R.I.P.: Free Brightmail

Last Updated on September 30, 2010 by Dave Farquhar

Brightmail, we hardly knew ye. I got notice last week that Brightmail’s free service is finito, as of the end of this month. Another effort to sell product by giving it away for private use goes away. That’s kind of a shame, because Brightmail did a decent job of filtering spam. I got one of my last Brightmail reports this afternoon, and it blocked 14 pieces of spam. Thanks guys. I’ll miss you.
So… I’ve got about three weeks to get something else going. The combo of Fetchmail, Procmail, and a nice anti-spam Procmail recipe on my Linux server ought to do the trick. I’ve done some reading up on it. Of course I’ll be letting you know how that goes. Configuring that stuff isn’t necessarily for the timid, but the price is right and many people report blocking about 95% of spam with their setups. Brightmail, by contrast, blocks about 70%.

Of course I’ll let you know how it goes.

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