Senior Manager, Enterprise Infrastructure at a manufacturing company with 1-10 employees
Real User
Reduced overall risk profile for our organization and increased users' effectiveness in responding to email
Pros and Cons
  • "The user interface for regular users is quite intuitive. The email report that they receive is pretty self-explanatory. The online interface for administrators is simple yet really quite effective. It's really a set-it-and-forget-it, and everything is available when needed."
  • "The quarantine email message that users get on a scheduled basis is something users generally don't pay attention to, like every other communication they get from IT. The formatting of the quarantined email report that goes to the users on a regular basis is a little confusing for them. That could be improved."

What is our primary use case?

We use it for inbound and outbound email pre-filtering, before emails reach our MS 365 environment.

How has it helped my organization?

Since we started using SpamTitan we've received some 22 million email messages and it has filtered out about 28 percent of all emails before they even got to a user. That decreases the overall amount of either malicious or innocuous spam. It also helps us block spam with explicit malicious intent. It's helped our business reduce our overall risk profile and helped increase our users' effectiveness in receiving and responding to email. It's pretty effective across the board.

In terms of the amount of time it saves a user, I am probably one of the top-five spam recipients within our organization. I would get 300 to 400 spam messages a week, at least. There is now a lot less chatter in my inbox.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable features are the 

  • reporting
  • overall filtering functionality

The reporting interface is quite simple and intuitive and provides all of the information that one would need.

The user interface is an eight out of 10. The user interface for regular users is quite intuitive. The email report that they receive is pretty self-explanatory. The online interface for administrators is simple yet really quite effective. It's really a set-it-and-forget-it, and everything is available when needed.

What needs improvement?

The documentation provided is very rudimentary. The tool itself is very easy to use, also very rudimentary. The quarantine email message that users get on a scheduled basis is something users generally don't pay attention to, like every other communication they get from IT. The formatting of the quarantined email report that goes to the users on a regular basis is a little confusing for them. That could be improved.

And that makes user communication and user training, up front, paramount to ensuring that the tool works, so that a critical email is not being blocked by the spam filtering tool.

Buyer's Guide
TitanHQ SpamTitan
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about TitanHQ SpamTitan. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
768,740 professionals have used our research since 2012.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using TitanHQ SpamTitan for two years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's reliable and stable. I believe it is actually hosted in AWS, so it is impacted by the global AWS outages, but overall it is stable and reliable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We've grown 100 percent since we started with SpamTitan and we have had no issues with scalability, volume, spam volume, filtering volume, whitelist volume, et cetera. And there have been no issues with reporting and doing metrics. It's completely scalable.

We have a little over 600 people using it, and maintenance requires one-tenth of an FTE. It is used extensively in our organization, across the board.

How are customer service and support?

We haven't really engaged their technical support.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

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

We used manual mail filtering rules in Office 365. The stability of SpamTitan versus our previous solution is like night and day. SpamTitan is a solution geared specifically towards email filtering, instead of manually creating new rules and extensively customizing those rules for all of the potential variants.

The stability and dependability of email security are very important for our organization. It's one of those behind-the-scenes tools that we view as incredibly important. A user may not even know that it's there, but they know that the majority of the spam is not coming through.

How was the initial setup?

The deployment took minutes. It was an easy, seamless process.

Our deployment strategy included developing communication for explaining to users how to

  • receive and review quarantine message reports
  • set individual user settings
  • report messages 
  • retrieve and unblock from a list.

We then picked a date and we turned it on. It took minutes to actually enable it. You can set it up in advance and all you have to do is move your MX record over to SpamTitan and it's on and running.

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

Find exactly what you want out of the tool and ensure that the options it provides are what you want, and then look at the price. In our case, we made the decision to go with SpamTitan because we didn't want all the other bells and whistles that Mimecast had. We have since subscribed to other tools that do the things that Mimecast also does, but the aggregated price of those other tools is still cheaper than Mimecast.

Look at what you really want, what you really have to have, and how those things are integrated across the board, and then make your decision.

There is a stepped-up version of SpamTitan, that some users may like, called SpamTitan Plus. It doesn't significantly increase the cost but it does provide some extra features. We get those features elsewhere, so we're not subscribing to them.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We looked at Mimecast. Everything we looked at gave us the same kinds of features. Maybe one had a more polished interface or portal, but based on the complexity and usability of the portal and the overall price, SpamTitan was a clear winner.

What other advice do I have?

The biggest lesson we've learned as a result of using this solution is in the area of user communication and the usability of the tool for end-users. Those aspects are incredibly important.

SpamTitan is just one tool in our tool belt but it's very effective at its job. It's quite simple to filter inbound and outbound email based on rules and public ratings for spam centers and originators.

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 of IT at a non-profit with 201-500 employees
Real User
Easy to deploy, learn, and administer
Pros and Cons
  • "The solution works really well. For a small nonprofit like us who don't have a large server footprint and rely heavily on cloud services, this is great for all our emails and the mobile workforce that we have. This is a great way to manage the traffic, hopefully keep our people from getting the phishing emails and stuff like that, helping to mitigate the risks."
  • "I wish there would be less false positives."

What is our primary use case?

We are just using it for spam filtering at this point. We are open to future options, but right now, this is our biggest problem. This solution really helps mitigate the spam for us.

We have a MX record that points to them before it gets to us for emails.

How has it helped my organization?

We were getting hit left and right with a bunch of different spam, spoofing, etc. When we deployed SpamTitan, that immediately stopped. Of course, there were some false positives. However, I have been going through regularly, and now there have been less as we identify some that should be valid but were blocked. Once in a while, we will still get some that get let through, but we are able to update them quickly through the web interface. Therefore, it has been working really well for us. It is helping us a lot.

In the first few weeks, there were a lot more false positives that I would go through and release, then update the filter. As each week went by, it got better and better. Now, it is just here and there. There are a few, but most of them are right on. So, it has been doing really well.

In November and December, we saw a bunch of people get a phishing attack. They clicked on the link, then their computer got infected. We had to go wipe their computer and open a bunch of issues, about 10 to 12 a month from November to December. When we implemented SpamTitan, it went down to zero. It was more the false positives rather than people falling for phishing scams. It was huge as far as the difference.

We only receive emails from internal clients. Most of the stuff on the block list is from the UK and Germany. That stuff is getting blocked.

What is most valuable?

The user interface has been really good. There is an option to send people an email with what has been filtered on your stuff. Given everything else that our users do, I thought, "Let me just hold onto those keys right now, and I'll just review," because we only have 200-and-something users. So, I have been just filtering it for them. Some people report, "Hey, this guy sent me an email. I haven't heard back." I immediately go and find it, then release it. That has been working well for us.

The solution works really well. For a small nonprofit like us who don't have a large server footprint and rely heavily on cloud services, this is great for all our emails and the mobile workforce that we have. This is a great way to manage the traffic, hopefully keep our people from getting the phishing emails and stuff like that, helping to mitigate the risks.

What needs improvement?

I wish there would be less false positives. 

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using the solution since late November or early December 2021.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is incredibly reliable. It has been like a rock, but it has only been a few months. It hasn't gone down or anything.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

As far as scalability, it is cloud-based. It just searches all the mailboxes for the domain name. I don't have to add or reduce email boxes. It is already set up. It is really hands-off. As we grow, if you can add domains, then you just add the domains. It is really easy to grow with it. We haven't had any capacity issues.

How are customer service and support?

We used the technical support once. Back in December, we used it because I had forgotten to add one of our domains, but that was really quick and easy.

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

We didn't use a solution like this previously.

We looked into this type of solution because of the number of people who were falling for phishing emails. I provided training to help educate them, but they were still clicking on stuff that they shouldn't have. Also, we had too many instances of having to reset laptops.

How was the initial setup?

It was super easy to set up, configure, and use. They walked us through all the steps for updating our MX records, SPF records, and all the DNS stuff. 

The quick setup time was an important factor when we chose the solution because things were super busy. All the different infections were really hindering our department. So, it was huge to be able to deploy this solution so quickly with them kind of holding your hand through it. That was huge.

What about the implementation team?

They walk you through every little detail, which is really helpful.

I signed up. In the first week, when we got the records, we had to wait until they were updated, then we did all the steps following their guidelines. You do one step, then you wait a week for everything to update. Then, you do the next step and start going through the false positives. So, it didn't take that long at all. It was according to their timeline. They said, "You need to wait for this to update before you do the next step." I said, "Okay," and we did just that. It worked out really well.

What was our ROI?

When someone's laptop is infected, our policy is to go and reset it to factory default. This is a huge burden on them. They have to reset all their passwords, and it is just a big problem. Therefore, it has been a huge time factor savings for our employees.

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

The price was great compared to other solutions that we looked at the time.

There is no appliance required for your onsite data center because it is all cloud-based. 

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I evaluated several solutions over the last six months leading up to actually implementing this solution. We evaluated costs because we are very budget-sensitive. SpamTitan was our premier pick, but the cost was still too much. Then, finally in December, they just said, "We have a deal for this month only." They gave us a really good price. So, I said, "I'll go for it," because that was the one hurdle that I was facing: the cost. They just totally slashed it, and I jumped on.

What other advice do I have?

It is easy to deploy, learn, and administer.

The solution is meeting all our needs right now. We don't have any big requirements though. I think it is doing a really good job.

I would rate the solution as nine out of 10. 

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
Buyer's Guide
TitanHQ SpamTitan
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about TitanHQ SpamTitan. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
768,740 professionals have used our research since 2012.
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.

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
IT Specialist at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Real User
Drastically improved our spam catch rate, and technical support is best among all our solutions
Pros and Cons
  • "Another feature of SpamTitan that I like is the reporting. We are able to identify the users or accounts that have been attacked most. We can see information that shows us the sites that the user goes to, and that helps in launching an investigation of that user and how they use our resources."
  • "What would be helpful to me is an alert if there were an increase in the number of threats that have been picked up. In that case, an alert could be sent to the admin in our company, to inform us. It could say something like, "Generally, about 20 percent of your incoming emails have been threats. Now it has jumped up to 30 or 40 percent." Something like that would be beneficial."

What is our primary use case?

We use it to scan for malicious software and other threats.

The solution is in the cloud. Our emails are directed to servers that clean them by scanning for spam, viruses, et cetera. The emails are then forwarded to our email server, which we have on-premises.

How has it helped my organization?

What I like about SpamTitan is that it takes the stress away from us as users. We do not worry about our email. We have not had any major email threats since we have been using SpamTitan.

The solution has also helped improve our spam catch rate. Prior to SpamTitan, we were using an alternate solution that was on-premises, but we still had about 60 percent of positive, threatening emails coming through. Since we moved to SpamTitan, that figure is down to about 10 percent. That is a drastic improvement.

Another benefit is that it saves our employees time by not having to sort through junk and spam emails, because any email that is suspicious is not allowed into our environment. It's kept there on their servers. We then receive an email saying, "These are the threats that we have noticed for the day. You can go in and check through those threats and see what you think is suspicious. Once you do that, you can release that email. To me, that is a plus.

The challenge with emails is that they are one of the vulnerable aspects of any network, given that a user—one of the biggest threats to network security—can compromise all of your security because they click a link in an email. Even though our organization is small, and the number of accounts that we protect with SpamTitan is small, the value that it offers is very great.

What is most valuable?

I like the fact that we can review any email that the solution deems to be a threat, before it gets into our environment. It could be a valid email, but if at any point that email appears to be a threat, it is held and we can check it out, see if it's a legitimate email, and then release it.

Also, the user interface, in terms of usability, is rather straightforward. It's very user-friendly and easy to navigate. Any basic user who has never traversed the SpamTitan interface can understand it. We have never had any complaints from new users about difficulties in working with emails that are held.

Another feature of SpamTitan that I like is the reporting. We are able to identify the users or accounts that have been attacked most. We can see information that shows us the sites that the user goes to, and that helps in launching an investigation of that user and how they use our resources. That's a very good capability for us. If somebody has been using a machine as a bot to launch or carry malicious activities, we have been able to detect that. We have been able to prevent a couple of cases of ransomware attacks thanks to SpamTitan.

What needs improvement?

What would be helpful to me is an alert if there were an increase in the number of threats that have been picked up. In that case, an alert could be sent to the admin in our company, to inform us. It could say something like, "Generally, about 20 percent of your incoming emails have been threats. Now it has jumped up to 30 or 40 percent." Something like that would be beneficial. That way, we could check to see if it's a result of something inside our company. We could be a bit more preventative, more proactive. That would help me greatly as a network administrator.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using TitanHQ SpamTitan for approximately five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's difficult to give any solution a 100 percent positive rating, but thus far we have had no setbacks at all with SpamTitan. Everything that they offered has been done. They continue to do so, and have done so from the time we initiated the deployment until today.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The solution grows with our needs. We have not had any drawbacks as our requirements have grown. SpamTitan is a solution that you set up and forget, because it works that well. Even when your needs grow, it grows with you without you knowing that anything is being added to the solution. We have never had an issue with SpamTitan when it comes to scalability.

Our environment is not that big. We have about 400 to 500 email accounts, and a similar number of employees.

This year though, we plan to sit down and look at other solutions they have that may be beneficial to us.

How are customer service and support?

Because it works that well, we rarely have to speak to anyone for technical assistance. The technical support for the initial setup was excellent. The customer service was excellent. During the setup, the support person was very accommodating and flexible. 

The few times that we have spoken to anyone, they were also very accommodating.

Another thing I like about SpamTitan is that they keep you abreast of the new technologies they offer, if there are any changes to your current solution, or if they're doing anything that would improve the solution. That's the most that you can ask for.

If I look at the solution that we had prior, there's no comparison between it and TitanHQ when it comes to support. With the previous solution, it would take days, sometimes, to get a response from the technical support. And with respect to other online solutions we have, there is still no comparison. TitanHQ support  is very receptive, very responsive, and very knowledgeable.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

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

We were using Websense Content Gateway, and one of the major reasons we switched was the support. The cost was also a factor. SpamTitan gives you a lot for what you pay. You get more value on the dollar.

How was the initial setup?

I did the setup and it was seamless. The only thing I had to do was diversion of the MX information for our email exchange. Everything was done within less than 15 minutes. And the propagation of the information to the DNS service took about a couple of hours.

What was our ROI?

We have seen a lot of ROI. The fact that we are working today in an environment that is full of threats, and we are still operating without any major issues, is a testament to the return on our investment. We had a lot of hits before SpamTitan, and that was one of the things that led us to seek an alternate solution to spam, malicious software, and other threats. We looked for something that was more practical and more effective, and that led us to SpamTitan.

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

The price is good by today's standards. You actually get what you pay for. 

The licensing agreement is rather seamless. You pay for a period and once that is up, you just renew. They give you some leeway in the payments. It's not like it's going to expire today and they're going to bombard you today saying, "Look, your contract has expired. We're going to cancel." That's a good thing as well.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We went back to Websense to evaluate them and we looked at a solution from Barracuda. For what we wanted, and the seamless nature of the operation, from our initial investigations, SpamTitan seemed to be the best. They seemed to be the best in terms of usability, scalability, and operational ability.

What other advice do I have?

I would recommend SpamTitan, but it should not be the only solution you look at. You should do your own investigation. But if you do not want to do that investigation and just want a recommendation for a product, I would highly recommend SpamTitan.

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