I managed to dig out my license code to SpamSieve a while back and take it for a test drive. Here’s my review of SpamSieve.
How It Works
SpamSieve is a spam filtering application for Mac that runs at the client-side. Unlike server-side spam filters, SpamSieve works with multiple Mac email clients including macOS Mail, Outlook, etc., and it works with multiple email accounts (including Gmail, Exchange, and IMAP). SpamSieve can adapt over time with a Bayesian filter and has whitelist and blocklist capabilities.
Setting Up and Using SpamSieve
SpamSieve takes a few minutes to initially setup and “train”, but once the setup and initial training process is complete, it runs well without much manual intervention unless one needs to mark another email message as spam or good. I personally tested SpamSieve with macOS Mail and Outlook. macOS Mail uses a plugin, a Spam mailbox, and a custom rule for processing spam. Outlook needs a little more configuration with per-account rules and mailboxes, plus AppleScripts for processing SpamSieve’s filtering and the ability to mark messages. It still works effectively with both mail clients, and I may test it with other mail clients as well.
SpamSieve’s Effectiveness
Overall SpamSieve has been quite effective. It has done an excellent job capturing most spam mail with only occasionally one slipping by, and only occasionally marking false positives. The more it runs, the more accurate it becomes, and most days it’s spot-on on what it captures as spam versus good.
Most of my email accounts still have server-side junk filtering as well. My work and school Office 365 accounts have EOP plus my work Office 365 account has a third-party spam filtering service. My personal email account has a solid spam filter as well with server-side blocking. SpamSieve still works well as an additional level of spam filtering across email accounts, so I see myself continuing to use it in conjunction with the server-side spam filtering I’ve been using.
iPhone/iPad Filtering and Multiple Macs
I tried running SpamSieve on multiple Macs just to see how it would work, and things can occasionally become messy when multiple email clients are running SpamSieve at once since multiple copies of SpamSieve is trying to filter mail across multiple Macs at the same time. My recommendation for users with multiple Macs is to keep one Mac setup with SpamSieve and the mail client running (I’m using my old iMac to do this) to act as a “spam filtering server”, then simply open the email client on other Macs when one needs to send/receive emails. Occasionally during the processing, I’ll still receive a duplicate email, but it’s a minor issue and not a major ordeal.
Since SpamSieve does not run on the iPhone or iPad, this method also works for filtering spam on the iPhone and iPad. It’s how I’m filtering spam on my iPhone and iPad.
Bottom Line
SpamSieve has long been a popular spam filtering app for Mac. It’s low cost ($30 one-time fee after the free trial), it works with a wealth of popular Mac mail clients and accounts, and offers powerful junk mail filtering that adapts and improves it’s accuracy over time. While I’m glad to still be using server-side junk filtering across my email accounts, SpamSieve is a nice supplement to server-side junk filtering, and another great and useful Mac utility.
Nathan Parker
