Exchange folks ... what do you use for Spam/Junk Mail Filtering

[Nothinman]

No, not necessarily...if you hired someone specifically to set that up, then it would cost the company more, and if the person is already on the payroll then you are still paying his salary + $370 to MX Logic or whichever boxed solution you opt for - either way it costs more. The time it takes to set up a spam assassin box is easily mitigated by the fact that there is no cost to use that software. I can set up the solution I recommended in a few hours. If it's taking "days" to set up a spam assassin filter box it's time to fire your admin and replace him with someone with a little more than a DeVry "look what I can do" McDegree.

In any case, if the company is hell bent on using a prepackaged solution, I would either go with Barracuda or Ironport because I know both of them are effective at what they're intended to do. I cannot speak for MX Logic because I have not used them before.

Sure, I could setup Postfix, SpamAssassin, ClamAV, etc pretty quickly. But most of the engineers that I work with don't know Linux so if/when I leave they'll all be stuck with a box they can't really maintain. And there's other costs to consider like hardware and power.

And there are other bonuses to using a service like MX Logic, like BlackOmen says you can restrict inbound SMTP access to only the ranges that MX Logic uses which means there's virtually no way for someone except MX Logic to break into your mail server that way. And having MX Logic accept and process all of your inbound mail first potentially saves you bandwidth since the only mail getting to you is what MX Logic approves.