Goodbye Google Postini

I have setup Google’s Postini anti-spam service for a number of businesses over the last few years, and although it can be difficult (to say the least) to setup, its’ ability to prevent spam is the best I have seen.

Unfortunately as I alluded to, setting up Postini is not for the faint hearted. You need to know all the complicated steps to make it work.

Also, support, at least for smaller companies or those not going through a partner, is almost non-existent. Sending an email to support will always (from my experience) result in zero replies. The only option seems to be using the forum to discuss your problem.

And lastly, the payment system can also be complex and during the last week I have found it impossible to make payment for due or now overdue accounts. Whether I use the manual renewal link after signing in or the link provided in the email Postini sent to prompt payment, I always get “server error – We are unable to process your request at this time, please try again later.”

I don’t know if this has something to do with Google’s plans to stop offering Positini as a stand alone service and integrating in to Google Apps (see here). Maybe they don’t want any more renewals?

It’s probably a good thing it’s going, it’s just a shame that it was actually very good at preventing spam.

Alternatives? I recently signed a customer up for Office365 as a replacement for their own Exchange mail server, and one of the selling points was that it has anti-spam so they would no longer need Postini. Unfortunately Office365 seems to be very bad at preventing spam, and unfortunately small business customers get very little control over the anti-spam settings. Businesses on the enterprise plans get more control, though I’m not sure if that makes the anti-spam service any better.

If Google Apps makes full use of the Postini ant-spam engine then it should be good, although I have stayed away from Google Apps for email as it doesn’t integrate as well with Microsoft Outlook like Office365.