Existing users, 
I've been using Mail.app for about 6 months with it's spam filtering enabled and found that it caught most spam. I got curious about SpamSieve, though, so I gave it a try. I trained it with lots of messages from my trash folder, with both spam and good mail. I then used SpamSieve for a week. I found that it caught about the same amount of spam as Mail.app does. What was alarming, though, was that I had a few false positives, which I haven't had for a long time in Mail.app.
There is also a minor nuisance with SpamSieve. Since the user is required to create a folder to collect the spam, spam messages cause Mail.app to beep, just like real mail.
If Mail.app didn't have spam filtering I'd likely buy SpamSieve, but it doesn't really add anything extra compared to what Mail.app already does.
SpamSieve
Bayesian spam filter for most email clients.
Version: 2.7.7
Not worth the money if using Mail.app
Feedback Type: Review
Contributed by: beirne Saturday, February 04 2006 @ 06:50 AM PST
Product Platform: MacOSX
Used Product For: Less than a month
Recommend Product: NO
Overall Rating:
Ease of Use:
Support:
Features:
Quality / Stability:
Price:
Comments
Not worth the money if using Mail.app - RAngol
Not exactly a scientific report based on number of spams, number of false positives, percentage of spam caught......in short you're guessing. Try filtering 125-150 messages per day and report back in a month. Mail has a decent filter. It's not as good as spamsieve.Monday, February 06 2006 @ 03:29 PM PST
Not worth the money if using Mail.app - kbeatty
If you are satisfied with the junk mail filtering that comes built into the Mail.app, then there is absolutely no need to seek a third party solution, as it will yield you little benefit. If however, like myself, you find that over time Mail's built in junk mail filter is less and less reliable, than you will find no better solution than SpamSieve.In the last 3 months alone, it's filtered 108,000 spam messages for me with an accuracy rate of 99.4%. Before I went to SpamSieve, I'd estimate Mail's built in accuracy at around 80-85%. With the amount of mail I receive, it's a huge, huge difference in my efficiency. Also, I set up SpamSieve to place spam in my Junk Mail folder, so it operates in virtually the same manner as the built in filter, but with the added benefit of more accuracy and color coding.
SpamSieve is on my list of indispensable utilities.
Thursday, February 23 2006 @ 01:22 PM PST
Not worth the money if using Mail.app - stoneman
I would like to echo kbeatty's comments. This is excellent software and I could not survive without it. But not everyone needs it. There are still fortunate people with light email traffic and little spam. If you need a third-party spam filtering application, this is a great investment. Regular updates to keep up with the newest spam tricks, and prompt and helpful customer service.Friday, February 24 2006 @ 07:53 PM PST
About the Minor Nuisance - michaeltsai
You can turn off the notification sound in Mail and let SpamSieve notify you when new non-spam messages arrive. It's also possible for SpamSieve to use Mail's Junk mailbox, although this is not the standard configuration because people tend to find it confusing.
beirne: I found your results surprising because most users report to me that SpamSieve produces fewer false positives than Apple Mail. If you see this post, please e-mail your ~/Library/Logs/SpamSieve/SpamSieve Log file to spamsieve@c-command.com so that I can see what went wrong.
Reply to This
Saturday, February 04 2006 @ 10:42 AM PST