It’s been way too long since the last post.  All I can say is that we’ve been very, very busy.  Of course, in this (and any) economy, busy is good.  Ok, here’s what we’ve been up to…

We are pleased to announce that we have completed the migration of all customers over to our new distributed cloud based spam filtering environment.  We always knew that this was the direction we wanted to go in, even before our service was launched.   However, since we are used to dealing with very reliable data centers, the first release of our service wasn’t cloud based and simply used relay servers as an emergency fallback.  The original system looked like this:

The location 2 and 3 servers were only engaged when there was a problem with location 1, which ensured that no email was ever lost.  However, since these locations only hosted relay servers, in the event of trouble they had to wait for the primary server at location 1 to come back online, which could cause email delays.

Our new distributed cloud filtering system resolves this problem:

This configuration splits up incoming email for each domain between two totally separate data centers, using round robin DNS MX records for the primary MX record (“MX 1″).  In the event that one of these locations has trouble, the “MX 2″ and “MX 3″ records point directly to the two locations so that sending mail servers will always be able to find an available server to send to.   Since this design eliminates the need of relay servers, this eliminates most any threat of email delays. Yay!

Oh, and this setup only requires 3 MX records, but, we’ve added support for a fourth.  The fourth record will be used when we expand the distributed cloud to include three locations.  For now, the “MX 4″ record mirrors “MX 1″ but will later point to the third location.   To take advantage of the third location when it comes online, you will need to update your MX records according to the instructions now displayed on the Settings -> mail host page when you login to the SpamHero back office.

If this upgrade doesn’t look like that big of a deal, then perhaps it’s because the sketch above is a little too simplified.   This was a big project for us, and it held up a lot of other projects and upgrades that we’ve been anxious to get to.   For example, one upgrade it had held up was a speed increase for those users with very large quarantines… if you are one of those users, you’ll notice a huge speed increase there.

With this distributed cloud project out of the way, you should see a steady flow of improvements and new features again.   I’ll try to make mention of some of the more notable ones here as they are rolled out.

Good news!  As of today, our affiliate program is online!  For each customer that you refer to SpamHero, we’ll pay $30.  That’s over 50% of the annual subscription cost of the service!

We’re excited about the feedback we’re receiving and we want your help spreading the word. We’ve found that some people are scared off by our low price,  but, if they hear about the service from someone they know, then they’re a lot more likely to give it a try.

Our aim is to revolutionize the spam filtering industry by offering superior performance and service at a substantially lower price.  When people see how well the SpamHero service works, they’ll be totally hooked.

Learn more here: SpamHero affiliate program

Sign up here: Signup as an affiliate (free)

Let’s save the world from spam together!

Best regards,

The O’Reilly Brothers (Jeremy & Curtis)
SpamHero Founders

Here we go!   Today we celebrate the official launch of our service.  We’ve had an extra long beta test and have had lots of positive feedback from our beta testers.  It’s time to unleash SpamHero on the world.

To kick things off, we’re offering new customers that sign up in our first month (between now and October 15) an entire year of free service.   We even put a out a cheesy press release about it.

Our hope is that by offering our service for free, that we’ll be able to employ the power of word-of-mouth advertising.  We’ve seen the technique work for other successful start-ups, and so we figure we might as well give it a go.  Besides, the only time you can make “crazy” offers like this is in the beginning.  I suppose you could try it after having your doors open for a while, but it seems to me that you might upset some of your loyal paying customers a bit (unless you offer them some free time too).

Internet domain owners get extended ‘test drive’ on new service

Henderson, Nevada – Sept. 15, 2009 – Curtis and Jeremy O’Reilly, brothers and long-time veterans in the web-hosting sector, are celebrating the release of SpamHero, a “hosted spam filter” for domain owners, by giving away a free year of service to all customers who sign up by Oct. 15.

SpamHero boasts enterprise level features, including a Web 2.0 interface for viewing “quarantined” spam, and superior spam filtering over traditional anti-spam solutions.  Even at the regular price of just $4.95 per month for domain-wide spam filtering, with no limit on the number of email accounts, the service is a fraction of what other solutions cost.

“At first, we were a little concerned some people might be scared off by the low cost,” said Jeremy O’Reilly, “but with SpamHero’s no-risk free year of service, we’re giving customers plenty of time to see how effective and accurate our filter really is.”

According to a recent report by Microsoft, spam now accounts for more than 97% of email that is sent. Another report on iTWire said spam volume records set last summer were broken again in 2009.

“Combine these factors with the ever-increasing need for businesses to cut costs and boost productivity, the timing of SpamHero’s arrival on the scene couldn’t be better,” Curtis O’Reilly noted.

But what makes SpamHero different is not just the low cost.  SpamHero is powered by a “team of human spam-fighting technicians who are updating the filter rules several times a day.  Over 2 million rules have been compiled so far,” Curtis O’Reilly explained.   “This also ensures that real email does not get blocked by ‘robotic’ algorithms that can sometimes mistake real email for spam.”

Jeremy O’Reilly added: “And, since SpamHero is a hosted solution, it requires no new hardware or software installed at a client’s location.”

Upon subscribing, SpamHero customers update their domain’s “MX record,” which then re-routes all email for the domain through SpamHero’s servers where it is cleaned of spam before arriving at the customer’s mail server.

“The change is so simple to implement and email is free from 99% of spam within 5 minutes,” said Curtis O’Reilly.

“Spammers continue to find innovative ways to get around traditional anti-spam techniques.  If your business isn’t protected by a filtering solution that is actively monitored and improved, prepare to be buried in spam,” Curtis O’Reilly warned.

Curtis and Jeremy O’Reilly decided to develop SpamHero after 13 years in the web hosting industry and witnessing first hand the frustrations that business owners have over the cost of fighting spam, and the lackluster performance of existing solutions.

We had a goal to launch SpamHero by the end of Spring.   Saturday was the last day of Spring, so in honor of our goal, we opened the site for business on Friday for an hour or two, so that we could say we made that goal.   Of course, we didn’t tell anyone about the site opening, and so nobody had a chance to try out the service.  We got to do a little testing using the live site and then we then shut down the site until today so that we could enjoy Father’s Day weekend without wondering if anyone was poking around on our new site.   But, hey, we “launched” in Spring for at least an hour, and therefore made our goal!   Is that cheating? 

When we set our goal to launch in the Spring, it was late 2008, and we thought we’d have no problem getting this out by Spring.  However, since we’re perfectionists, we continually found things that we wanted to get right before we’d even consider a beta launch.

We think we got a lot of things right.  SpamHero is a spam filter that both does a good job and doesn’t break the bank.  We’ve looked high and low… and of all the spam filters out there, we feel SpamHero is the only one that does a really good job, includes some enterprise level features, and is competitive cost wise.

We’re going to take it easy about spreading the word about our beta launch, and just invite a few people to check it out in the first week.  Our official launch will probably be around July 1st. But, if you’re lucky enough to have found us before then, feel free to sign up!  The system is completely automated and will get you started right away.  Be sure to let us know if you see anything that looks out of place.

To sign up as a beta customer, just click on the Free Trial link and you’ll be good to go.  We don’t expect to have a long beta period, and may go into official launch by July 1st.  However, for anyone that does sign up during the beta period, we’ll restart your trial period on the official launch day.

We’re excited!  We look forward to making your life spam free!

– Curtis O’Reilly
co-founder, SpamHero

P.S. We’ll be sharing our adventures of marketing SpamHero to the masses here in our blog, and hopefully sharing some of our marketing ideas along the way.  Stay tuned.