Cleanmail vs MX Guarddog

Cleanmail is Alinto’s email security relay for filtering unwanted and malicious messages. Alinto says it eliminates 99,9% of spam messages and email viruses, and protects against scams, phishing, spoofing, malware, and ransomware. An outbound scanner checks outgoing mail to help prevent server misuse and domain or IP blocklisting. Administrators can manage allowlists and blocklists at the domain and individual-user levels. The control panel provides real-time tracking, analytics, and log files, with self-service log access using the ELK stack. If the standard messaging service is unavailable, an emergency webmail interface provides another way to access email. Cleanmail can archive non-modifiable copies of incoming and outgoing mail, including attachments, for up to 10 years, subject to business rules and legal requirements. Alinto describes it as compatible with professional mail servers and says it does not require changes to existing infrastructure. Deployment choices include SaaS, cloud, and on-premises options, including dedicated platforms and customer-selected private or public clouds. Alinto says its private cloud is hosted in the EU, France, Switzerland, or another country according to customer requirements. Pricing is on request, and a free trial is available.

MX Guarddog is a hosted email gateway for standard SMTP servers serving owned domains. It scans incoming messages for spam, phishing, malware and viruses, quarantines offending mail, and forwards clean messages to the customer’s server. The service runs in the cloud, so it requires no hardware or software installation and no configuration changes to email clients or the server. Quarantine reports summarize stopped spam, and users can adjust report preferences; quarantine retention is seven days. If a customer’s server is unavailable, MX Guarddog says it holds mail for up to 168 hours and delivers it when the server returns. It can sync active addresses from Windows AD, LDAP or cPanel, and says it uses Transport Layer Security, including Perfect Forward Security, for email in transit. The listed per-address price is $0.25 per month; aliases are not charged. A free plan and 30-day trial are listed. The service is for web use and does not support consumer Gmail or Hotmail accounts.