Ray Kiesbrink - PeerSpot reviewer
CTO at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
Real User
Reduces spam email, and the time needed to deal with it, significantly
Pros and Cons
  • "What I like the most is the filtering and the granularity with which you can really zoom in on the spam that's coming in and configure it exactly so that what you don't want is blocked."
  • "I'd like to see something like "My First SpamTitan," by which I mean, "Guide me through the things I need to set, and tell me about the things that you're setting already." That way I would get a good feeling for setting up the product, rather than having to figure it out by myself, which is what I did."

What is our primary use case?

We use it for filtering spam.

How has it helped my organization?

We saw the benefits the same day that we deployed it. Normally, our client would get between 300 and 600 spam emails each day, and we reduced that to 15 on the first day. That was a real win and they were very glad we implemented it.

Employees used to take about two hours a day to sift through all the spam emails that were coming in, to see if they were valid or not. Now, it is just an afterthought. They spend two to three minutes because so few spam emails come through. They just need to take a quick glance and say, "Well, okay, I need to have that one and the rest are spam emails."

What is most valuable?

What I like the most is the filtering and the granularity with which you can really zoom in on the spam that's coming in and configure it exactly so that what you don't want is blocked.

What I also love about SpamTitan is that you can deploy it on your own hardware, so if there are any performance issues you can just upgrade the hardware and you'll be fine.

What needs improvement?

I'd like to see something like "My First SpamTitan," by which I mean, "Guide me through the things I need to set, and tell me about the things that you're setting already." That way I would get a good feeling for setting up the product, rather than having to figure it out by myself, which is what I did. It wasn't a big issue because I've configured spam filters before, but I think someone else might be overwhelmed with all the options you can set.

They can either keep it as it is, which is rather technical in looks and in management, or they can have more of a "My First SpamTitan" interface, which would guide you through things and give you a good configuration at the start. Later, you could perfect it by tuning it yourself. Something like that would be nice.

Buyer's Guide
TitanHQ SpamTitan
May 2024
Learn what your peers think about TitanHQ SpamTitan. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: May 2024.
787,061 professionals have used our research since 2012.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using TitanHQ SpamTitan since 2016 or 2017.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's very stable. We have never had it go down unless it was our own fault. Overall, the stability is very good when compared with other solutions.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

From what we have seen, it is a scalable solution. We started with about 20 licenses and ended up overusing them by 70 licenses when we got up to 90 email addresses. We later had to reduce that because it was over our licensing limit, but there was no problem in scaling at all.

Our client is a company with just one location and a fiber internet line. They have about 70 people using the internet.

How are customer service and support?

The technical support is very good. One time, because of something we did, and not because the product failed, they were quick in resolving it. We made a support call and they said, "Okay, can we look at the machine?" We had to enable remote support and they could directly log in. After they logged in, they were able to quickly resolve it. It took about two hours after we placed the call, at the most, for them to get back to us and resolve the issue.

Compared to other solutions I've used, TitanHQ's support is very speedy. 

They are perfect.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

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

We previously used Cisco IronPort. We switched because Cisco IronPort wasn't supported anymore and we would have had to buy a very expensive next-gen tool from Cisco. We didn't like that, so we looked for another solution.

We had a lot of spam coming in at a time when we were using a local Exchange Server and there was not really much we could do in a granular way. We were looking for a new solution that would filter the email more perfectly. We found that in SpamTitan.

How was the initial setup?

I did the deployment. For an engineer, it's a fairly straightforward process. Once you install it, you get the proper tips for configuring it. It took me about half an to get us up and running and configuring took a bit longer. That was the fine-tuning. But setting it up, getting it to work, and placing it in between the internet and our email took just half an hour. It was very easy. You do need knowledge of networking and email routing, but that's it.

I was the only one involved in the deployment, and it requires just one person for maintenance. We keep to a monthly cycle of looking at the updates and we update if there are any, but it takes almost no effort to maintain it.

It has saved us a lot of management work. It's almost a fire-and-forget solution. There is some spam coming through, but that's just because the spam creators are also getting smarter. We have to tweak it a little or maybe update the system and, after that, it comes up roses.

What was our ROI?

Our most important return on investment is time because the solution has saved us a lot of time by not having to worry about emails coming in. The things that are coming in now, most of the time, are just right. Sifting through emails went from two hours to a few minutes.

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

The pricing is just right. There are no additional costs to the standard fee, as far as I know.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We looked at some open-source solutions but didn't find anything to our liking. When we came up with SpamTitan it was a bullseye. It was exactly what we needed. It's a complete package. 

With the open-source packages, you still have to do a lot yourself, whereas SpamTitan has a development organization behind it. Anything that needs to be in there is there. The setup is simple and I was configuring away after about half an hour. That was a big difference compared to the open-source solutions at the time.

We based our choice on the things TitanHQ said it could do. We installed it and it did everything they said it would do. It has saved a lot of effort and a lot of time.

What other advice do I have?

Just do it. Make it a real-world example because once you have it set up and running, it runs just fine. It's a very good solution.

It's an eight out of 10 because the interface could be improved.

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
Information Technology Manager at a financial services firm with 11-50 employees
Real User
Geo-blocking is important for reducing our exposure; less spam saves everyone time
Pros and Cons
  • "SpamTitan learned faster than I thought it was going to, based on other products that I've used. There was a lot more feedback. The other products are based on the users, but this one, with its AI, seems to produce tremendous improvements day-to-day. I told the teams it was going to take two to three weeks but, within a week, we had dropped the amount of spam that was getting through."
  • "The support hours are tough for U.S.-based companies like ours, because they're in Europe. They did tell me that they're opening a support office in the U.S. There is, currently, some overlap in support, but it's difficult to get real-time support and, a lot of the time, I just need a quick answer."

How has it helped my organization?

The geo-blocking is doing a very good job. I look at our SIEM to see from which countries we're getting attempted logins through Office 365. I started to correlate that with places we were getting spam from, like Brazil. We were also getting a fair amount of stuff coming in from the usual suspects, like China and North Korea. But Brazil was unexpected. I never would have guessed that there's a large hacking community down there, or machines there that are owned by hackers in other countries. The geo-blocking is important for reducing the exposure that we have.

For example, we can geo-block something and then we don't have to inspect a blocked email for a virus. Before we enabled geo-blocking, we were getting embedded viruses, and it was catching those, but now that's being caught by the geo-blocking feature.

Because our end-users are not getting spam, I'm not getting messages where people say, "I think this is spam. What do you think?" I used to get something like that six or eight times a day, so SpamTitan has definitely helped save time.

And in comparison to our previous solution from Barracuda, SpamTitan has reduced our spam by a factor of three.

What is most valuable?

I'd read that the portal software was dated from the UI perspective, but when I use it, it is very logically laid out. That is one of the things I like. I'm able to get to what I need to very quickly and manage it efficiently. Once I understood the model of how they were doing things, it was very easy to work with.

In addition, I looked at the reporting and about one-third of things that come are not spam, but they are blocked and they need to be blocked because of our rule sets. They're failing DMARC; SPF records are nonexistent. Another valuable feature is "nonexistent recipient." That eliminates a lot of noise that we would get, such as things coming in for former employees. We just don't need that mail.

What needs improvement?

The training for end-users could be improved. I would like to see a video that says, "Here's the solution and what it will look like." It would be helpful if they had something like that to set expectations.

For example, some of our end-users would go in and delete a message through the solution but they didn't know there was a popup that was part of that process. They weren't allowing popups. And then they couldn't understand why the message they had deleted was still in their mailbox when they knew that they had deleted it.

There was a disconnect regarding how things function, so they need something to show the end-user, very simply, what to expect and how you do things. They have it documented in text and with screenshots, and we went through that, but these days all of our training is done with short, three-minute videos, and people prefer that. They're not going to read anything.

For how long have I used the solution?

We've been using TitanHQ SpamTitan in earnest for 60 to 90 days. We were testing it for about three months before that.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability is good. 

My concern is about what would happen if it goes down. Is it load-balanced? Is there a cluster on the other end or is this just one single server? As a mortgage bank, email is critical and everything is time-sensitive. If that's an option, or it's something that is built-in, I'm not aware of it.

From what I'm looking at, it's probably a single server having fault tolerance with two nodes. I come from regional banks and international companies and we always have multiples for failover. We're a small company and I don't know that we could afford that kind of redundancy, but I haven't had a discussion with TitanHQ about what that would look like or what it would cost. I could bring that to our executives and say, "Is this something that would be valuable given the cost?" If they were to say no, and then we had an outage, it could get expensive on our end.

How are customer service and support?

The support hours are tough for U.S.-based companies like ours, because they're in Europe. They did tell me that they're opening a support office in the U.S. There is, currently, some overlap in support, but it's difficult to get real-time support and, a lot of the time, I just need a quick answer.

That could be improved. It's not an untenable situation but it is a little bit frustrating when I've got users saying, "Hey, I need this or that," and I really need to know how to configure it.

When I do get somebody in support, they're on top of it and they do a great job, but sometimes there's a delay in getting a response.

I had to become familiar with all the different features, and how they classified things a little bit differently. But they do a good job on the help desk side of it. We had a couple of issues where the documentation wasn't there and they agreed. Two days later I was on their help site and I saw that they had built a more specific page for that. It was really encouraging that they're on top of it.

The quality of the support is great. The people I've worked with are great. It's the timeliness. Sometimes it takes a little while, going back and forth, to get the right person.

For Barracuda support we went through a service provider and it typically took a day or two before we would get a response, so SpamTitan is much better.

But compared to other companies, SpamTitan is on par with what we would get from Microsoft or Cisco, given that we are a regional bank and a larger account. With those companies, I can usually get a hold of somebody on the phone within an hour to four hours. With SpamTitan, it is mostly through email, back and forth. That means there are some delays. Sometimes, being able to talk to somebody and just say what I need to do would be better than doing it through emails.

The best support I've ever gotten, as a reference point, has been from Nutanix. That might be a model that they want to look at. I got better support from Nutanix on products that weren't even theirs. I had problems with VMware and their engineers helped solve the problem, which really engendered my confidence in their product.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

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

Our company has been doing managed service for 10 years with two different service providers. My job was to come in and stand up an internal IT department because they weren't happy with the services. I've been in IT for over 40 years and I typically fulfill a CTO role and help companies get their IT functioning during a major merger or acquisition. My current company is constantly in a merger and acquisition phase.

I looked at the products that our company was using but, because there was no IT department, we weren't really getting value out of those products. In all fairness, the products weren't configured optimally for this company. I said, "Well, this is an opportunity to look at something more cost-effective."

We landed on TitanHQ's SpamTitan.

We were using Barracuda, which is not a bad product. But we weren't set up with any portals so I couldn't see anything. We were getting an inordinate amount of spam and targeted spam. I was just unhappy with the company overall. I decided I had to put my own stuff in and just forklift everything else out.

How was the initial setup?

Overall, the setup was very good. 

The exception was creating the proper certificate. We couldn't get it working properly. So SpamTitan created the certificate but it doesn't function properly because we still get an error message that people have to bypass. This is part of what I was talking about with the end-users getting a popup. It's like when you go to a webpage and the certificate is out of date. Our end-users are getting that error message because the certificate doesn't function properly. They thought the site was broken and I said, "No, you can bypass it. We trust this site. This is 'our site.'"

This issue with their certificate has caused a lot more communication between my team and the end-users where we have to say, "No, really, this is okay," because in general, we've trained them to not bypass messages like that. In this particular case, we know it's something we have to fix. That part of it wasn't clear in the documentation.

I've got a call tomorrow with the SpamTitan support team and I'll talk to them about getting this fixed because it is the only problem that we have right now.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

When I talked to Barracuda from the licensing perspective, it was not as competitive as what I would have liked. We're a smaller company with about 130 employees.

Also, in a meeting with my senior management, they said that my prediction that we were going to get more spam temporarily until the SpamTitan machine learning had completed was true, but they also said they thought it was going to take much longer. Within about a week, things had settled down and they said we are getting a lot less spam than we used to with our previous solution.  

We still have SpamTitan in learning mode and one of the things that I did at the beginning was to log in every day and look at all the email. When something was obviously spam I took care of it in the back end so that end-users don't have to deal with it. This week, when I looked at it, I didn't see anything that I needed to take action on. It's doing a very good job of properly identifying things.

At first, my senior management were apprehensive about SpamTitan, but now they are saying that they feel they are in control of spam. The way SpamTitan works is a little bit different because, with Barracuda, they were getting hourly updates about quarantined mail. When I told them they were only going to get updates once a day, but they could go check, they thought that was going to be more impactful, but for most people it has resulted in less noise. Our end-users are comfortable with it and it's working really well.

In our business, we get bulk notifications from different companies about the current interest rates, sometimes two or three times a day from the same company, and they go to 20 or 30 or more recipients who are our loan officers. Our end-users like that they can go into the quarantine and clear those. After a while, they'll either create a folder for those updates or they'll just say, "I don't need this anymore and I'm going to block it." They like the fact that they're all managing that independently. That's not to say they couldn't do so with Barracuda, but it required logging into a portal and knowing how to sort things. Now, it's in an email and, right from that email, they can block or allow those  messages independently.

A few people in our organization didn't like it, but I said, "Look, you can just open this email and click a button and, within about 30 seconds, you'll have an email that says, "This is everything that's currently in quarantine." It's easier than having to use a browser, log in to a portal, and do that. That saves them a little time.

Overall, SpamTitan learned faster than I thought it was going to, based on other products that I've used. There was a lot more feedback. The other products are based on the users, but this one, with its AI, seems to produce tremendous improvements day-to-day. I told the teams it was going to take two to three weeks but, within a week, we had dropped the amount of spam that was getting through. By Tuesday of the following week, meaning about a week and a half after implementation, it was mature. It wasn't final—it's always going to be learning—but it was mature enough that we felt that the hand holding with the individuals and checking in were not things we needed to do anymore. Everybody was confident at that point.

What other advice do I have?

Don't discount TitanHQ because you haven't heard of them. I sit with other CISOs.  We get together for dinner once a month and talk and I mentioned it but nobody had heard of them. I said, "SpamTitan has this and this feature," and I delved into some of the reasons we went with it and they were taking notes. They're excited to look at something recommended by a peer who is saying, "I've used multiple products and I like the way that these guys work. I like what they're doing and how we're stacking up our security." 

TitanHQ recently acquired Cyber Risk Aware for security awareness training with phishing simulation. I mentioned that it makes sense because you could tie that into your SpamTitan and WebTitan. Your training could be based upon real metrics, in real-time, based on what people are doing. That's a very good, competitive place to be. I look forward to their growth. When I mentioned those things my colleagues were saying, "Wow, this sounds like a company we need to really seriously take a look at."

My approach is to leverage things that make sense, not because they're there. I always look at: Why? Where are we going? How do we get there? Then we can decide whether that's the right type of product or service to use going forward. We have different outcomes than we would get if we did what most people do. They say, "Well, how do we improve what we've got?" Maybe what you have doesn't fit anymore.

We also use TitanHQ's WebTitan. We just rolled that out to replace Cisco Umbrella and because the interface is very similar to SpamTitan's interface, it was very easy to roll that forward and to manage it.

So far, SpamTitan is the easiest and most efficient solution I've used. I give it a 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
Buyer's Guide
TitanHQ SpamTitan
May 2024
Learn what your peers think about TitanHQ SpamTitan. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: May 2024.
787,061 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Jean Paul Alfaro Silva - PeerSpot reviewer
CIO at a manufacturing company with 201-500 employees
Real User
Top 10
Is easy to set up and use, and is stable and scalable
Pros and Cons
  • "I like SpamTitan's email sandboxing. It is very effective and blocks almost 99% of spam. It also has zero-day threat protection."
  • "The analysis of ransomware attachments could be improved. Other solutions seem to detect ransomware faster than SpamTitan does."

What is our primary use case?

We use SpamTitan as a complement to Office 365 because it works well with Outlook and blocks malware and spam.

What is most valuable?

I like SpamTitan's email sandboxing. It is very effective and blocks almost 99% of spam. It also has zero-day threat protection.

The IT team has seen more time savings than the end users. The end users used to call frequently to have us check whether an email was safe. However, with SpamTitan, these emails don't arrive in the end user's inbox.

The end-user has seen a 50% reduction in spam with SpamTitan. The percentage could be higher, but we have not configured SpamTitan with a higher level of security. This is because we did not want to lose important images from customers or providers who don't have a good score. It's been working well for us so far, and we haven't had any issues with high false positive rates.

What needs improvement?

The analysis of ransomware attachments could be improved. Other solutions seem to detect ransomware faster than SpamTitan does.

It would be great if the commercial and support teams in Latin America spoke Spanish.

For how long have I used the solution?

We've been using SpamTitan for almost five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We haven't had any issues with stability during the last five years.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It's easy to increase the number of users or the volume of emails in the cloud version. I emailed partner support or SpamTitan's support, and they increased the capacity. We have approximately 2,000 users with SpamTitan.

How are customer service and support?

TitanHQ's technical support is good. They're quick to respond to emails and to correct any issue we may have. On a scale from one to ten, I'd give them a nine.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup process was fast. It's very easy to set up and use. One person can manage the solution once it's implemented; it is a lightweight solution.

What about the implementation team?

We implemented the solution with the help of a SpamTitan partner. Their level of expertise was great.

What was our ROI?

SpamTitan has protected us from ransomware attacks, and that is a return on investment. We have seen this ROI in one year.

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

The pricing is great, but it has been increasing on a yearly basis. It is now close to that of Microsoft solutions. If it continues to increase, then clients may need to migrate to a different solution.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We evaluated solutions from Microsoft and Cisco before choosing SpamTitan. The solutions from Microsoft and Cisco were too expensive.

What other advice do I have?

My advice would be to try SpamTitan. It is not as well known as Microsoft or Cisco, but it is a great solution. SpamTitan blocks malware and spam like other solutions do but at a lower cost. It is a good solution with great pricing.

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate SpamTitan at ten.

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
Proprietor at Fellcroft
Real User
Top 20
Reasonably-priced, simple to use, and reduces the support and investigation required for suspicious emails
Pros and Cons
  • "Its simplicity is most valuable. It does what we ask it to do. The filters work, and we are able to set the levels and give the clients or end-user access to the quarantine through a simple email."
  • "A lot of the other companies that I deal with have a feature that allows you to modify emails and apply signatures automatically based on linking into Azure's servers and database. That feature isn't there in SpamTitan."

What is our primary use case?

SpamTitan for our clients, and it's there just as a spam filter for them.

How has it helped my organization?

It reduces the number of support calls and investigations into suspicious emails.

It's not something the clients think about after the initial rollout. It just becomes part of their daily work. The advantage is that the client doesn't have to think about things or spend too much time sorting through things as the vast majority is done before they get anywhere near it.

The geo-blocking feature blocks spam emails from entering the network and servers, reducing spam intake. It has probably reduced spam intake by about 80%. It mainly restricts based on the country of origin, which is something the client doesn't think about, but it's important to me because I have to pick up the pieces.

The geo-blocking feature allows exemptions based on a trusted sender's IP, domain, or email address. The feature is there, and it does work. It's not something that we have to change too often.

It has helped save employees time by not having to sort through junk and spam emails. The whole point of doing it is that end-users don't have to troll through hundreds of spurious emails. If they don't see them, they get a list each morning, and they can decide if any of them is worth releasing.

It has drastically reduced the amount of time that employees spend going through emails. They only get the ones they should.

It has improved the spam catch rate and reduced the organization’s false positive rate. That's the whole point of it. Otherwise, we wouldn't use the service. There is a 70% to 80% improvement.

We are an MSP of TitanHQ. The aspect of TitanHQ’s technology that helps us acquire new customers and add value to our services or product offerings is that it's very quick to roll out. It's very quick and easy to configure, and it's very quick and easy to modify as required.

TitanHQ’s key differentiator for its partners is simplicity. Some of the other packages that we use are quite complex and awkward and not necessarily easy to configure or logical.

What is most valuable?

Its simplicity is most valuable. It does what we ask it to do. The filters work, and we are able to set the levels and give the clients or end-user access to the quarantine through a simple email. It works in a very straightforward method and doesn't require a lot of maintenance.

What needs improvement?

A lot of the other companies that I deal with have a feature that allows you to modify emails and apply signatures automatically based on linking into Azure's servers and database. That feature isn't there in SpamTitan. 

Others have the facility to remove certain bits of text. For example, if somebody sends an email from their iPhone, it always says, "Sent from my iPhone." On a couple of other services that we use, a feature is available to strip known phrases and also to strip things like obscenities from emails that are being sent, just in case you have an employee who is misbehaving.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using SpamTitan for three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I've had no issues with it. So, it has got to be very stable.

Its stability is on par with the other solutions that I have used. Stability was never an issue.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It's scalable. You can go as far as you like or as low as you like. You can go from one user to 200 users very quickly and very easily.

It's deployed on multiple locations, multiple devices, and multiple platforms. There are just under 40 users for this one.

How are customer service and support?

It has been very good. I've not had much need to use their support, but when I needed their support, it was there. Their support was very good in terms of expertise, attentiveness, and speed of response. I would rate them a nine out of ten. Nobody gets a ten.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

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

We were using Mimecast. We switched because SpamTitan was a simpler solution, and it was also cheaper.

How was the initial setup?

It's a cloud solution. It's on Azure, and it's all Microsoft based.

The initial deployment was very straightforward. We required a couple of tweaks, which the support team sorted out in a reasonable time. 

The deployment took about 30 minutes. It was very easy to set up, configure, and then use SpamTitan. It doesn't require any maintenance.

What about the implementation team?

It was just me.

What was our ROI?

I suppose we have seen an ROI. We do make a margin on it. I don't have the metrics because it's just a revenue stream at the end of the day. We could earn more money off some of the other products that are out there on the market, but that wouldn't necessarily suit the client.

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

It's priced very reasonably. There are no additional licensing costs that affect me.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I looked at some of the other solutions, including BitDefender and Kaspersky, as well as Mimecast. SpamTitan stood out in terms of the simplicity of the system.

What other advice do I have?

I would definitely recommend this product. I would rate it an eight out of ten. It just lacks a couple of features.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

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

Microsoft Azure
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
Director of Technology at a performing arts with 201-500 employees
Real User
Top 20
Has a simple process for end users to encrypt emails but does not have an easy way to deal with false positives
Pros and Cons
  • "The encryption feature seems to be the most useful. We didn't have a convenient option for it previously, and having the capability to encrypt from within the message nearly seamlessly is a benefit to us."
  • "With SpamTitan, the false positives and false negatives seem to be higher than those with the product we had previously. The other area for improvement has to do with how to deal with false positives. If something slips through, there's no easy way to mark it as spam globally. The add-in has not been working. We haven't even deployed it to our entire organization yet because it's not working for the few in the pilot project."

What is most valuable?

The encryption feature seems to be the most useful. We didn't have a convenient option for it previously, and having the capability to encrypt from within the message nearly seamlessly is a benefit to us.

EncryptTitan's Keyword Policy Based Encryption feature is one of the features we were looking for. We wanted a simple process for our end users so that they could encrypt emails and attachments. The other option we had before used multiple steps in order to achieve the same result.

What needs improvement?

With SpamTitan, the false positives and false negatives seem to be higher than those with the product we had previously.

The other area for improvement has to do with how to deal with false positives. If something slips through, there's no easy way to mark it as spam globally. The add-in has not been working. We haven't even deployed it to our entire organization yet because it's not working for the few in the pilot project.

For how long have I used the solution?

We've been using SpamTitan for almost a year now.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Stability-wise, it's pretty consistent. It has not gone down, although we had to have the instance restarted once. The stability of our previous email security solution was about the same as that of SpamTitan.

How are customer service and support?

I'm not happy with the technical support. Issues seem to drag on longer than they should, and we have no direct phone contact with support staff. Everything is handled through email, which is not really efficient in some situations and prevents the problem from being resolved faster.

In comparison, the technical support from AppRiver was much faster in terms of service responses. The products that we had before AppRiver were from GFI MailEssentials, and they were very responsive and had phone support so that we could directly talk to someone.

Overall, I would rate technical support at five on a scale from one to ten.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Neutral

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

We previously used AppRiver. The primary reasons we chose SpamTitan are that it was a more modern product and that it offered encryption. On paper, it also looked like SpamTitan had more features than AppRiver.

SpamTitan built a solution for us and tested it out, and it seemed to work fine. That's why we went with it.

How was the initial setup?

The level of complexity of the initial setup was not beyond what we expected because we were deploying a lot of options. We had good support, and it was not difficult to set up and configure SpamTitan. We definitely wanted to be able to deploy the solution as quickly as possible.

We have one person assigned to handle the maintenance of the solution.

SpamTitan is deployed organization-wide. We're very regional, so we don't have other entities outside of our location.

What about the implementation team?

We worked directly with SpamTitan. I did the backend configuration, integrating it with our Office 365 tenant, and my colleague was responsible for the Outlook plugin, which is still an issue.

What was our ROI?

Encryption has definitely filled a gap that we needed, and it's a return on investment. 

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

The pricing was a little bit below the average of what we were looking at.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We evaluated Proofpoint, Barracuda, Trustify, and Kaseya. We chose to go with SpamTitan because of the encryption option and the supposed modern email security options.

What other advice do I have?

If you are evaluating SpamTitan, I would advise you to take a look at the service options for problem resolution.

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate SpamTitan a seven.

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?

Amazon Web Services (AWS)
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
Director, Information Technology at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Good pricing with excellent geo-blocking and low false-positives
Pros and Cons
  • "The initial setup was relatively easy."
  • "It's been the same interface for ten years and some things are hard to find, even after using it for years."

What is our primary use case?

We primarily use the solution for spam filtering for all of our internal clients.

How has it helped my organization?

We're talking ten years since we started using it. At the time, the products we were using took a lot of manual effort to make sure that we were blocking unwanted emails. When we moved to SpamTitan, it alleviated some of that daily work that we'd have to do to make sure we were getting clean email.

What is most valuable?

Their general spam filtering and the logging of the history are helpful.

They have a low false-negative detection. We have a lot of control over what is filtered and what isn't through creating our own rule sets.

We also use SpamTitan's geo-blocking feature. We started using that when it became available as we were doing that ourselves on-prem. We started using that when it became available last year. It allows you to block spam emails entering your network and servers, reducing your spam intake. Being able to block a whole country that our customers don't deal with is just an easy way to not even have to process those spam messages. 

I'm not sure if I can approximate by how much we've reduced our spam intake by using this feature, however. We tend to geo-block based on the country, not the IP. So far, it works. It's easy to set up and easy to make exceptions, based on either IP or domain, in case there is some email from a country that we're blocking that we have to allow through. It's very important due to the fact that we're a government agency. Blocking emails from certain countries, especially during times like this, where there are a lot of attacks coming in, helps keep us safe.

In general, the user interface is good. SpamTitan's overall intuitiveness is okay. 

The solution has saved us time. We went from doing work every day to maybe a couple of times a week to make sure the emails we are getting are clean.

What needs improvement?

The interface could be updated. I wish it was a little bit more modern. It's been the same interface for ten years and some aspects are hard to find, even after using it for years. If you don't go to a certain feature often, you have to dig around to find it sometimes. Therefore, the layout or structure of it could probably be better. 

In terms of intuitiveness, the main daily admin use is fine, however, some of the special configuration areas don't seem to be logically laid out compared to other products that we use.

The only other issue we've had is with searching the logs. It has a field for searching the "from user", yet does not have a "header from". Sometimes it's difficult to find an email when the "from" and "header from" are different, as we're only able to search the from field. This is difficult compared to other products that we use.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've used the solution for about ten years. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability is good. I'd say it's around an eight out of ten. We've had a couple of issues with running out of memory or disk space. However, support has always been able to adjust things to get them back working.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We haven't really expanded it. We have about 5,000 mailboxes that go through it. We've adopted it 100%. We do plan to increase usage.

How are customer service and support?

Their support has always been very good. They're always responsive. You get to the person that is going to be working on it immediately. You don't have these different support levels to get through to get your question answered or the problem fixed.

It's very good. It's one of our best supports on any of the products that we have.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was relatively easy. SpamTitan support helped us get it initially configured. It wasn't difficult on our side. Some of the rules we had to manually enter, and if we had a large batch of things that needed to be inputted, we could send it to their help desk, and they would make the changes for us. They were very helpful with getting it up and running.

For the deployment, I had it up and running on the same day and we were able to point our email to it.

What about the implementation team?

We did have some assistance from technical support.

What was our ROI?

We have seen an ROI. Mostly due to the fact that it freed up man-hours of dealing with spam on a daily basis.

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

The pricing is definitely reasonable. Compared to Office 365 Defender, it's a lot cheaper.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We actually use multiple levels or multiple vendors of spam filtering. SpamTitan is our primary one. Then we have another one behind it. Then, some of our customers that have Office 365 have 365 checking things also.

SpamTitan is definitely easier to manage than the others. We haven't compared to any others that have been primary filtering, however, it's done a good job on filtering. Of course, no spam protection is 100%. That's why we run multiple solutions.

What other advice do I have?

In terms of advice to others, I would say if the customer wants to get very detailed in their spam filtering and if they need something to formulate the specific patterns, this is a good solution to look into.

I'd rate this solution a nine out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

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

Amazon Web Services (AWS)
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
Joe Connor - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Technician at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Real User
Easy to use, generates a helpful filtering report, and it's competitively priced
Pros and Cons
  • "Overall, the intuitiveness of this product is pretty good."
  • "The interface looks a little dated and could be modernized."

What is our primary use case?

We are a solution provider and we have a lot of customers set up on our platform. This solution is used by us and our customers for email filtering.

How has it helped my organization?

The actual number of spam emails we get now is single digits per day. It's very little compared to the volume of email that we see coming into the spam tool. There are tens of thousands of emails per day, or even more. Using this tool brings it down to a manageable amount.

Overall, the intuitiveness of this product is pretty good.

Using SpamTitan reduced the load on our helpdesk. We do IT support, and we get help desk tickets coming in from people saying they've got emails caught or they're not getting emails from a certain sender. Instead of them emailing us their reports, they can easily unblock them themselves and allow them to go through. This eases our help desk ticket queue quite a lot, which takes a lot of pressure off of us.

Based on the number of tickets that we get each day that we no longer need to deal with, using SpamTitan saves us several hours per day.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature is the way it quarantines spam email.

The quarantine feature is easy to use. It has many different filters and you can easily find messages that our users are struggling to get delivered. It makes it easy to find out why it is that messages were blocked in the first place.

This product provides an email filtering report for our customers. A lot of users are set up with this report so that they can see the details themselves, before having to come to us.

SpamTitan has a geo-blocking feature and it reduces our spam intake.

What needs improvement?

The user interface contains quite a lot of information, so it can be a bit confusing when you first start to use it. It takes a bit of time to get used to, but once you know it, and with a bit of training, it's got everything you need. I can't really complain about it having too much information because it really helps out when you need it.

The interface looks a little dated and could be modernized.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using TitanHQ SpamTitan since I joined the company, seven years ago. The company has been using it for at least ten years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability is 100%. We've never had issues with stability.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

This solution is very scalable and you can do so easily. For example, you can mass import email addresses so when we get new customers that want to use it, it's very quick and easy to set them up.

We currently have 5,000 users. At the moment, pretty much all of our clients are on it. If we get new customers then we will set them up and our usage will increase.

How are customer service and support?

The technical support team normally gets back to us pretty quickly. However, they're a notch off of perfect. There are times when I would rate them a nine or ten out of ten. However, other times, they have taken a long time to get back to us. On these occasions, I would rate them a five or six out of ten.

Overall, I would rate support a seven out of ten.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Neutral

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was completed before I joined the company. I have set up some of our customers on the system and we've had no trouble with it along the way. 

The configuration is very easy and straightforward, and this is something that is very important to us. It saves us a lot of time and we never have to come back to reconfigure things or troubleshoot anything. It just works.

What about the implementation team?

There are about ten of us on the help desk team that log in to use this product and maintain it. 

What was our ROI?

We have definitely seen a return on our investment from using this product. It's been very profitable because of how many users we have. It also saves us time because it frees the help desk staff to get other jobs done.

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

This pricing is absolutely fine and it's never been an issue of it being too expensive. We pass the costs along to our customers but it is competitively priced.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I have not used another similar solution. It has been in place since before I arrived and we've never had any need to use anything else.

What other advice do I have?

Feature-wise, it's got everything that we need to do. There are no features that we consider missing. It gets top marks in this regard.

My advice for anybody who is implementing this product is to get familiar with it. It can be a little bit scary to start with, just because of how many features it has. I definitely suggest getting some training with it, if possible.

It's a good solution and when you leave it running, it deals with everything that you need to do. We trust it a lot. Overall, it's a good solution and there is not much that I can suggest they have to improve.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public 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
President - CEO at Micro Computer Enterprises
Reseller
Blocks spam email, and support is well above average compared to other companies
Pros and Cons
  • "Every client that uses it experiences a productivity boost. If somebody has to filter through 150 or 200 emails a day to find the 30 good ones, that's inefficient. If they're using SpamTitan it's making them more efficient because they don't have to go through all the junk."
  • "They could improve on the color of the interface."

What is our primary use case?

We use it for domain spam filtering. You put the original MX records on their server and the mail goes to them and then back to you, clean.

How has it helped my organization?

One way that TitanHQ positions me, as a reseller, to acquire new business is that what they have is comprehensive. It's not any one thing that does it. It's a conglomeration of product offerings. The group of products that we can offer makes us look better because we're offering a comprehensive suite of solutions.

Every client that uses it experiences a productivity boost. If somebody has to filter through 150 or 200 emails a day to find the 30 good ones, that's inefficient. If they're using SpamTitan it's making them more efficient because they don't have to go through all the junk.

SpamTitan helps improve your spam catch-rate and reduce your false-positive rate. It depends on the domain, but in general it blocks spam email which amounts to about 60-plus percent of the email that people receive. It makes them that much more efficient.

What is most valuable?

The user interface and user experience of SpamTitan are very good. It's easy to use and very intuitive. No end-user is going to buy the product. A company or a reseller is going to buy it for them. As one of those resellers, I know that our users get a daily report and they can un-quarantine something, or block it in the future.

What needs improvement?

They could improve on the color of the interface.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using TitanHQ SpamTitan for four or five years.

I pay them a flat price for space on a shared server and I can then set up unlimited domains and up to 200 email addresses.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability is extremely high.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It's an all-in solution. We have it across five domains and there are about 175 users.

How are customer service and support?

The biggest benefit of being a partner of TitanHQ is the technical support. It's good, quality support. Any product can say it is as good as it wants, but without support, no product is useful.

Their support is well above average. They are way better than the average tech support you get from other companies.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

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

I used to use a different product and I was pretty happy with it, but then it had a technology fallout and it disappeared off the planet. We couldn't get to our system. Their phones were out for a month and the service was down for a month and we just had to get away from them.

I had Googled SpamTitan, from the TitanHQ line of products, and had gotten very good feedback about them. I decided to give them a try because I needed a new solution. The service worked and the tech support is great.

How was the initial setup?

The setup is another area where we go back to the support they provide. Their support department holds your hand and helps you get through the process. I did four or five domains over a couple of hours on a weekend.

It's pretty simple, just a matter of making sure you have control of the DNS and updating the MX records.

It just takes one person for deployment and maintenance.

What other advice do I have?

The biggest lesson I've learned from using the solution is that there are a lot of nasty emails out there.

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:
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Download our free TitanHQ SpamTitan Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: May 2024
Buyer's Guide
Download our free TitanHQ SpamTitan Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.