2008 AntiSpam Reviews

Cloudmark gives us our top pick for anti-spam software this year: Cloudmark Desktop 5.3.3 for Microsoft Outlook. The system is clean, easy to use, and most important, excellent in filtering spam. What makes Cloudmark so successful, is because they use the best spam filter of all: humans. Spam is filtered out based on a community of users just like you. This along with Cloudmark's ability to filter POP3 and IMAP makes it our Editor's Choice for 2008.

iHateSpam 5.0 uses the same technology as Cloudmark does. In fact, it's esentially the same anti-spam software for Microsoft Outlook. The only real difference being that as of this writing, iHateSpam 5.0 only works with Outlook, whereas Cloudmark supports a wider variety of email clients. So why choose iHateSpam over Cloudmark? IHateSpam 5.0 is just as strong as Cloudmark but a little bit cheaper. Plus, if you use Thunderbird or Outlook Express, iHateSpam is not an option at this time.

MailWasher Pro 6.1 is our third choice this year due to its unique approach to fighting spam. Instead of integrating with your current email client (like Outlook, Outlook Express, Thunderbird, etc), MailWasher Pro is a stand-alone product that lives between the email server and your email client. What this means is, you need to open up MailWasher Pro first, select which emails you want to let through, then allow them to download to your email client. This can be helpful for a few reasons: helps prevent obscene emails from ever reaching your inbox, and preventing potential viruses from infecting your system.

SPAMfighter Pro is a Microsoft Gold Certified partner. What this means is, it's designed and tested to work flawlessly with Microsoft Outlook versions 2000 or later, Outlook Express 5.5 or later, and Vista's Windows Mail. SPAMfighter Pro is a good anti-spam solution with good spam filtering results. SPAMfighter Pro works on the community-based spam filtering principle like Cloudmark Desktop, or iHateSpam 5.0. The results are fairly accurate, and the software is easy to use.

If you're looking for a simple and relatively effective spam filter, SpamBully does an adequate job. While SpamBully 4 doesn't use the innovative community-based filtering of Cloudmark Desktop or iHateSpam, this anti-spam software is simple and intuitive enough for basic spam filtering. SpamBully 4 installs as a simple toolbar (Outlook, Outlook Express and Vista Mail) that allows you easily flag emails as spam or not-spam.