canada, have an Exchange Server sitting in Japan or in the Netherlands. It seems they have branches or their head office in other countries. Having this exception feature is helpful."
  • "I would also like to see SpamTitan improve on its antivirus software. I believe they're using Bitdefender and ClamAV. A problem with them is that they sometimes miss Trojans and malicious sites. We have internal antivirus software as well, and when we receive emails we see that our local antivirus software has found Trojans in them."

What is our primary use case?

We use it to protect our emails from spam, malware, viruses, as well as from attacks like spoofing.

How has it helped my organization?

We have seen a reduction in complaints from employees about spam, for sure.

What is most valuable?

Geo-blocking is a great feature. We like it. Every spam solution should have that kind of filtering. We don't work with African or Asian countries. We're mostly focused on North America. Blocking those regions helps a lot in protecting us from spammers who are trying to reach us. Before we implemented this feature, we saw a lot of spam coming from Vietnam, Russia, China, and India, et cetera. The geo-blocking has reduced spam a lot.

Another good feature, related to geo-blocking, is the ability to specify exemptions. We discovered that some of our customers, even though they are located in Canada, have an Exchange Server sitting in Japan or in the Netherlands. It seems they have branches or their head office in other countries. Having this exception feature is helpful.

The SpamTitan user interface is pretty straightforward. I don't see it as very complicated or difficult to navigate. It's very user-friendly. 

What needs improvement?

Within the reporting part, when you look at the history of the emails, it would help if it were more intuitive. If you don't know where it is, you have to go through many things to find it. Once you know, it's fine. It's only an issue at the beginning.

I would also like to see SpamTitan improve on its antivirus software. I believe they're using Bitdefender and ClamAV. A problem with them is that they sometimes miss Trojans and malicious sites. We have internal antivirus software as well, and when we receive emails we see that our local antivirus software has found Trojans in them. SpamTitan should find better solutions for the antivirus. What they have is not so bad but it's missing some things. Of course, no solution catches 100 percent of what's out there.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using TitanHQ SpamTitan since 2018.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

At first, we had an issue with the emails getting stuck in SpamTitan and getting old there. The emails were in a queue and didn't go out. It was a one-time issue but when I contacted support they fixed the issue and it has been working fine since then.

One thing that concerns me is that when they need to upgrade the version or the hardware, even though it's virtual machines, the unit becomes unavailable and during these kinds of maintenance, all emails stop. Other solutions have redundancy and, even as they do maintenance, it does not affect email at all.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability is good. We purchased 500 licenses and then we increased the numbers because our company grew. If our company grows more, we'll add more licenses.

How are customer service and support?

Their technical support is very responsible but, because of different time zone, sometimes the response is late. In the past, their response was slower but in the last year it has been much faster.

Their expertise is very good. The technical knowledge of SpamTitan's support is better than FortiClient's, for sure.

Maybe it's just the Canadian in me, but I would like it if SpamTitan's support were a little bit more friendly. They know their stuff but sometimes you feel they're not friendly. It's not all of them, but some.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We used to use FortiClient and Symantec Messaging Gateway. We didn't like Symantec's solution, but we switched because of the cost. SpamTitan was more cost-effective than either of the other solutions.

How was the initial setup?

The difficulty level of the setup process is medium. You spend time understanding how it's set up and how it's configured. The hard part was understanding how we were going to switch to it and how we were going to: add the white lists and the black lists, do exceptions by IP and by domain. There are many things you need to consider.

It didn't take long to deploy. We did it really fast, within about a week. We prepared everything and then we switched one company and then another one.

When switching from one spam filter to another, you need to make sure the move goes smoothly. You run two spam filters at the same time and migrate everything.

There were a lot of false positives in the beginning. We had to tune it and manage and create exceptions. It was time-consuming to adjust everything and white-list a lot of things. It's better now but it's still catching some false positives.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We tried a few other solutions before, including FortiClient and, before I chose SpamTitan, I looked at many reviews online. One of the online suggestions I read was for SpamTitan because it does its job and it's a cost-effective solution compared to other products, like Barracuda and FortiMail. Also, the false positive rate in FortiMail was worse.

SpamTitan may not be one of the top products on the market but I think it's good enough, at least for us.

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
TitanHQ SpamTitan
November 2024
Learn what your peers think about TitanHQ SpamTitan. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: November 2024.
824,067 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Network Administrator at a government with 501-1,000 employees
Real User
Geoblocking helps us automatically ban spam from regions we don't do business with
Pros and Cons
  • "They also let you customize it to match your organization's feel, so it looks like a product from your organization. I like when companies do that. Our city logo is on it when you log in to this system."
  • "SpamTitan's logging features could be improved. The logs are hard to deal with because you need to download the log as a text file. Then you need to search through this text file to find what you need."

What is our primary use case?

I work for a city government, and SpamTitan provides front-end protection for any incoming email. It scans for viruses or any malware that comes across the email. I also block some countries using geoblocking features in the software. 

For example, since we don't do business with China, we block any emails coming from there because most of them try to do something malicious. 

How has it helped my organization?

SpamTitan has led to a tremendous reduction in spam intake. Employees will enter their email when registering for a website, which gets sold off to a million places. 

Since we implemented the solution in 2018, about 74 percent of our messages have come in clean, so 26 percent were spam or other rejected emails. That equals about 2 million clean messages and 600,000 emails that were geoblocked, flagged as spam, or otherwise rejected because of viruses or bad attachments.

SpamTitan has also improved our catch rate and reduced false positives relative to our previous solution. It's hard to say how much because I wasn't in that area of operations at the time, so I wasn't involved with our previous spam solution. 

I'm not sure if it was a configuration issue, but the catch rate was probably the opposite. In other words, three-quarters of the mail coming through was spam and only a quarter was clean. 

Implementing SpamTitan made our operations a lot more efficient because the users have accounts and can check for spam. If it's a false positive, they can release it and get the email. With the old system, they had to go to two different spam portals. It was convoluted, and I don't think too many people have used it.

It's hard for me to quantify the amount of time our employees save. I don't have those statistics. However, it saves time if your inbox isn't filled with spam. You don't need to waste time filtering through the junk. The city's communications through email have become a great deal more efficient, but I don't have statistics to back that up.

Our security has improved, as well. A virus hit the entire city government, and we believe the infection came through email. We reevaluated our products after that. We changed our antivirus and firewalls and switched our spam solution to SpamTitan. We changed almost every security product that we had to something better.

What is most valuable?

TitanSpam's security features keep malicious occurrences from coming, and the spam features prevent all the garbage from coming into our inboxes. And the geoblocking helps us automatically block email from regions we don't do business with.

The user interface is also highly user-friendly. I didn't know much about this system when we got it in 2018, but I could easily navigate it. It's intuitive and straightforward with tabs, so you can access the settings you need to get to. 

They also let you customize it to match your organization's feel, so it looks like a product from your organization. I like when companies do that. Our city logo is on it when you log in to this system. 

After we configured SpamTitan to our liking, it pretty much took care of itself. It even provides spam scores on all the emails that come in. You can determine the highest score you want to allow. 

What needs improvement?

SpamTitan's logging features could be improved. The logs are hard to deal with because you need to download the log as a text file. Then you need to search through this text file to find what you need. 

At the same time, I don't have too many problems, so I don't have to look in the logs that often. It doesn't bother me that much, but it would help if I could view these logs in a more user-friendly way.

For how long have I used the solution?

We've been using SpamTitan since 2018.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

SpamTitan is extremely stable. I've never had this system go down.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I would say that SpamTitan is highly scalable. I can see memory and CPU usage on the dashboard, and we have more than enough hardware to scale out as high as we need. I know they have packages with a lot more users than we deal with. We're running on about 500 users, but I don't think we would have a problem scaling from there. We don't have too much use for more. We only have about 900 employees here.

Many city employees don't use their official email accounts that much. For example, we have public works people out on the streets who hardly use email. My license usage went over the limit a few times, but it's not much. I think it's only 50 or 60 users.

How are customer service and support?

I rate TitanHQ's support eight out of 10. They're highly knowledgeable about the product they have produced and resolve issues fairly quickly. I've had one or two issues in four years that required them to do something on their end. 

They have remote support, so they can access the private cloud. I can enable remote support, so they can connect to it, look at the issue, and resolve it remotely. It's top-notch support. We've never had a problem with them. Everything gets resolved as quickly as possible.

I never had to deal with support for GFI MailEssentials, but I know that people in those positions struggled with their support at times, so I would say SpamTitan's customer service is much better than competitors.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We were using another product called GFI MailEssentials, and the difference between SpamTitan is like night and day. We had all kinds of malware go into our inboxes, so we needed to sift through it to get to the real meat of the issue.

We function better with this product because we don't have any downtime. We haven't had any virus infections since implementing SpamTitan. We took a massive hit with GFI MailEssentials, and it took our entire network down. We had to rebuild everything manually, so we did a lot of research to find a better solution. This is what we landed on after months of research.

How was the initial setup?

The deployment was relatively fast. It took a little bit of time to spin up the private cloud and around a week to deploy SpamTitan. I'd say it took about two weeks from start to finish.

The maintenance and configuration are straightforward. I configured this solution back in 2018, so it's been close to four years. I do updates and other tweaks periodically. I might change some allowlists, but it requires little involvement after the setup. It pretty much runs itself.

What about the implementation team?

I worked directly with SpamTitan and implemented the solution.

What was our ROI?

We've definitely seen a return. When that security incident happened in 2017, I can't even tell you how much that cost us. There was a lot of downtime. I'm sure it was in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. SpamTitan costs less than $5,000 a year. It's worth it to keep us out of those situations.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

We pay around $4,200 for a license, so it doesn't come out to that much per user. It's about $8.40 per user annually. You just can't beat that. I don't know if people negotiate that down further, but TitanHQ tried to raise the price on me after we had been using this solution for a year or two. 

I told them we had already budgeted for the amount we've been paying for the past two years, so they agreed to keep the price the same. Maybe a customer could haggle for a better deal, but I think that's a pretty good price to protect one user from spam and viruses for a year.

What other advice do I have?

I rate SpamTitan nine out of 10. I recommend trying it out. TitanHQ will work with you. I can't remember if I did a trial beforehand, but I know there were talks about spinning up a private cloud that we could try for 30 days. If they're willing to let you try it for a month, there's really nothing to lose. You can move on if you don't like it, and if you do, the solution's already in place, so you can start scaling it out.

In general, it's always good advice to research security products to make sure you have the best solution for your environment in place. Also, you need to make sure your products are up to date. Security updates are essential, and you should double-check your configurations. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Private Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Other
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
Vipin Malhan - PeerSpot reviewer
Network and Security Engineer at Total Outsource
Real User
Easy to set up, has a good interface, and the Link Lock feature blocks untrusted URLs in messages
Pros and Cons
  • "The user interface is great. Everything is in the browser; it is easy to set up and there are not a lot of tabs."
  • "I would like to see a filter for searching inside the message content when it is quarantined."

What is our primary use case?

SpamTitan is our primary defense for email against spam and viruses.

We have it running on a virtual machine image that they gave us. It is hosted in our data center.

How has it helped my organization?

We have noticed a trend of approximately 5% growth in spam per year, versus legitimate email, and SpamTitan seems to catch almost all of it.

Using SpamTitan saves us a ton of time. We have users that get literally thousands of junk emails a day. The longer you are at an organization, the more spam you seem to accumulate, and it seems mostly the owner specifically. In our scenario, they went from getting like two or three thousand junk emails a day, to now just two reports a day. They don't have to go through each email to filter what's actual work and what's just junk.

We had some users that were spending two or three hours going through email. There is a huge difference for some people, although it depends on the user. Some people do not use email often so it's not really beneficial for them. For the people that spend a lot of time sending and receiving email, it's saved quite a bit of time. It is upwards of hours in a day. Also, it saves me a ton of time because it prevents them from clicking the wrong thing.

Twice a day, it sends a report of what it has caught. I haven't actually looked at the report in perhaps two years because the accuracy for my inbox was always dead on. At the same time, however, we have a lot of users that check the report all the time. One reason is that they may have a new client that is accidentally classified as spam, or they receive a legitimate email that contains a lot of spam keywords. One of our clients is a large equipment manufacturer and they send legitimate emails with marketing taglines that sometimes get flagged as spam. For the most part, we have very few false positives.

What is most valuable?

SpamTitan is good at catching zero-day viruses and spam messages.

One feature that helped us a lot in the past year is the Link Lock. It will check the URLs that are included in messages and if they're not trusted sites then the link will be blocked.  For example, our users will receive an email that says something to the effect of "Your password is about to expire, so please click on the enclosed link." If they click on the link, it causes a huge headache for us. Now, it's automatically blocked, which saves us a ton of time.

The Link Lock feature will check every URL in your email against a database of legitimate URLs. A malicious URL might go to a phishing site or a hacker site but if it isn't in the list of valid URLs, it will respond with a message that says "Blocked by SpamTitan Link Lock". It re-writes the URL so that it goes through their server, rather than the URL itself.

We just recently turned on the geo-blocking feature to block emails from Russia and Ukraine. We don't monitor the email that is blocked, unless it comes under the "relay denied" classification. That is approximately 2% of our total intake.

We use the whitelist feature to allow exemptions based on trusted senders. This is an important feature because we have approximately 12 sub-companies, and there is a good deal of marketing material sent between people. We configure them as trusted senders so that the messages don't get classified as spam, due to a large amount of marketing material. The whitelist allows them to communicate with each other and not get filtered out.

The user interface is great. Everything is in the browser; it is easy to set up and there are not a lot of tabs.

Most of it is simple to use and the side that the user sees is pretty intuitive. That said, there are grades of difficulty based on user experience.

What needs improvement?

When an email is quarantined, there are a couple of different search filters to help find what you're looking for. Having more choices would be helpful because as it is now, we can search for inbound or outbound, the score, the subject, and the email address. I would like to see a filter for searching inside the message content when it is quarantined.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using TitanHQ SpamTitan for approximately seven years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

This is a stable product. Our current uptime is 412 days. It was offline at the time because we had an outage in our data center. We had something plugged in wrong, so the fault was on our side.

Our service from them has been steady, including our daily antivirus updates. We've not had any problems. Stability is very important to us because if this goes down then we don't get any email.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We are not really seeing a heavy load on the machine that we host it on, so I assume it could go much higher. Now, we have a 500-user license, but we seem to be going over it every day. For example, at the moment, it's showing 755, so we're probably going to increase to a 1,000-user license when it comes up for renewal in another month.

With a current load of approximately 6%, I'm sure that it can easily go to 10,000 users on our hardware.

Everyone in the company uses it, although I and the CTO are the only two administrators. Our CTO takes care of the management, whereas I am the network/security administrator. I normally perform the maintenance, although the CTO does it sometimes.

How are customer service and support?

If I need support, I can immediately send a ticket and click connect on the website. They'll be able to go in and do whatever they need to fix an issue.

Initially, we were hesitant to join because they are based out of Ireland and we were concerned about being able to get support. However, it's never been an issue. I'm the main contact for support, and I might call them once a year for a weird issue. Usually, they get back to me within 30 minutes.

I would definitely rate their support a ten out of ten.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Before SpamTitan, we used to use MailGate, from Tumbleweed. The biggest difference between these two products was the price. The functionality was very close to the same but SpamTitan is approximately 30% of the price. Similarly, both are pretty stable and I wouldn't say that one was more stable than the other.

We switched because everything seemed to be as good as it was with solutions from the other big providers, with a huge difference in cost.

How was the initial setup?

It took us approximately an hour to set it up, and most of that time was on Office 365 to route incoming mail through SpamTitan first.

Ease of setup is something that was more important to me than it was to management. They would have preferred to use a free, open-source product. The problem with the open-source products is that anytime we needed to make a configuration change, it would take three or four days of research to figure out how to do it.

This is in contrast to SpamTitan, where there are only eight or nine tabs, with eight or nine subtabs on each one. For the most part, setting it requires visiting perhaps six tabs. If you have a question about any of the features, there is a question mark icon on the browser explaining each one. It's pretty well organized from the administration side.

What about the implementation team?

We implemented it ourselves.

What was our ROI?

We have realized ROI from our time savings. It has saved me hundreds of hours because we have people in one department that would constantly click on links that were bad. Most people would know not to click on them but certain people would always click on malicious links. Once that happened, they had a virus and it was sending out viruses to everyone in their email contacts.

Every time that happened, it cost me between 50 and 60 hours of time to fix the problem. It was an absolute nightmare that used to happen once or twice per month, and now the incidence of that has gone down to almost nothing. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

We implemented SpamTitan over other solutions because of its price. The functionality of all of these services is pretty much even, with the main differences between them being support options and where you can deploy them.

For other vendors, we had to purchase their hardware or employ a cloud solution that adds thousands of dollars per year to the cost. SpamTitan is something that you can put on your own hardware and it runs great.

The only additional cost was for Link. It isn't expensive, at perhaps a dollar extra per user.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Management was interested in saving costs by using an open-source solution. However, they are more difficult and time-consuming to configure.

We also looked at Barracuda and we didn't find much difference between the two, except for cost. We chose SpamTitan because it is more cost-effective.

What other advice do I have?

We have not had any issues with the product, the pricing is probably better than most vendors, and the support is definitely top-notch.

My advice for others is that if you're looking for a simple solution that you can deploy quickly, especially if you're on a budget, then I definitely recommend SpamTitan. You can have a full solution within a day.

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
Rami Al-Bader - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior System Administrator at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Real User
It's much easier to track emails and find them
Pros and Cons
  • "URL blocking is helpful. It will block any URL sending out lots of spam or phishing. It will rename the URL itself and send it to the user. The admin will block it, or you can allow users to release it if you want."
  • "SpamTitan doesn't allow you to customize the frequency of reports. Sometimes our users complain that they cannot control how often SpamTitan's report comes. Users get a daily report, but some would prefer a notification every time an email is quarantined."

What is our primary use case?

We sell communications solutions to companies like Microsoft, Cisco, 8x8, and RingCentral. We mainly use SpamTitan for basic email filtering. We don't use geoblocking because most of our client companies' employees work remotely, so we're working with users in India, Bulgaria, the United States, and multiple destinations in Europe. We might configure it one day, but not now.

Each employee gets a report every morning, and we authorize them to release the emails they want from quarantine. It's their responsibility. We are all working remotely, so our antivirus and other security solutions don't work well unless everyone is connected to a VPN. We are seeking a cloud solution for that. 

In the meantime, SpamTitan is much better for our users. They can check their spam reports and see whether those emails are really spam or not.

How has it helped my organization?

In the past, our users opened a lot of support tickets because they didn't get an email they were expecting and they couldn't find it in quarantine. We had some problems with our previous solution. It's much easier to track emails in SpamTitan and find them. 

Our previous solution's configuration was complex, which made it harder to provide support for our users. You had to go through three or four tabs to find the email you were looking for. SpamTitan has one tab where you search all the reports and emails. It's easier to manage when someone complains they didn't get an email because it has some kind of attachment. 

We haven't had many issues with false positives since we optimized SpamTitan's configuration. We only had one false positive, but it has worked perfectly otherwise. There was a noticeable improvement in spam in the first week. After four or five days, it was obviously much better than before. We didn't get the complaints we were getting every day.

What is most valuable?

I had some ad emails getting through the filter from time to time. I don't get them anymore with SpamTitan. It's always moved to the junk by default. SpamTitan has some intelligent features for learning which emails should go to the inbox and which should be flagged or quarantined. 

URL blocking is helpful. It will block any URL sending out lots of spam or phishing. It will rename the URL itself and send it to the user. The admin will block it, or you can allow users to release it if you want. 

What needs improvement?

SpamTitan doesn't allow you to customize the frequency of reports. Sometimes our users complain that they cannot control how often SpamTitan's report comes. Users get a daily report, but some would prefer a notification every time an email is quarantined. 

Our previous solution sent out immediate alerts when an email was quarantined. Some people prefer it, but it doesn't matter to me. I get the report when I start my day, and that's fine. 

For how long have I used the solution?

We've been using SpamTitan for around four months. 

How are customer service and support?

I rate TitanHQ's customer service 10 out of 10. I've contacted them twice in the past few months. They were highly responsive and resolved issues quickly. I don't think there was much difference between TitanHQ's support and the service we got from Barracuda's team. 

The main difference was the solution. Even if I got the support quickly from Barracuda, the configuration or the setup was hard to follow compared to SpamTitan.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We were using Barracuda when we decided to move to SpamTitan. At the time, we were looking for the best value. It was also essential for us to have an email filtration setup that allows users to log in and see which emails were in quarantine.

The most critical factor was cost-effectiveness. SpamTitan was much cheaper than Barracuda and offered the same value. When we did a trial, we also found the console was faster than Barracuda. The console is easier to use, and the configuration wasn't complicated.

I don't have any complaints about Barracuda's ability to catch spam. It catches, but it's more complicated to categorize where it goes. SpamTitan is more straightforward. SpamTitan has URL blocking, too. I feel it's different there. 

How was the initial setup?

It took us about 20 minutes to set SpamTitan up. We updated the DNS records and added a configuration to SpamTitan. That was it. The speed of the installation was crucial because we set it up on a workday. We monitored it for the next 24 hours and had no issues.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Our COO did a search on the internet. We looked at multiple options but only tried SpamTitan. We found that it was the most suitable.

What other advice do I have?

I rate SpamTitan 10 out of 10. 

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
Harvey Hochkievich - PeerSpot reviewer
Directory of IT at a manufacturing company with 51-200 employees
Real User
Huge reduction in spam, easy to use, and good and steady price
Pros and Cons
  • "I like its ease of use. As director of IT, I'm often in contact with our staff to make sure that they're safe and secure in their usage of email, etc. The quarantine features in SpamTitan make it really easy for them to review messages that haven't come in, and the rating of the score helps them determine whether or not they want to look at them at all. So, I see the quarantine feature as one of the best things in SpamTitan."
  • "There is no plugin for Outlook, which might be of an advantage so that you can just click on a link in Outlook that takes you right to your quarantine list. It doesn't have that at the moment."

What is our primary use case?

We use it in front of Office 365. We have 365 in the cloud. We use SpamTitan in front of it as a filter to make sure we don't lose anything in our protection, or our onion. It's just one more slice of the skin.

How has it helped my organization?

It has been a long time, but I know that they did some benchmarking back when it was put in. My understanding is that it has improved the blocking of spam by 50% to 60% from when we were relying on other products to do that. I wasn't here when they implemented it, but looking back at some of the old notes, there has been an improvement of 50% to 60% of less spam coming through. That is huge. This 50% to 60% reduction in emails certainly makes a big difference.

It has definitely saved employees time by not having to sort through junk and spam emails. The daily report that lets them pick and choose what they would like to pull through is much easier than having to go through the whole list of emails, etc. They don't worry about it much. They look at that report, and they determine what's worth taking out of it. It's not very often that they pull anything out of it. It's a quick look, and you're done, rather than scrolling through 20, 30, or 100 emails that would've got through and you have to sort them out. It's definitely a time saver.

I know it only takes them seconds to go through the SpamTitan list, review it, and just delete the SpamTitan email. I know it's not taking a lot of their time just from looking at my own report. On a daily basis, I get a report that shows 60 to 100 emails that were blocked by SpamTitan, and I know I don't have to go through those. I just need to have a quick look. The only thing I do is to look for stuff that I was expecting that got caught by SpamTitan, but that doesn't happen very often. It's a huge time saver from that perspective.

We get maybe one or two calls a week, maybe in false positives, where SpamTitan caught something that should have gone through. One or two false positives in a week are excellent. That just means my team doesn't have to worry too much.

What is most valuable?

I like its ease of use. As director of IT, I'm often in contact with our staff to make sure that they're safe and secure in their usage of email, etc. The quarantine features in SpamTitan make it really easy for them to review messages that haven't come in, and the rating of the score helps them determine whether or not they want to look at them at all. So, I see the quarantine feature as one of the best things in SpamTitan.

There is ease of use for the individuals who are accessing it. It doesn't require a lot of training. It's intuitive. You can see what you need to see. They get their daily reports so they know what they're looking at. If they're missing something they were expecting to come in, they can contact the help desk, and we can take care of that for them. It's easy for my team to find things. The filtering setup on it is quite good.

What needs improvement?

I personally haven't gone through SpamTitan enough. I don't necessarily need the reporting features and whatnot. There are a lot of things that might be of value, but at this point in time, I don't use them. If there was a way to increase the frequency of the daily report, that would be helpful. Somehow I thought that it was just a setting. If it's not a setting that I can change, it would definitely be helpful to have that come two times a day: one during the day at one o'clock or two o'clock in the afternoon and one overnight. If they could adjust the frequency of the reporting so that I could have it two times a day, that would be helpful.

There is no plugin for Outlook, which might be of an advantage so that you can just click on a link in Outlook that takes you right to your quarantine list. It doesn't have that at the moment.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using this solution for about five or six years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It has been extremely reliable. We haven't had any outages or downtime with them. I can't remember anything in recent memory. In the last year or so, we haven't had any outages. We haven't had any problems. Our team has had a few questions about configuration, and they were responded to very quickly. It's very reliable. It's always on, and it just works.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We haven't had to change it a whole lot. I don't know for sure, but my understanding is that it's very flexible. I get a call from our sales rep, and we walk through the options and determine whether or not we're going to change. One of the questions I have is whether we need to change the number of access points, and the answer has been no for the last couple of years. So, I assume they scale quite well, but I don't know for sure. It didn't seem to be an issue from their side anyway.

In terms of its usage, we have a single location. We're a manufacturing company. We have one location, and it's deployed across the network here. I have roughly 143 users, and I have two admins to manage that. It reduces the effort on part of my admin team, but it also reduces the effort on part of the users themselves.

How are customer service and support?

My team has had the occasional reason to call them up when they weren't sure of a setting that they needed to change. The response has been quick. It has been easy, and they've met all our time frames in terms of responding. So, we've been happy with it.

I would rate their tech support a ten out of ten. They're very responsive. They're very quick, and the answers are succinct. There are no issues.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

How was the initial setup?

My team didn't have any trouble implementing it and getting it running quickly with the cloud team. Originally, it was on-premises, and we went to the cloud three years ago. The switchover and implementation were great. There were no issues, problems, or hiccups.

Its maintenance is very lightweight. It runs in the background. We don't have to worry about it. We haven't had any issues with failures, outages, or anything. It has been excellent.

What was our ROI?

What I pay for it in the year, I definitely recoup all of that in the time saved for my team and the users in terms of not having to deal with problems.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Its pricing is good. We've been happy with the pricing. I know that they did some extensive research, and the pricing was quite favorable with everything else that they looked at. My budget hasn't changed a whole lot over the last three to five years. It's nice to see that it has remained pretty steady. So, I am happy with the pricing. It provides good value for money.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

My team here did a pretty good job comparing two other options against this particular option, and SpamTitan was head and shoulders better.

What other advice do I have?

I would advise doing a good comparison with other mail filters. Do your due diligence and take a look at the other options and list both sides of the equation. You'll find that SpamTitan is better than whatever else you're looking at.

SpamTitan has a lot of nice features, but we haven't got to utilize all of them. We haven't used the geo-blocking feature. We've thought about turning it on, but we don't use it at the moment, and that's just a matter of we haven't gotten to it yet. Similarly, we haven't yet used ArcTitan or EncryptTitan. We're pretty much using the basic version of SpamTitan. We'll be looking at all of the options for SpamTitan as we move forward.

I would rate it a nine out of ten because I don't know all the options. I haven't utilized all of what we could. I haven't explored the rest of it, but I would highly recommend it. I have no problem recommending the product. I know it works quite well. It functions, it works, and I don't have to think about it much.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
Network Specialist at Alabama Fire College
Real User
Had a huge impact on our spam, freeing our employees to be more productive
Pros and Cons
  • "The safelist and blocklist are the best parts. If I've got a new contact coming in, I can safelist that domain or email address. Alternatively, I can block the domain or the email address if I'm getting harassed by someone. I like the ability to get down to that granular level if I need to block or allow an entire"
  • "Emails from companies we work with often get flagged, and I have to go in and release them. For example, I made a hotel reservation today from Marriott that got blocked. I'm sure hotels spam people, but I wish there was a way to know that the email was to confirm my reservation and for it to allow that through."

What is our primary use case?

SpamTitan is the email filter we use to drastically reduce the amount of spam we get in our inboxes. We're deployed at two physical locations with several departments. Altogether, it's about 360 email accounts.

How has it helped my organization?

SpamTitan has freed up our employees to be more productive. They don't need to waste time sifting through a bunch of garbage emails. I'd say it's at least a 50 percent improvement. It has had a huge impact on our spam. You can go in every day and look at the amount of emails that are blocked. It's doing an outstanding job.

What is most valuable?

The safelist and blocklist are the best parts. If I've got a new contact coming in, I can safelist that domain or email address. Alternatively, I can block the domain or the email address if I'm getting harassed by someone. I like the ability to get down to that granular level if I need to block or allow an entire domain.

What needs improvement?

Emails from companies we work with often get flagged, and I have to go in and release them. For example, I made a hotel reservation today from Marriott that got blocked. I'm sure hotels spam people, but I wish there was a way to know that the email was to confirm my reservation and for it to allow that through.

For how long have I used the solution?

We've been using SpamTitan for around two years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We're pleased with SpamTitan's stability so far. We've had just zero issues with it. The stability is probably about the same, but the previous solution didn't catch spam the way SpamTitan does.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

SpamTitan scales easily. 

How are customer service and support?

TitanHQ's support is excellent. I rate them eight out of 10. 

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We were using Office 365's built-in filter, but I needed something more robust. I did some research online and tried a SpamTitan demo. It seemed to do an excellent job, so we went with it.

How was the initial setup?

Setting up SpamTitan is very straightforward, and it took a couple of days to deploy. You only need to make a couple of DNS changes, and it's ready to go. It doesn't require much maintenance after deployment. Occasionally, I go in and safelist an email or a domain when someone's expecting an email but not getting it. I check to see if the filter caught it. Once I mark it as safe, we don't have any more issues.

What about the implementation team?

We leaned on SpamTitan's tech support to help us get up and running.

What was our ROI?

We have seen a return on investment.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I think the price is fair for the service we're getting.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We looked at other options, including McAfee. I can't remember the others, but I looked at about four or five options. Ultimately, it came down to price and performance.

What other advice do I have?

I rate TitanHQ SpamTitan eight out of 10. When you deploy SpamTitan you should consider the filter sensitivity and how strict you want it to be. That may need to be tweaked with each individual organization. SpamTitan gives you a baseline of sensitivity to start with, and that number may need to be adjusted for your organization.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
Johnny Zodrow - PeerSpot reviewer
Service Manager at OnSite
Reseller
Vaporizes dangerous spam so that our customers never even see it, and it's easy for them to use
Pros and Cons
    • "We have submitted requests for a feature which would be a total control panel… Our previous spam filter had that and it saved us from having to log in to the panel online, search for an email, pull it up, and figure out where it came from originally and why it got the spam score it did. That would be a huge improvement and time-saver because then we wouldn't have to be in the webpage for that."

    What is our primary use case?

    Almost all of our email spam filtration goes through SpamTitan.

    How has it helped my organization?

    Most, if not all of our customers, benefit from SpamTitan because of the way it eliminates really dangerous spam. It is called “vaporizing.” It will vaporize bad and very dangerous spam so that our customers never even see it and there's never a chance for them to click on something that could potentially be dangerous or hazardous to their networks. It's a very nice security feature for us. People are still mostly the problem when it comes to becoming exposed to network vulnerabilities and SpamTitan takes some of that responsibility away from them.

    When it comes to our organization, as an MSP, I have a handful of techs who work with me and, because the interface is so intuitive and simple, it has made training them very easy and quick. In addition, because TitanHQ’s support is so fluid with their own product, they're able to get us the answers we need and we're then able to implement fixes for customers.

    Out of the gate, it takes a little fine-tuning to get the numbers right, but it definitely saves time for our customers’ employees because they don’t have to sort through junk and spam emails.

    What is most valuable?

    The big aspect of TitanHQ’s technology, when it comes to acquiring new customers for us as an MSP, is the way it sandboxes all incoming email attachments. That feature allows an email attachment to be run as if somebody had opened it, without causing any threat or concern to our customers' environments. The solution can open the attachment, run through it, and make sure there's nothing malicious about it. If there is something malicious, it destroys it. If there isn't, it passes it on. 

    On average, it does that in less than a second and that means a customer never feels that something is scanning their attachments. Nobody is going to notice a one-second lag in email delivery. It provides a lot of security and peace of mind for us, but it doesn't bother or interrupt a customer’s day-to-day functions.

    The customer-facing panel, what the customers actually log in to, is where they can release spam email, or allow and block email addresses or domains, was also a big selling point for us. We like how customer-friendly the interface is.

    What needs improvement?

    We have submitted requests for a feature which would be a total control panel. It would have a footer at the bottom of every email and list things like

    • the original source of the email
    • what its spam score was when it passed through the system
    • original or source IP's
    • other, more technical information.

    Our previous spam filter had that type of feature and it saved us from having to log in to the panel online, search for an email, pull it up, and figure out where it came from originally and why it got the spam score it did. That would be a huge improvement and time-saver because then we wouldn't have to log into the web portal for that. It would be at the foot of every single email that passes through the system.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    We have been using TitanHQ SpamTitan since January of 2022, so about six months.

    We have it deployed across about 20 different Microsoft 365 environments, using Exchange Online, with about 600 mailboxes in total. We run it in our office and that is also Microsoft 365.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    It has been stable. We had one update, in April. Other than that, it has been completely stable. We can log in to the panel and see the uptime. It's only been restarted once, after that update, and otherwise, it has been up 100 percent of the time.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    Scaling it is very easy. It's just a matter of submitting a support ticket to increase the overall number of mailboxes we're paying for, and then we just keep moving forward.

    We plan to increase our usage of SpamTitan. We have five customers still in Reflexion and they will be moving over in the next two months. At that point, we'll be 100 percent SpamTitan.

    How are customer service and support?

    The biggest benefit of being a partner of TitanHQ is the support. Every account manager seems to go above and beyond to ensure that we have the information we need and that we have it in a timely fashion. That goes for every support ticket and interaction we've had with them as well. In addition, they're just genuinely a friendly group of people to work with.

    Account and customer support stand out for us as an MSP because we interface with them a lot.

    Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

    We used Reflexion. We switched because it was bought out by another company that decided to sunset the product. It hasn't had any major updates in quite some time and it was beginning to be a security hazard.

    Reflexion was a stable product. Where it fell short was with updates in security. It ran and was always there, but it was falling behind.

    How was the initial setup?

    Our initial deployment was a piece of cake. We did it on the phone with SpamTitan in about 12 minutes. It was phenomenal. I had another technician, on our side, involved in that phone call.

    The product, in general, is very easy to implement and it's very effective. It doesn't require any babysitting or hand holding. You just tie it to the platform you're using for email and it goes to work. You do a little bit of fine-tuning based on feedback from the customers. Then, it's just a matter of checking on it occasionally.

    We've got it down pat now. We make the necessary DNS changes, build the customer information in the new SpamTitan panel, and schedule a cutover with the customer. We cut over the MX and DNS records and usually, within minutes, email is flowing through SpamTitan successfully. From there, it's just a matter of working with the customer, usually for a couple of days, to help fine-tune the spam score so that stuff that shouldn't get caught gets through and stuff that should be caught is stopped.

    In terms of maintenance, SpamTitan support sends us an email to let us know when there is an update. We schedule downtime, log in to the panel, and do the update. The entire thing takes less than 30 minutes.

    What was our ROI?

    For us, the ROI is the time we get back from not having to babysit the solution or have people trying to figure it out. And for our customers, it's a time-saver because it's very easy and intuitive to use. It's quick.

    What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

    The pricing is very fair. We've been very happy with it. You just pay the bundle fee for a group of mailboxes.

    Which other solutions did I evaluate?

    We tried three other options before we settled on SpamTitan.

    First and foremost, we went with SpamTitan because of the ease of use inside the web panel. What our customers have to see when they click on something is a factor we take very seriously, and the customer-facing panels from the other contenders were just terrible. SpamTitan has that all figured out, cleaned up, and it presents very well. When a customer who's not techy clicks on the link and needs to release or block an email, it makes it very simple and clean for them.

    Customer support from TitanHQ has been top-tier, top-notch, the whole time we have worked with them, they have been on it. As for the others that we demoed, while they did respond, it didn't feel like they were as comfortable with their own products as SpamTitan’s techs are with theirs.

    What other advice do I have?

    We haven't had any conversations about things that need to be improved in the solution. Nobody has any major complaints. For the time being, it's a pretty solid solution out-of-the-box and we're not looking for any immediate changes.

    Just try it. Install it, run it, and try it. It’s incredibly simple to use, it sets up in minutes, and there are wonderful account and support teams. Just do it. Just use it and the product will sell itself.

    Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor. The reviewer's company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: MSP
    PeerSpot user
    Buyer's Guide
    Download our free TitanHQ SpamTitan Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
    Updated: November 2024
    Buyer's Guide
    Download our free TitanHQ SpamTitan Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.