I've been using Xeams for about a year and have been relatively happy with it. It does a good job of filtering SPAM, but is a little weak with virus filtering since it relies on ClamAV. For free it was an excellent product for small installations. Especially since it can be run on the same hardware as the mail server, avoiding the hardware cost of a separate email scanning computer. For large installations it was also very cost effective at $700 a year for support. The philosophy was to give the software away, letting everybody use it for free, and then hope that those with larger installations would value support enough to pay the $700 yearly fee. Perhaps not enough people decided to pay, so the publisher has decided to change the licensing and cost structure.

I have no problem with a company making changes to be profitable. Programmers have to be paid and the lights need to remain on, but I'm not sure that the currently advertised pricing schedule is the best option. Yes, there should be discounts for those that purchase a larger number of licenses, but the starting point is too high in my opinion, will likely drive away current smaller users, and more importantly, some potential users.

It's common practice for some software companies to give away limited versions of their software to promote their product, with free licenses being only for home use, or having limited features. Xeams will continue to be free, but only without SPAM filtering, which is the only good reason to use Xeams.  If you want a free mail server without  SPAM the filtering features of Xeams then there are much better choices than the free Xeams server. I doubt that the new free version of Xeams will be used by more than a relatively small group of people, and those people aren't going to give any praise to SPAM fighting features that are not included in the free product. 

So, what are the options? To begin with drop the ridiculously high pricing for a small number of accounts and consider a free version with all features for up to 10 users. This will keep all the happy smaller users around singing the praises of Xeams. What will this cost the company in profits? Probably not much since I don't think a lot of smaller users are going to pay the new stiff pricing. Especially if they are not running Xeams on the same hardware as their mail server and have to pay the cost of an additional scanning computer on top of the cost of Xeams. It would be better for them to use hosted email scanning. Heck, for 10 users it would probably make better financial sense to put them all on a free or low cost hosted email service, and use that service's SPAM filtering. So why are the smaller email servers around? Some of it could be that small businesses want groupware, but I think mostly it's geeks being geeks and wanting to run either their own home email server, or perhaps running a server for a small businesses with a small budget. I believe that keeping these geeks happy could be beneficial to promoting Xeams since these same geeks could be promoting products to larger businesses in the future.

I understand the swing to a new licensing model, but perhaps the swing is a bit too wide and some of the people that have contributed to the success of Xeams are now being pushed aside, which could cost the company more in the long run than what can be made in the short term on a small number of licenses.

So what are the options for small home networks with their own mail server? Well, there was a report on this board that messages pointing to other products have been removed. Hopefully that won't happen to my message. Home users can consider Sophos UTM which is an Enterprise class firewall that is free for home use which includes email SPAM and virus filtering. It's different from Xeams in that it does not include continuity. A log file is created and you can see what was rejected and why, but you can't view the message. In some ways it's a stripped down Xeams, but in other ways it has more features. For example, it includes outgoing encryption that Xeams does not support. I don't want to compare Xeams to Sophos UTM and say that one is better than the other, but based on cost for a home network, Sophos UTM should be considered. Not only does it filter email for SPAM and viruses, it is also a very good firewall and it provides AV for workstations.

I've been using Sophos UTM (formerly Astaro) for well over 10 years. I've been using the free home version for myself and have become very familiar with it.  Because of the familiarity that I've gained, when it came time for me to recommend a firewall for my customers I recommended Sophos UTM. This is an example of how a free product can result in sales to larger businesses. I now have several businesses running Sophos UTM and I can say with good certainty that they would not be using the product if it was not for the free home use license. Instead, I would probably have used whatever was hyped in reviews. Something like Sonic Wall or WatchGuard. This same phenomenon could also apply to Xeams.

There have been some complaints about the timeline offered by Synametrics, cutting off free users in around 30 days, and I agree. They should give at least 90 days notice and start their new licensing at the beginning of 2017. This will give users time to consider their options, make proposals to managers, and get things approved without the stress of rush. I also think that a monthly option should be offered for those that may require more time to decide. Rushing customers could cause them to have an unfavorable view of the company, which could lead to reduced sales. Appearing to be heavy handed will not be beneficial to the sales of Xeams.

Rob

Thumbs up for your post.

To bad the Xeams company only deletes some of the messages instead of giving a public statement about al the fuzz since yesterday.

Dear Richard,

Please note that messages that do no adhere to our forum policy (http://www.xeams.com/forum-policy.htm) will be removed. Although, the message from Rob also mentions third-party solutions, it is a well written post and is clearly not a plug for a competing product.

One problem with public forums is that our competitors put their product names on our site and we have no way of confirming who posted them.

As far as licensing policy goes, we do have a public statement, which is posted on http://www.xeams.com/LicensingPolicy.htm. We do understand many users do not like paying for something they have been using for years. On the flip side, you have see this from our perspective. We initially thought enough users would purchase our support contract and that will be enough for us to keep improving Xeams. Unfortunately, was not the case, which left us with only two choices: abandon the project or start charging for it.

Thanks for your response.
I have read the licensing policy change page yesterday, What I meant was: we is Synametrics not responding to the messages that are posted since yesterday. It could take a way a lot anger - allthough it doesn't sound you are consedering a price change. In my opinion 20 dollar per user per year is way to much for spam/junk filtering, and that's the main sound you hear on the forum : the price seems to be to high compare with other players in the field.

Also : moest users are pissed about the way the change was made : after a update they were faced with a irreversible change on licensing/usage on *their* server. You could see at is form of ransomware: "Ji, we updated your server now you have 30 days to pay or this software won't work anymore.
That, with the high price, is what makes the posters so angry and running away to other competitors. It would have made a huge difference if the 30 day window was larger, with a headsup that any future version needs licensing.

Richard,

We are considering a slight modification in our pricing structure and you will see a message in your Admin Console in the next couple of days.

Having said that, it really hurts when someone calls Xeams a "ransomeware". We have worked for almost 10 years on this product investing countless hours bringing it to a point where it is being used by thousands of companies. Sadly, out of these thousands just a handful opted to support us by purchasing the support contract.

Don't want to be rude, but somehow it is ransomdware. As much as the term might hurt  you, it hurt users to see that after a unanounced update you are forced to pay (or loose core functionality).

I agree with 'randsomware' in the way this update and forced subscription model has been pushed on people BUT the term is probably a little harsh in all fairness.  A warning in the update notification, or a message pre-upgrade to say that things are changing, people could have had the option to hold back and review their needs rather than being given a 30 day deadline.  Granted, this gives you bigger bang for buck, but you may find that this will simply alienate people and market share is lost.

I appreciate that you are reviewing your licence terms and look forward to hopefully some sort of middle ground for personal use vs corporate us.  I have no problem paying a nominal fee for personal use (as already stated, $20 per year for a personal installation is more than fair in my opinion, but once you start going above 1 user it starts to put off a good chunk of home users, most of whom will be of technical experience and could be, like myself wanting to use the product for work reasons.

The question of "if I buy 1 user licence despite Xeams saying 6 due to the number of email addresses I personally use, what would happen".  Reading the licence terms, it seems as though you are operating on a 'trust' basis for people to order the correct amount (which to be fair, a lot of the larger anti-spam base their licence terms on....)?

The new Xeams policy change was a necessary adjustment we had to make
after many tough deliberations this year in regard to the future of
Xeams. During this decision process, our team performed extensive
research on and many different contributing factors the most important
being: pricing structures, customer satisfaction, quality of our product
and support. In order to continue supplying Xeams to our customers, this
change was inevitable.

We value and appreciate all the feedback we have already received and
understand your frustrations. We strongly urge you to send us an
email at sales@synametrics.com explaining your personal situation and we will be more than happy
to find a solution that accommodates you or your businesses needs.

Sincerely,

The Synametrics Sales Team

I can appreciate and respect the desire to be compensated for years of work on a product. As I stated before I personally have no issues with supporting that compensation.  However, I do think there's been an overestimation as to the value of the product in question.  A person or business is free to place a value on an item as they see fit, but the purchasing public can also freely determine if that valuation is fair or not.  Survival and satisfaction only occurs when those two values meet, or are at least close enough.  I relayed my experiences from my prior service provider, in the hopes that it would provide a more concrete foundation as to what value I, and potentially others, see as an ideal.  There is obviously room for movement there, but the current valuation is far in excess of what I can bare, or pass along to my clients.  I have personally spent a not insignificant amount of time learning, tuning, and tweaking Xeams to the point it is at now.  I am extremely pleased with its performance in all aspects, despite some growing pains over the years (namely around build 5790; there was a whole host of issues that made me want to set fire to the whole thing.)  I do not want to expend the time and energy (and potentially money) to start over again with a new product from someplace else.  If the Synametrics team can come to some accord that works well with us "little people" then I'm confident most will stay.  You're going to suffer some losses (or more properly categorized, unrealized income streams) due to the handling of this whole situation.

To put all of this into specifics:
$20/year/address is well outside the realm of possibility.
$10/year/address strains the outer edges.
$5/year/address would be ideal from my standpoint.
(note, the CPI Inflation Calculator says $3 in 2011 equals $3.22 in 2016.)
The ability to purchase licenses one at a time is almost a requirement.
If you do not desire to deal with "micro" transactions, then allow the system to overrun halfway between licensing jumps
(ex: If buys are increments of 10, allow the software to "soft" warn up to 15 licenses, and "hard" fail on attempt to create the 16th)

At the end of the day, the equilibrium point is going to be when everyone is EQUALLY UNHAPPY.  I've laid out my suggestions and proposals, and I hope they prove some benefit to all of this.

addendum:

First 5 CALs free. Packs of 10 CALs at $50/year.  Think of it as the Microsoft Model.

Also, could you tell me why this is not ransomware but the team still decided to wait a few days until locking my server? The 5864 build was released 14 october. The ransom demand started not earlier than 18 october. Please explain?

I wasn't going to post anything about this, but my feelings was exactly the same. This totally felt as a ransomeware, you spend months making the system work smoothly and then boom, or you pay or you loose  hours of tuning the software.

Only Synametrics hours matters, those spent by users tuning the software can be littered.

I agree with this. It took me about 3 months to get xeams to the point where it no longer blocks our incoming mail, and now that it's almost perfect, they spring this on me. It feels like ransomware. There should be a roll it back option, where I can continue using the old version for free but no longer receive updates, so that I can at least have longer than 30 days to figure out what i'm going to do.

I have an exchange server with up to 25 users (SBS) and $300 a year is ridiculous for just the spam filtering proxy. I usually only have 4-5 accounts that actually need spam filtering, but we use 15 of the addresses for various things inside the network, so xeams is telling me we have 9 active accounts. If you are going to have a per user subscription cost, there needs to be some way of selecting which users get filtering and which don't.

Also, $20 per user per year is really high - because I'm using 15 accounts, if I wanted all of them covered, it would cost me  $150(10 users)+$100(5 users @ $20)= $250 a year. That's kind of outrageous, considering I'm running everything on my end, and there are several SAAS cloud based spam blockers out there that start at $5/ month ($60/year) for unlimited users.

I understand that the company thought more users would be purchasing support and now they need a way to monetize, but that was not the fault of the many users who chose this software because of the cost. Without any way to opt out, you forced an update that says "Pay in 30 days or all the effort YOU put in to setting up this software, maintaining a server for it to run on, and training the filter is gone." So I can understand the ransomware comparison.

In addition, there are many people who just use the junk filtering aspect of the software in front of another paid email server solution. You would have those people pay the same fee as those who use the software as a full email server?

Finally, XEAMS was "free" software that required someones time and resources to setup, configure, and especially to tune the filters. If you want to start selling the software then you should make a final "free" edition and leave it unsupported, otherwise you just screwed over the trust of the people you are now asking so much money for. Based on your current track record you could very well double the licensing costs next year on those who invest in it now.

It feels shady, and your licensing model doesn't take into account what must be a significant segment of your users who would only want the junk mail filtering component.

My exact same feelings, Sam

Sam,

I think we have already mentioned this on other postings, here it is one more time. If you need an extension for more than 30 days, please contact us towards the end of your Trial period and we will happily extend it for another 30 days.

I agree with all that has been said above. We have been working as unpaid beta testers for this product, aiding in it's development and finding it's problems. I purchased an email server a few years ago and have not paid any support on it and therefore have not received updates - it suits my situation perfectly and I see no need for updates. The same is true of the current version of Xeams that I run, why am I being FORCED to now pay for something that was supplied to me as free and being FORCED to pay for support and updates that I do not want? Is there no way that the new "terms" can be "opted out of" so that people are left with an unsupported version that does not allow further updates but still fills their needs?

On all above accounts I agree. I work as software dev and freelancer for 20+ years and a professor at local university teaching best practice of gaining revenue for your work.

The one that told you this was right choice should be laid off, as in today time where kickstart and donation wide concept is proven working forcing subscription model is near the same as like putting a gun to own head with all six bullets and pulling the trigger.

Ok you had paid support good, you had large number of testers and small users a good testing environment. You find all that not enough good, why you haven't asked for a help? I would be first to help any way I can. Not enough good, add some new feature and make it subscription or paid service good, do a pool/ask eg. use the resource of your disposal, make yourself better and let users earn revenue for you for FREE.

Well 20 years ago this model would pass and you would get away with this, but sadly not now when there is so many choices (paid and free) that would do the same, now simply first thing I got on my mind when I got the first update was OK wanna me to pay, no way I'll pull the trigger myself and record it so that it can be published as an example. Actually I already made an bad example in my classroom telling 300 People how one great product can go so low in an instant and will put it as steady example of a bad decision of how things would never be done. You said you invested time and resources in product, well you just erased all that with ultimatum you put. You lost my trust and based on feedback not just mine, no matter what you say you can't reasonably explain with facts why this ultimatum (I deliberately not said ransomware) was pushed and that there was no other way.

Worst thing is that your other solutions are also flagged and company was put on the lots of black lists by this behavior.

I really hope that damage is somehow reversible or in near future you will be facing  even worse problems.

You should be laid off if you think donation and kickstarter are considered proven methods

@Norf

Any facts to support your claim?

Either you succeed or not, certainly forcing something is not right choice unless you want to shoot yourself in the head.

I finally gave up and moved on to different free one. Even it has a lot of features but I barely use all and don't want to login and monitor the junk emails, too much

The best 2 right now is EFA Project spam filter and ScrolloutF1 spam filter that runs on VMware

EFA Project spam average incoming mail between 3-5mins and better with web interface, very powerful, easy to install

ScrolloutF1 spam is simple web interface, average incoming is 10 mins, kinda long compare with EFA, I like the option to 1 click select the country that you want to receive email but web admin is very basic. The installation is very easy but make sure to choose Bridge network, otherwise, it won't work. Check the installation video and follow exactly, then you get it running right after that.

Good luck if anyone is moving forward for a free spam server. I am pretty done with XEAMS that has never worked well as I expect.

What Xeams did here is not worth another word. i hope many of you are doing the same as we are doing:

Switching to open source again!

EFA Project has virtual appliance, is open source, can be configured as you want, we will take some of xeams budget and contribute.

so please join, if we all do the switch away from xeams and take 10% of budget to contribute we all have a far greater system.

bye bye xeams! love to kill this vm in a few days! 

Btw, both EFA Project and ScrolloutF1 can be installed under free version of VMWare Workstation Player. I installed both to compare right now which they did pretty well without monitor the junk mails. I think I will stay with EFA Project. Got both running with different IP address. All needs is to change ip address on forward port 25 on router for testing either one.

Hello

I have been testing mailcleaner which is a VM and ver easy to configure. especially if you used the install tips on configuring port 2525. Just point your firewall port 25 to the mailcleaner VM bridged ip address. In the setting of mail cleaner point to you actual exchange mail server ip address and port 2525. Thats it  

I installed Scrollout F1 and I am now testing with it, it has DMARC and xeams does not.

So I will change to Scrollout very soon.

Thanks Xeams!

I can uderstand that you want to sell a paid license but the way you do this is not correct.

You should not upgrade the current version automatically and then say "Hey guys, now you have to pay".

I also do not agree with the price changes regarding Xeams. But, one think i can say. I have tried all free/opensource mail filters and no one, but no one is not even close to Xeams. Scrollout F1 is a good alternative but still far away from what you will expect. I have nothing to win, but just to lose if xeams really keep their new terms.. so consider this message just an info. 

So lets still hope a change will come till January.

Andrei.

Try EFA Project, then you won't get disappointed. I currently test EFA Project and ScrollOutF1 and so far I like EFA Project. If you do, make sure to search the forum to get the latest version 3.0.1.5, the main download page has version 3.0.0.9 and the update after installation doesn't work right.

I know XEAMS has a lot features however; I haven't completely get the filter running as needs, keep monitor weekly to update junk mails even thought it has been running over 2 years.

Hello mpndang,

I know EFA Project. I am not disappointed, but still far away... I start to prepare for building my own Filter, based on mail-scanner and all the other opensource technologies.  (spamassassin, RBL, Razor, clamAV, Grayscan, etc.). I think that will be the best option. Currently i wanted to start selling anti-spam solution to our customers, but with those prices it is quite impossible to use Xeams.

Good luck finding the perfect one or getting good prices from Xeams.

Andrei