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SpamSieve Press

This page lists some of the significant SpamSieve reviews and recommendations in the press. For information about new releases, please see the version history and the blog archive.

• May 2024 - David Shayer, writing in TidBITS, says that you “can eliminate most spam with C-Command Software’s venerable SpamSieve.”

• May 2024 - John Buck recommends SpamSieve on the Mac Power Users Podcast (audio starting at 1:21:36).

• May 2024 - The Tech Daddy names SpamSieve a “Desert Island App”:

  SpamSieve is the most effective means of dealing with spam[…]

• May 2024 - Mac Performance Guide writes that SpamSieve is “One Program I Can’t do Without”:

  For better or worse, I use Apple Mail for my email. But Apple’s junk mail filter is rife with problems and lets all sorts of yuck through.

  Enter Michael Tsai’s SpamSieve, which I’ve used for over a decade. Even without any training, it is excellent. And with a little training (super easy), it’s highly effective at passing through the good stuff and blocking the unwanted stuff, which I can quickly skim just in case.

  SpamSieve is indispensible to my day. Without it, I’d be dealing with dozens of spams a day.

• April 2024 - Writing in Mac|Life (issue 217, p. 73), Howard Oakley reviews SpamSieve 3, calling it “Outstandingly accurate” and rating it 5/5 and an Editor’s Choice:

  SpamSieve goes back almost as far as Mac OS X, and was first released for 10.2 Jaguar, 12 years ago. Over that time it has established itself as the only spam filter worth using, and version 3 builds on that success.

  […]

  As SpamSieve never stops learning, and training it is quick and simple: select one or more messages and either use its menu bar commands or Dock icon to classify them as “good” or “spam”. You’ll be surprised how quickly this is reflected in improving accuracy.

  […]

  As well as being one of the longest-serving macOS apps, SpamSieve is one of its best-supported. […] Basically, if you’ve got email, you need to get SpamSieve.

• January 2024 - The January issue of Mac & i writes (translated from German):

  Everything is significantly better than the filter from Apple.

• November 2023 - OWC’s Rocket Yard reviews SpamSieve:

  SpamSieve has been 99.7% correct in detecting spam e-mails in my InBox. That’s pretty awesome. […] As a long-standing Apple Mail user, I was able to upgrade SpamSieve very easily. The first thing I noticed after the upgrade was the new icon; it’s a vast improvement over the old one. […] I found SpamSieve’s online documentation to be very thorough and comprehensive. […] In my testing and use of SpamSieve 3.0 with Apple Mail, the program works as advertised. It’s both fast and highly accurate; it saves me time whenever I’m checking my InBox. There’s a lot to like here. […] [If] you are constantly being plagued by spam to the point where it’s become frustrating, the time you will save with SpamSieve will be well worth the investment.

• October 2023 - VVMac hebdo #130 reviews SpamSieve (translated from French):

  If Mail’s built-in service doesn’t filter what you receive well enough, the C-Command application can be a good solution: its mechanism is well-established and its effectiveness praised by all those who have used it for two decades. To “last” this long, the application is worth it.

• September 2023 - ifun.de writes (translated from German):

  The Mac application SpamSieve is one of the very old hands in the industry. […] Now, over 100 updates and a whopping 20 years later, the desktop application is available in version 3.0 for users who drown in spam emails and optimized for use on macOS Sonoma.

• September 2023 - MacGeneration reviews SpamSieve (translated from French):

  After a few days, the filter offered by the app is excellent for me and I have almost no more errors. It’s much better than what Mail offers by default, also better than what my email account providers (Gmail and iCloud in person, Fastmail for work) offer.

  After more than twenty years of career, SpamSieve remains a good option if you mainly use your Mac to access your emails. Provided you train the app well, you will get a much more effective anti-spam than Apple’s and with the added advantage of good traceability and complete control, which makes it easy to correct an error.

• September 2023 - TidBITS covers SpamSieve 3.0.

• September 2023 - heise online writes (translated from German):

  SpamSieve 3.0 is easier to set up despite the import process. So you no longer need approval of Full Disk Access. There is a new log database in which you can look up more detailed information about the filter decision. Settings have been simplified and you can also transport spam directly to the trash can from a certain score. The already fast program has become faster[…]. The software complements or replaces filtering on the server side and is much more accurate than integrated services such as Google’s.

• June 2023 - MacFormat magazine recommends SpamSieve.

• March 2023 - Dan’s Tutorials recommends SpamSieve.

• September 2022 - SpamSieve is one of wordsmithwriter’s 6 Most Amazing macOS Apps I Can’t Live Without:

  Mac users can use the effective anti-spam program Spamsieve. It integrates with the majority of email services available, analyses your correspondence, and picks up on your routines. […] Once learned, it’s precise enough to save you the time you’d otherwise spend each day choosing all of your emails and clicking “mark as spam” if your email service didn’t succeed in doing it.

• September 2022 - Mac|Life recommends SpamSieve.

• April 2022 - SpamSieve is a MacInformer Editor’s Pick:

  To sum it all up, if you need a user friendly, highly configurable and effective spam blocking application then you will find the SpamSieve software as a great solution.

• October 2021 - Macworld reviews SpamSieve , selecting it as an “Editors’ Choice” and a “Mac Gem”:

  SpamSieve is often 100 percent certain a message is desirable or that it’s unwanted, and it’s correct nearly all of the time.

  […]

  SpamSieve is a largely set-it-up-and-forget-it utility after some initial training, about which C-Command Software offers detailed guidance.

  […]

  SpamSieve is a one-trick pony and it performs its Bayesian trick exceptionally well. We will never be free of spam, and this decades-old method built out with simplicity in the app remains an important line of defense.

• October 2021 - The Automators Podcast mentions SpamSieve.

• October 2021 - App Pearl reviews SpamSieve:

  When we first launch the SpamSieve application, we are greeted by a convenient and intuitive interface.

• July 2021 - Code Completion Podcast recommends SpamSieve.

• June 2021 - VVMac issue 020 recommends SpamSieve (French).

• May 2021 - Lifewire recommends SpamSieve.

• April 2021 - MacLife recommends SpamSieve (German).

• February 2021 - Mac Geek Gab Podcast recommends SpamSieve.

• November 2020 - PureWow recommends SpamSieve.

• October 2020 - Spider-Mac recommends SpamSieve, rating it 5/5 (Italian).

• September 2020 - Lifewire says SpamSieve is the #1 Mac spam filter:

  SpamSieve v2.9.39 adds superior Bayesian spam filtering to email clients on Macs. It’s just as easy to use as Apple Mail’s junk-mail filters and can give you statistics you may find informative. It works with any email provider on your Mac.

• August 2020 - Accidental Tech Podcast recommends SpamSieve.

• May 2020 - IBiblioTech.fr recommends SpamSieve (French).

• April 2020 - TheGmailGenius recommends SpamSieve.

• March 2020 - AskWoody recommends SpamSieve:

  Overall SpamSieve has been quite effective. It has done an excellent job capturing most spam mail with only occasionally one slipping by, and only occasionally marking false positives. The more it runs, the more accurate it becomes, and most days it’s spot-on on what it captures as spam versus good.

  Most of my email accounts still have server-side junk filtering as well. My work and school Office 365 accounts have EOP plus my work Office 365 account has a third-party spam filtering service. My personal email account has a solid spam filter as well with server-side blocking. SpamSieve still works well as an additional level of spam filtering across email accounts, so I see myself continuing to use it in conjunction with the server-side spam filtering I’ve been using.

• January 2020 - TheSweetBits recommends SpamSieve:

  With so much spam around, you must get access to the best E-mail spam filter. SpamSieve, by far and large, is the best spam filter for the Mac.

• October 2019 - Hosting Advice recommends SpamSieve:

  C-Command’s SpamSieve has helped Mac users eliminate spam from their email inboxes for more than 17 years. The solution differentiates itself by working within a user’s email application, rather than as a separate app or cloud-based service layer. And SpamSieve offers a broad range of customizable, innovative spam-blocking features that ensure a clean experience. The solution also incorporates a hybrid technique that leverages machine learning and statistical filtering to learn new spam patterns.

• October 2019 - Clean Email names SpamSieve one of the “Best Email Spam Filter Services” of 2019.

• September 2019 - Michael Kummer uses SpamSieve to recover good messages that were incorrectly caught by Apple’s server junk filter.

• August 2019 - The Kim Komando Show recommends SpamSieve.

• July 2019 - The Mac Power Users Podcast recommends SpamSieve.

• July 2019 - Gizmodo recommends SpamSieve:

  [SpamSieve] comes highly recommended and seems to do an excellent job of keeping spam messages out of your inbox. It works with whatever email client you use on your Mac, and it comes with plenty of customization options if you need to tweak how it functions.

• June 2019 - The Mac Power Users Podcast recommends SpamSieve.

• April 2019 - Paweł Kadysz recommends SpamSieve (Polish).

• November 2018 - Emailmate recommends SpamSieve.

• August 2018 - Bohemian Boomer recommends SpamSieve for “killing spam on iPhone and iPad”:

  There is a way to reduce spam to nearly nothing on the Mac via an app we longtime Mac users know and love. It’s called SpamSieve and it works with Apple’s Mac Mail, Airmail, Outlook, and other email apps.

  […]

  My experience through the years tells me that SpamSieve is about as good as it gets at blocking spam on the Mac. Yes, you can use Mail’s built-in Junk Mail filter, but SpamSieve seems to learn faster and doesn’t forget. I can’t say that about Mac Mail’s built-in Junk Mail.

• July 2018 - Compétence Mac recommends SpamSieve (French).

• June 2018 - Tiziano Fogliata recommends SpamSieve as an essential app (Italian).

• May 2018 - Louis Rossetto uses SpamSieve.

• May 2018 - European Motion Picture Association has a video review of SpamSieve.

• April 2018 - Mac Square recommends SpamSieve.

• April 2018 - Systweak recommends SpamSieve as one of the “Best Mac Mail Extensions.”

• April 2018 - TopTenReviews’s “Best Spam Filters of 2018” survey recommends SpamSieve as “Best for Mac.”

• March 2018 - Popular Science recommends SpamSieve.

• March 2018 - Webwijzer.nl (Dutch) recommends SpamSieve.

• January 2018 - Mac360 recommends SpamSieve:

  The Mac comes with Mail for email and it’s a decent application as email apps with far too many features go, but it also comes with a built-in Junk Mail filter for spam that is, well, after a while, junk itself. The best known replacement for the Junk Mail option to capture and segregate spam messages is SpamSieve. The app has been around for years and seems to get better over time. […] If you get an onslaught of spam every day, SpamSieve works wonders.

• January 2018 - Elle magazine recommends SpamSieve.

• November 2017 - The Mac Power Users Podcast recommends SpamSieve.

• September 2017 - Glenn Fleishman at Macworld recommends SpamSieve:

  SpamSieve ($30) is a very long-running, still regularly updated app that maintains its own database of spam and ham, and which plugs into Mail, Outlook, and other macOS email software. It relies on Bayesian analysis of spam and ham, letting it use word frequency to provide a probability of whether a given message is legit or should quit.

• August 2017 - Passion Support recommends SpamSieve (Dutch).

• August 2017 - Tera Talks reviews SpamSieve:

  SpamSieve is one of those must-have apps of historic proportions.

• June 2017 - Stephen Hackett at The Sweet Setup says that SpamSieve is one of his favorite Mail plug-ins.

• April 2017 - aptgetupdateDE recommends SpamSieve (German), rating it 10/10.

• March 2017 - Mac360 recommends SpamSieve:

  Simply put, this app works better than SpamAssassin, and unlike the Junk mail filter in OS X’s Mail, it gets better over time. […] If your email accounts are IMAP, the offending and unwanted messages are stored in a separate folder on your Mac and that keeps them off your iPhone and iPad, too.

• March 2017 - Mój Mac Magazyn recommends SpamSieve (Polish).

• January 2017 - Limni recommends SpamSieve (Spanish).

• January 2017 - RAW Mac recommends SpamSieve:

  The best alternative to Mail’s built in spam filtering is SpamSieve. It isn’t free, but a lot of people reckon it is worth the money.

• December 2016 - Macworld UK recommends SpamSieve:

  If you find that Mail’s filter is not enough for you then you could consider investing in a third-party option. One long-time favourite is C-Command SpamSieve which adds a Bayesian spam filtering system to Mac Mail alongside a massive list of rules for determining junk items.

• December 2016 - GeerGeek recommends SpamSieve:

  The most important feature is the very efficient filter, look at my statistics : 99,9% correct, which is in my experience way better than the integrated spam filter.

• October 2016 - ZDNet Storage Bits recommends SpamSieve:

  I use SpamSieve, an excellent spam filter for Apple Mail, to sort the 500 or so emails I get every day.

• October 2016 - Mac360 recommends SpamSieve:

  For most of the 21st century I’ve relied on SpamSieve, and add on Mail utility that works much like Junk Mail, only better. Actually, much better. And there’s a way to set it all up so you don’t get spam on your iPhone or iPad.

• June 2016 - EntreArchitect recommends SpamSieve:

  After a recommendation from my friend Neal Pann over at Apple for Architects, I added SpamSieve to my inbox and now find only a dozen or so critical messages in my inbox each day. Since moving to Gmail with SpamSieve, I have almost completely eliminated spam from my life altogether… automatically.

• May 2016 - Dinside recommends SpamSieve (Norwegian):

  The day before this article was written, I installed the trial version of Spamsieve, and it is something I gladly going to pony up $30 for when the trial period has expired. For after spending half an hour on training the spam filter with what was junk and not, I almost got tears in my eyes how much tidier my inbox was after only one day.

• March 2016 - McSolo recommends SpamSieve:

  Simply put, this app works better than SpamAssassin, and unlike the Junk mail filter in OS X’s Mail, it gets better over time. […] If your email accounts are IMAP, the offending and unwanted messages are stored in a separate folder on your Mac and that keeps them off your iPhone and iPad, too.

• March 2016 - Markus Ostermeier reviews SpamSieve (German).

• February 2016 - Tiziano Fogliata recommends SpamSieve (Italian).

• January 2016 - Mój Mac Magazyn (p. 72, Polish) reviews SpamSieve and rates it 5/5.

• December 2015 - Macworld reviews SpamSieve, calling it a “must-have”:

  Years ago I decided that I prefer using software on my Mac to filter spam. C-Command Software’s $30 SpamSieve has been around since 2002 and is hands down the best spam filtering software for Mac. Unlike the brute-force filters on servers, SpamSieve learns from your email. If you get lots of emails that contain certain words, SpamSieve learns that these are normal, and sends them to your inbox. However, if spam gets through, you just select one or more messages and press a keyboard shortcut to tell SpamSieve that they are spam; the app learns from that too. And it’s incredibly accurate. […] This app works so well that, over time, you almost forget about it.

• December 2015 - About.com recommends SpamSieve:

  SpamSieve from C-Command is by far one of the most powerful spam filtering systems available for the Mac. […] I found SpamSieve easy to set up. Its spam learning system was easy to train, and much quicker and more accurate than Apple Mail’s built-in spam filtering system. In fact, Apple Mail and SpamSieve make very powerful partners for fighting spam.

• November 2015 - Macworld recommends SpamSieve as one of “10 essential Mac utilities”:

  I get lots of email, and much of it is spam. I’ve tried using server-side spam filters, but there are too many false positives; messages marked as spam that aren’t. To tame my email, I use SpamSieve, a simple utility that works in the background to filter all my email as it arrives, and sort the wheat from the chaff.

• November 2015 - Dan Counsell recommends SpamSieve as a world-class application that’s sold outside the Mac App Store.

• August 2015 - Ryan Cash’s profile in The Sweet Setup recommends SpamSieve:

  I recently purchased SpamSieve to help me keep my inbox in Apple Mail clean – it was getting out of control, and Apple’s junk filters don’t seem to work as well. It was totally worth the purchase.

• July 2015 - John Castle recommends SpamSieve:

  The combination of Airmail 2 and SpamSieve carries with it *phenomenal* spam-blocking power, and delivers it through a stylish, minimal, functional and above all *intuitive* interface that Apple’s Mail — and all Mail’s other competitors — simply do not even approach, let alone match.

• June 2015 - Tera Talks recommends SpamSieve:

  Years ago I switched to SpamSieve and unlike Mail’s Junk Mail Filter, this one seems to get smarter over time, though it requires occasional training episodes. Installing SpamSieve is straightforward, and it works right out of the box, though tweaking is in order because it does learn the kind of spam your accounts receive.

• June 2015 - cuk.ch recommends SpamSieve (French).

• June 2015 - The CapMac Users Group recommends SpamSieve:

  Harvey Rubinstein will discuss the benefits of using SpamSieve, along with its installation, set-up, features, and how this spam, phishing, advertising, & malware controlling application can give you back your Inbox.

  SpamSieve uses powerful Bayesian Spam filters to detect incoming spam, and adapt to new spammer tricks to block those too. It can even maintain a whitelist to ensure that none of your legitimate emails get tagged as spam.

• June 2015 - MacLife.de (p. 92) recommends SpamSieve (translated from German):

  The additional spam filter SpamSieve is one of the best add-ons for Apple Mail. Installation is simple and if you train the application with some examples of which messages are spam and which are desired, the hit rate of the software is impressive.

  SpamSieve can outsmart serious-looking emails with dangerous attachments, since the software also analyzes these. You can use a slider to adjust how rigorously SpamSieve filters, and the results are impressive.

• November 2014 - Mac360 reviews SpamSieve:

  Easily the premiere spam catching filter utility for the Mac is SpamSieve; an app I’ve used for years with great results.

• September 2014 - Yahoo News reviews SpamSieve:

  SpamSieve works well, and it’s a good option to consider, especially if you find a lot of spam messages sneaking into your Inbox. It integrates with so many mail programs, and it does a good job of learning and adapting to your needs.

• August 2014 - Ben Brooks reviews SpamSieve:

  For a $30 app, this seems like an absolute steal of a deal for a problem that almost everyone faces. If you use email, I highly recommend SpamSieve.

• July 2014 - MacLife (p. 79) recommends SpamSieve:

  The built-in Mail spam filtering that is included with Apple Mail is […] not the best that’s available. However, there’s an easy-to-use plugin that is available for Mail that allows for better email spam filtering. The plugin is called SpamSieve.

• July 2014 - David Bosman includes SpamSieve in his list of essential apps (French):

  Payer pour un filtre antispam ? Oui. Je ne l’ai découvert qu’il y a quelques mois, mais, enfin !, consulter ma boite aux lettres n’est plus une corvée : (presque) zéro spam. Une efficacité bluffante qui vaut largement son prix.

• June 2014 - Ask MetaFilter recommends SpamSieve:

  SpamSieve is the best client-side tool, recommended by many pros I know. I’ve been using it for a few years. A $30 one time purchase. Nothing works better if all you have is client side access.

• April 2014 - The Mac Power Users Podcast recommends SpamSieve.

• April 2014 - Macworld Sweden recommends SpamSieve.

• April 2014 - Kafeneio recommends SpamSieve:

  SpamSieve is very easy to train and it remembers. If you have some spam emails in your Inbox or JunkMail, you point SpamSieve to it and it uses them to train itself. It is uncannily good at catching crap, and once you train it on the ones that manage to sneak by, it catches them faultlessly in the future.

• April 2014 - Macworld’s My nine must-have plug-ins for Apple Mail recommends SpamSieve.

• April 2014 - Macworld UK’s How to filter spam in Mac Mail: block junk mail from clogging up your Apple Mac recommends SpamSieve.

• March 2014 - The Mac Observer’s 6 Tools to Keep Your Mac Life Sane and Quiet recommends SpamSieve:

  I wouldn’t even think about using Macintosh e-mail app unless it’s supported by C-Command’s SpamSieve by Michael Tsai. This app has changed my computing life greatly for the better, and I love it. SpamSieve uses Bayesian filtering to build a corpus, and it learns as it goes. The longer you use it, the better it gets at filtering out spam. These days, SpamSieve is filtering out about 50 spam messages a day with just about perfect accuracy.

• March 2014 - Ivan Expert’s Top 5 Apple Mail Plugins recommends SpamSieve.

• January 2014 - Mac Performance Guide recommends SpamSieve:

  SpamSieve is indispensable for my high volume email needs!

• January 2014 - Macworld’s Simplify Your Email recommends SpamSieve.

• December 2013 - Bohemian Boomer recommends SpamSieve:

  The first on the list is the very popular SpamSieve. It’s a Bayesian spam filter that works much better than Apple’s built-in Junk Mail filter. If you have a spam problem, this is the utility you want.

• November 2013 - David Sparks writes in The MacSparky Email Field Guide:

  SpamSieve is the premier spam software for the Mac. This has been true for a long time. Every few years I survey the field of other spam applications on the Mac and every few years I come back to the conclusion that this is a one-horse race.

  […]

  If you’re having trouble dealing with spam on your Mac, go directly to SpamSieve and install it on your Mac.

• October 2013 - Mac 360 reviews SpamSieve:

  For most of the 21st century I’ve relied on SpamSieve, and add on utility that works much like [Apple Mail’s Junk Mail Filter], only better. Actually, much better. […] If spam is a problem for you on your Mac, SpamSieve could easily be the answer.

• September 2013 - Daniel Jalkut recommends SpamSieve on The Setup (also republished in Macworld).

• July 2013 - SpamSieve is one of Frank Eves’s Essential Mavericks Apps.

• June 2013 - Macworld’s 100 More Things Every Mac User Should Know Superguide recommends SpamSieve.

• April 2013 - One Thing Well recommends SpamSieve.

• April 2013 - Macworld’s “Dealing with junk mail” recommends SpamSieve:

  If you want great then you want C-Command Software’s $30 SpamSieve. It’s a far more comprehensive and effective tool than Mail’s built-in junk mail feature. It’s easy to train and, once trained, it gets the job done. I’ve used it for years and can’t recall the last time it made a mistake.

• April 2013 - Macworld’s “100 Tricks Every Mac User Should Know” recommends SpamSieve (p. 48).

• February 2013 - Episode #126 of the Mac Power Users podcast recommends SpamSieve for iOS spam filtering (audio starting at 57:40).

• December 2012 - Macworld covers SpamSieve’s integration with MailMate.

• December 2012 - TQ White II recommends SpamSieve:

  Here’s another amazing thing. If you set up your email right (imap!), SpamSieve running on your main Mac will remove the spam from your iPhone, too. And your iPad. And you iPod Touch. And your other Macintosh. It is a miracle.

  SpamSieve costs thirty bucks but it is the best thirty bucks you will ever spend.

• December 2012 - Katie Floyd recommends SpamSieve in ScreencastsOnline Monthly Magazine.

• October 2012 - Clark Goble’s list of Developer and Power User Tools includes SpamSieve:

  A better spam filter period. You need this. It uses a combination of bayesian inference and rule based filters. Further it gets updated every month or so in response to the latest spamming going on. Since I got it my spam problems disappeared.

• October 2012 - OS X facile reviews SpamSieve:

  Que faire ? Je vous conseille d’opter pour “SpamSieve,” qui non seulement est en français, mais est extrêmement simple dans son fonctionnement et en plus donne d’excellents résultats avec une visibilité facilitée. Si la fonction “Indésirable” de “Mail” ne vous semble pas suffisante ou peu adaptée pour venir à bout des nombreux spams que vous recevez, “SpamSieve” devrait pleinement vous satisfaire.

• September 2012 - Macworld’s Enhance and extend Mail at a discount writes:

  If you’re looking for the best Mac-based anti-spam solution, look no further than C-Command’s SpamSieve 2.7. The program offers highly accurate filtering, is relatively simple to install, and is easy to use, particularly with Apple Mail.

• September 2012 - Mac306 reviews SpamSieve:

  Your mileage may vary, of course, but my success rate is right around 99-percent and false positives for the past year can be counted on my fingers.

• September 2012 - Katie Floyd (co-host of the Mac Power Users podcast) recommends SpamSieve:

  SpamSieve is hands down the best spam filter out there…If you don’t have it, get it.

• August 2012 - WoowooMac recommends SpamSieve:

  Install SpamSieve and you will rid your inbox of spam. Really, it just works. SpamSieve learns and adapts to your mail, so it’s able to block nearly all the junk without putting good messages in the spam mailbox.

• August 2012 - Matt Henderson recommends SpamSieve’s drone setup:

  My home iMac is continually checking my email. SpamSieve on that machine is continually processing the email, moving any messages it thinks are spam to the “Spam” folder — keeping my inbox pretty much spam-free for my MacBook Air, iPhone and iPad.

• July 2012 - Gear Live recommends SpamSieve:

  SpamSieve is our favorite spam control solution, as it’s proven to be an invaluable tool for us over the years. Highly recommended.

• July 2012 - James Fallows recommends SpamSieve in The Atlantic.

• July 2012 - Robert Paul Leitao reviews SpamSieve at The iPad Chronicles:

  The product’s effectiveness evidences SpamSieve’s smart design while its ease-of-use belies the sophistication that’s brewed into this comprehensive spam solution.

• June 2012 - Joe Kissell’s Take Control of Apple Mail with Lion e-book recommends SpamSieve:

  If […] you get too much spam in your Inbox, you need a third-party anti-spam utility to beef up Mail’s defenses. There are several good choices, but my favorite is Michael Tsai’s $30 SpamSieve. It’s freakishly accurate and, for heavy email users, money extremely well spent.

• May 2012 - John Siracusa on Mac Power Users podcast #87 says (audio starting at 1:04:54):

  The Gmail spam filtering is vastly inferior to SpamSieve, which is what I use locally to filter my mail.

• May 2012 - The New York Times mentions SpamSieve.

• April 2012 - Bohemian Boomer reviews SpamSieve:

  Once you setup SpamSieve it’s mostly set it and forget. If an email spam gets through, use the pull down menu in Mail to train the massage as spam. If you find a legitimate message is marked as spam, again, train it right within Mail. It’s a click.

  Whatever the folks who make SpamSieve are doing, it works. The price is modest (Apple’s built-in Junk Mail filter is free, but problematic at times) and updates are frequent.

• April 2012 - SpamSieve is Tom’s Mac Software Pick at About.com:

  What separates SpamSieve from many of the spam filtering systems built into email clients is how simple it is to set up and use. It also works better than most built-in systems.

• March 2012 - Christopher Breen’s Dealing with spam when Mail won’t cut it in Macworld (June p. 84):

  The other option is to forget about creating rules and lists and instead get an effective anti-spam utility. And when I say effective I do mean C-Command Software’s $30 SpamSieve (5 mice). We don’t dish out five-mouse ratings lightly, but in this case it’s completely deserved. I’ve relied on SpamSieve for years as have many of my colleagues. It really is the best way to deal with this crud.

• February 2012 - Cult of Mac includes SpamSieve in its list of 50 Mac Essentials:

  If you use Mail, you probably know it has its own spam-zapping feature, which is pretty good, but a long way from perfect. SpamSieve is the professional compared to Mail’s enthusiastic amateur. Once installed, it fiercely protects your inbox from the spammers, but still gives you control.

• February 2012 - Kibbles & Bytes #764, the newsletter of Mac retailer Small Dog Electronics, recommends SpamSieve:

  If you are being plagued by junk mail and Apple’s junk mail filter just ain’t cutting it, I cannot give a higher recommendation to Spam Sieve, as I value it as an essential piece of software. I convinced my skeptical IT department to adopt it and buy a site license for all Small Dog employees. It is just that good, and will give you that most precious gift—time.

• January 2012 - SecondAct’s 5 Ways to Tame Your Inbox recommends SpamSieve.

• December 2011 - Justin Williams includes SpamSieve in his Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Mac OS X.

• September 2011 - David Pogue recommends SpamSieve in his New York Times blog:

  [M]y main carry-around machine is a Mac laptop. Onto it, I’ve installed an amazing antispam program called SpamSieve. After reading countless glowing reviews, I gave it a try, and found it indispensable. It works with all Mac e-mail programs, and does an astonishing job of putting all spam from all my accounts into the Spam folder.

• September 2011 - A Day in the Life recommends SpamSieve:

  I rarely do this but it’s not often that I come across a piece of software that not only performs exemplary but is also helmed by one of the most committed developers I’ve ever come across.

• September 2011 - PixoBebo recommends SpamSieve in “How I Killed Spam On My Mac.”

• September 2011 - NightLion reviews SpamSieve:

  SpamSieve has been a god send for me. It’s by far the best email spam filter for the Mac, period.

• July 2011 - tPetaccia.com says SpamSieve is “the best 30 bucks you’ll ever spend on your Mac.”

• June 2011 - Macworld’s “Help!: Got a Mac problem? Here are answers to the most common troubleshooting questions” recommends SpamSieve (p. 42):

  If you have a severe junk-mail problem that Mail can’t deal with, get C-Command Software’s $30 SpamSieve…

• January 2011 - Mac Genius reviews SpamSieve:

  If you’re looking for the best Mac-based anti-spam solution, look no further than C-Command’s SpamSieve. The program’s filtering is highly accurate, it’s relatively simple to install, and it’s amazingly easy to use, particularly with Apple Mail.

• October 2010 - Macworld recommends SpamSieve:

  …do what I did and purchase a copy of C-Command Software’s best-$30-you’ll-ever-spend SpamSieve. It’s the most effective spam-filtering tool I’ve ever used and one I refuse to compute without.

• October 2010 - SpamSieve is on Carpe Aqua’s 2010 Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List.

• October 2010 - TidBITS says that SpamSieve 2.8.4 is “the best way to keep your inbox clean on a Mac.”

• October 2010 - MaUsE DoubleClick (the online publication of Macintosh Users East, Ontario, Canada) reviews SpamSieve (p. 24):

  SpamSieve is an affordable, effective, easy to use utility. While other spam software may filter your mail nearly as well, none performs the job as transparently.

• September 2010 - MacFixIt recommends using SpamSieve to fix Apple Mail’s missing “New Mail” sound.

• September 2010 - SpamSieve is one of The Loop’s hot software picks:

  One of the best apps on the market to rid your inbox of spam is C-Command’s SpamSieve. I’ve been using this Bayesian spam filter for years and it is the best.

• August 2010 - iPhoneTouch.BLORGE.com recommends SpamSieve to solve iPhone 4 spam problems:

  Installation was painless, and getting it integrated with Mac Mail took just a few minutes. The improvement over the rules-only solution was instantaneous and complete.

• April 2010 - SpamSieve receives an Editors’ Choice nomination in the category “Best Web And Online Software” for the 2010 Macworld Awards [UK].

• April 2010 - Sound Support recommends SpamSieve:

  For the general Mac user I recommend SpamSieve.

• April 2010 - MacAppZone reviews SpamSieve:

  SpamSieve is hands down the best spam filtering system available for the Mac. Right when you start using it, it catches almost all of the spam messages and hardly ever puts a real one to spam.

• March 2010 - TidBITS recommends SpamSieve 2.8.1.

• March 2010 - Macworld’s “Mac security reality-check: scams” recommends SpamSieve (page 32).

• January 2010 - The Geek Gab Podcast recommends SpamSieve.

• December 2009 - SpamSieve is the top-rated spam filter in MACup magazine (German).

• December 2009 - SpamSieve is one of MacAppZone’s “11 Applications for the new Mac owner.”

• October 2009 - Macworld’s “Filtering foreign e-mail” recommends SpamSieve.

• September 2009 - The Unofficial Apple Weblog names SpamSieve a “Friday Favorite.”

• September 2009 - Macworld UK reviews SpamSieve and calls it an “Editors’ Choice.”

• September 2009 - MacFan magazine (Dutch) recommends SpamSieve.

• August 2009 - Macworld’s Five favorite Entourage tips recommends installing SpamSieve.

• August 2009 - TechRadar recommends using SpamSieve instead of Apple Mail’s built-in junk filter:

  SpamSieve, which works with many other e-mail programs as well, is far more powerful and customisable. You’ll find that it’s regularly updated, easier to train and lets you create rules for approving and blacklisting particular kinds of mail.

• July 2009 - The Seattle Times highlights SpamSieve’s integration with Growl.

• July 2009 - Macworld reviews SpamSieve:

  If you’re looking for the best Mac-based anti-spam solution, look no further than C-Command’s SpamSieve 2.7.4. The program’s filtering is highly accurate, it’s relatively simple to install, and it’s amazingly easy to use, particularly with Apple Mail.

• June 2009 - IT Management recommends SpamSieve as one of the “Best Mac Security Software Apps.”

• June 2009 - Macworld recommends SpamSieve to help manage e-mail on multiple Macs.

• May 2009 - The Mac Power Users Podcast recommends SpamSieve (audio starting at 56:10):

  I have yet to find a single person who has download the trial who has not turned around and bought the program. It is without a doubt the best e-mail filter program for the Mac.…I blindly trust that whatever it has designated as spam is in fact spam.

• March 2008 - Ron Garret writes:

  I’ve become a believer. I’ve only been using (which is to say training) it for three days, but the situation is already dramatically better than it was before. I’ve had one false positive during the training process, and the false negatives have rapidly dwindled to 1–2 a day. My spam problem is (I almost dare not say this for fear of tempting fate) effectively solved.

• March 2009 - The Entourage Help Blog:

  The Entourage Junk Mail Filter does not learn. It is periodically updated and has worked well for me over the years. However lately, I was getting hit ever day with the same spam in my Inbox. Trying to catch this with a rule proved fruitless so I decided to install SpamSieve that does learn. Now, no more spam in my Inbox.

• January 2009 - Macworld recommends SpamSieve as an alternative to challenge-response.

• January 2009 - MacFormat issue 203’s “Turbocharging Mail” recommends SpamSieve.

• December 2008 - The Typical Mac User Podcast recommends SpamSieve (audio starting at 20:52):

  It’s a must-have. If you don’t have this, you’re getting way too much spam.

• November 2008 - TidBITS’ Security Tips For Safe Online Holiday Shopping writes:

  If you have email accounts with providers that don’t filter, you should also look at C-Command Software’s excellent SpamSieve. Even though all my email accounts are filtered by my service providers and Apple Mail has decent filtering too, I still use SpamSieve to catch those last stragglers.

• November 2008 - SpamSieve is a top pick of the Hershey Apple Core Mac user group.

• November 2008 - The Pain in the Net recommends SpamSieve:

  This brilliant application is a bargain at US$30 and works a charm.

• August 2008 - Macworld Podcast #129: “…if you don’t have a copy of SpamSieve running on your Mac, you should.”

• August 2008 - NBC: “Make sure you have a spam filter on your computer that uses a Bayesian filter, like SpamSieve….”

• August 2008 - The Seattle Times recommends SpamSieve.

• July 2008 - Macworld’s “The E-mail Edge” (p. 34) and “Empty Your Inbox” (p. 66) articles recommend SpamSieve.

• June 2008 - Macworld:

  If you continue to receive a lot of spam in your inbox, you may be better served by a third-party antispam utility such as C-Command’s excellent SpamSieve, which employs sophisticated tactics to separate the wheat from the chaff.

• May 2008 - NoodleMac does a short review of SpamSieve:

  Best Mac spam filter gets better with age. Incredibly accurate, easily trained, integrates with Apple’s Mail, Microsoft’s Entourage, and Address Book. If email spam bothers you, get SpamSieve.

• May 2008 - Macworld UK nominates SpamSieve for “best consumer software” of 2008.

• May 2008 - The Evansville Courier & Press recommends SpamSieve.

• May 2008 - The Leopard edition of the Take Control of Spam with Apple Mail eBook recommends SpamSieve, and the author, Joe Kissell, discusses it on the MacVoices podcast.

  SpamSieve is still by far my favorite. There are others out there that are OK, but I still definitely prefer SpamSieve. It’s 30 bucks. It’s freakishly accurate, and for me that’s money extremely well spent.

• May 2008 - Wil Wheaton uses SpamSieve.

• April 2008 - TechRadar prefers SpamSieve.

• April 2008 - Mike “PC Mike” Wendland, writing in the Detroit Free Press (and in a video that appeared on NBC), says that SpamSieve is his choice for spam filtering on the Mac.

• April 2008 - Macworld recommends SpamSieve to Thunderbird users.

• March 2008 - Wi-Fi Planet names SpamSieve as one of “Five Indispensable Apps.”

• January 2008 - Macworld’s help desk recommends SpamSieve for catching spoofed messages (p.103).

• November 2007 - Small Business Computing names SpamSieve one of its “Best Mac Tools: Five Indispensable Apps”.

• November 2007 - tPetaccia calls SpamSieve “the best 30 bucks you’ll ever spend on your Mac.”

• November 2007 - Mac360’s “10 Days With The Mac’s Best Spam Filter”:

  Setting up SpamSieve is download, open, drag and drop to install. If you’re getting more spam than you want and the situation is not improving, try SpamSieve. If there’s a better solution, I don’t know what it is.

• November 2007 - Macworld’s I will be smarter about how I handle e-mail article (p. 60) recommends SpamSieve to stop phishing attempts.

• October 2007 - The Evansville Courier Press recommends SpamSieve.

• October 2007 - MacBites reviews SpamSieve:

  When I say I had a lot of spam to handle, I’m talking about 50 an hour.…My experience of spam handling software was limited to Outlook, and my opinion was it wasn’t that good.…At the point I decided I was moving to the Mac…I setup a few Gmail accounts ferrying mail from one to the other to try and reduce the amount of spam I was getting. But I can’t get it down to nothing…I was still getting about 300 a day. And that’s when I came across this product called SpamSieve. I had a go with just the junk mail filtering that was in Apple Mail. And, no, it couldn’t really cope. It was making mistakes, both positive and negative.…Over time with SpamSieve, things get better. It learns.…It’s very very clever, and yet it’s pretty simple in use.…I haven’t seen one spam message in my inbox in two months. I haven’t seen one false positive in that long, either.

• October 2007 - Rubin Recommends recommends SpamSieve:

  …since phones don’t have junk mail filtering it’s amazing to use this. All you do is open your mail client a few times a day or at the end of the day and if you’re using IMAP it will suck all the junk mail messages out and off the server so when your phone goes to check it, it’s only the messages you want. Also you don’t have to spend time tidying up your Phone’s inbox because at the end of the day you can open your mail client and it will clean it up!

• September 2007 - Macworld’s Mac 911 recommends SpamSieve for dealing with e-mails from hijacked addresses.

• September 2007 - Developer SmileOnMyMac says that SpamSieve is Smileworthy:

  For the second entry in our new “Smileworthy” category, in which we highlight software we like and use from other software companies, we chose SpamSieve. Like our first entry, LaunchBar, Philip, Greg and I all use this. It is another application we would not want to live without.

• September 2007 - MacLife’s Can Spam For Good (p.37) recommends SpamSieve:

  For heavy email users, Mail’s built-in spam filter may not be enough. Our favorite replacement is SpamSieve.…The difference is hardiness and aptitude—within two days SpamSieve was trapping spam that had eluded Mail for months.

• August 2007 - Karelia Software’s Sandvox e-mail alert said:

  We’re adding [a “Good Karma”] feature to our e-mail alerts, and today we’re giving some unsolicited testimonial to some packages you might want to check out.

  SpamSieve—$30 from C-Command Software—is recent discovery of ours. We have been trying a number of spam-filtering techniques here at Karelia, and nothing has even come close to this gem. It’s an add-on that you attach to Apple Mail or just about any Mac-compatible client; its filters are astoundingly accurate. It’s also trainable so its performance improves over time.

• August 2007 - MacMerc writes:

  If I had a list (and maybe I should compile one) of absolute-must-have Mac apps, [C-Command’s] SpamSieve would certainly be in the top 5…maybe even the top 2.…I’ve been using SpamSieve for almost 4 years now and the tactics spammers use to foil the common filters have changed over that period of time. Methods used by other spam filters (including the Junk Mail filer in Apple’s own Mail.app) have been rendered effectively useless against the modern spammer, but SpamSieve remains in control.

• July 2007 - SpamSieve makes Jim Mitchell’s list of 10 Mac Apps I’d Be Lost Without:

  Tightly integrated with GyazMail (and other clients), SpamSieve does a bang up job of dealing with those little blue pill emails and overseas lottery notifications. I can’t even fathom having to manage the slew of garbage that drops in my inbox everyday without this app. One of the biggest time-saving software purchases I’ve made.

• July 2007 - Issue 34 of MacGuide (p. 44) reviews SpamSieve 2.6.1 and rates it 93%:

  Well [spam] was a curse for me. But I’m glad to say I’m hardly even aware of it now. I have had SpamSieve running for several weeks. My email life is once again constructive, efficient and fun. Praise be!

• June 2007 — Macworld’s “Spam fighters: Seven utilities that can help to rid your inbox of junk” (p. 32) concludes:

  The name SpamSieve should be on the lips of any Mac user serious about ridding his or her computer of junk mail. It’s affordable, effective, easy to use, and configurable. While other spam utilities may filter your mail nearly as well, none performs the job as transparently as C-Command’s SpamSieve 2.6.1.

• May 2007 - Macworld’s “Filter your spam” video recommends SpamSieve.

• April 2007 - Macinstruct’s How to Stop Spam tutorial recommends SpamSieve:

  This is probably the first and last spam filtering application you’ll ever need. If you train it correctly, it’ll bust spam like none other!

• April 2007 - Christopher Breen reviews SpamSieve 2.6 in Macworld:

  SpamSieve 2.6.1 is the gold standard of spam utilities, by which other utilities should be judged. It earns this high regard for a variety of reasons, not least of which are its accuracy and ease of use.

• April 2007 - Ian Betteridge reviews SpamSieve 2.6 in the April 13 MacUser UK (p. 42):

  [Apple] Mail on its own spotted 90 spams, with one false positive among the good mails. Thunderbird alone spotted 86 spam emails, with no false positives. Thunderbird with SpamSieve, though, managed to spot every single spam email, with no false positives at all.

• April 2007 - Joe Kissell reviews six Mac spam filters for IT Management and chooses SpamSieve:

  It’s hard to find anything bad to say about SpamSieve, the gold standard of Mac anti-spam programs. It’s highly accurate, unobtrusive, configurable, and frequently updated.

• April 2007 - Macworld’s Stop Today’s Spam article (p.72) recommends SpamSieve:

  The filters built into Mail and Entourage aren’t bad, but some add-on tools are much more sophisticated. My favorite is Michael Tsai’s $30 SpamSieve 2.5. It has been more than 99 percent accurate in my tests and offers numerous ways to customize and improve its results.

• March 2007 - The Seattle Times recommends SpamSieve:

  What I needed was some kind of super junk e-mail filter that would somehow know what was bad and good.…In just a few days, the accuracy became so good that SpamSieve’s accuracy in detecting spam on my computer is now at about 99.8 percent. Now I have my computer back.

• March 2007 - On the March 2 edition of the Computer America radio show, host Craig Crossman and guest Chris Breen discuss SpamSieve.

  It’s spooky how accurate it gets.

• February 2007 - LowEndMac reviews SpamSieve:

  Right out of the box, SpamSieve exceeded the accuracy of the Apple Mail filter I’ve been training for over a year.…This just may the best $30 I ever spent.

• January 2007 - Chris Betcher recommends SpamSieve:

  Then I discovered an amazing little tool called Spam Sieve. Spam Sieve is for the Mac OSX platform and uses a complex mix of safelists, whitelists, blacklists, Bayesian classification and intelligent heuristic scoring analysis to make some incredibly subtle and refined decisions about what comprises a spam message.

  […]

  It’s a $30 purchase but the best $30 I’ve ever spent. I deal with a lot of mail, and I haven’t seen a single spam message in weeks. The bottom line is that email has actually become pleasant to use again.

• January 2007 - Kevin Kelly recommends SpamSieve in his list of Cool Tools:

  SpamSieve is the best spam filter for the Mac. It’s incredibly accurate yet invisible. I have been using it for almost three years now and its statistics show that over that time it was 99% accurate. SpamSieve is so invisible and maintenance free that I’ve just about forgotten about it—despite the fact that my e-mail has been widely posted on the Web for 10 years.

• January 2007 - MacAddict recommends SpamSieve in its “AutoDespamification” how-to (p. 70).
• December 2006 - The MacReviewCast names SpamSieve one of the top 10 shareware apps of 2006 (audio starting at 9:30):

  Sure, there’s a lot of other spam filters out there.…But anyone that really wants to clean out spam before they read their e-mail, you need SpamSieve.…It just keeps getting better with each new version.

• November 2006 - The Apple Blog’s 10 OS X Apps You Might Not Know About But Should:

  Spam is an unfortunate fact of life…or is it? It hasn’t been for me in almost a year. I’ve abandoned the junk filter in Apple’s Mail app in favor of Michael Tsai’s SpamSieve. It’s incredibly accurate and really is the best spam filter I’ve ever used. No mac should be without this! It’s got a low $30 price tag for so much power.

• November 2006 - ScreenCastsOnline shows how to use SpamSieve with Apple Mail.

• November 2006 - The Mac Observer reviews SpamSieve 2.5 and rates it “Outstanding”:

  Why bother buying an extra application when Mail and Entourage have their own built-in spam filtering features? Simple: Because SpamSieve does a better job. If you get lots of email messages, and lots of spam along with them, SpamSieve is a must have application.

• November 2006 - MacBreak’s weekly audio roundtable features SpamSieve:

  Leo Laporte: I think it’s the best [anti-spam] program for the Mac.

• October 2006 - Ric Ford writes on MacInTouch:

  I used Eudora’s built-in spam filter for a long time but finally switched to SpamSieve, which I can strongly recommend as a superior spam filtering system at a very reasonable price.

• October 2006 - Tip #26 of Macworld’s “59 ways to use your applications better, smarter, and faster” (p. 69) recommends installing the “extremely accurate” SpamSieve “for better protection.”
• September 2006 - On MacNotables #675, Bob LeVitus says that SpamSieve is one of his top four shareware programs:

  It’s incredibly accurate.…I’ve tried a lot of different ways of filtering out spam, and so far SpamSieve is by far the grand champion.

• July 2006 - MacPeople MUG reviews SpamSieve.
• June 2006 - SpamSieve is one of Mike Wendland’s top ten reasons he’s glad to be a Mac switcher.
• May 2006 - .net Magazine reviews SpamSieve (page 60):

  We don’t usually get excited about spam filters, but we’ll make an exception for SpamSieve. This OS X spam-killer plugs into most major OS X clients (including Entourage) and does a sterling job not just of zapping spam, but also of making sure that legitimate messages don’t get zapped by mistake.

• May 2006 - About.com reviews SpamSieve 2.4.3.
• April 2006 - David Pogue recommends SpamSieve in his New York Times e-mail column:

  Spam Sieve is just incredibly, amazingly accurate; my In box is clean, baby, clean!

  Once or twice a day, I take a look at my Junk Mail folder and literally grin with glee. There they are, all together, stewing in their own sleazy juices: all the ads for Viagra and Cialis; all the stupid phony phishing e-mails from eBay, PayPal and Chase Bank; all the foreign-language spam; all the messages that contain nothing but a big pasted graphic ad for pills; and on and on.

  And in about 2,000 spam messages flagged so far, I’ve encountered not a single legitimate message flagged as spam. Now THAT is a great feature.

• March 2006 - Matt Asay at InfoWorld says that if you “don’t like spam…you need SpamSieve.”
• February 2006 - Chris Barylick at The Mac Observer says that SpamSieve is the “best mail filter available.”
• December 2005 - LowEndMac’s Ed Eubanks says that SpamSieve is a tool he couldn’t live without:

  If you use e-mail, you will want SpamSieve. It’s simple to set up, it works very well with Mail (and Entourage, and just about every mail client I’ve heard of), and it’s pretty close to foolproof.

• November 2005 - TidBITS #806 covers the release of SpamSieve 2.4 and offers a $5-off coupon for Take Control readers.
• October 2005 - LowEndMac’s “Simple Strategies to Minimize and Filter Spam” recommends SpamSieve.
• September 2005 - Macworld’s Internet Beat (p. 21) mentions SpamSieve 2.3.1.
• August 2005 - macHOME’s Desktop Makeover (p. 9) says:

  Michael Tsai’s SpamSieve 2.3 is a clever utility that can be quite successful at stopping spam.…Once SpamSieve is sufficiently trained, it will happily intercept all incoming mail and move suspected spam to your e-mail application’s junk folder.

• June 2005 - J.D. Roth writes:

  If I could have only one third-party Macintosh application, it would be SpamSieve.

• May 2005 - iCreate #18’s “50 Must-Have Mac Apps” cover story includes SpamSieve:

  Almost all mail applications, including Entourage and Mail, have their own built-in spam filters. Some are better than others but almost all can be improved upon. SpamSieve [is] an even more effective spam filter [than Apple Mail’s]. After a bit of training, false positives and negatives tend to go away, leaving you with an inbox untained by herbal Viagra and requests to confirm your Bank of Washington security settings. Since Tsai updates the product frequently, SpamSieve is often ahead of the built-in junk filters and in keeping up with spammers’ latest techniques. Better still, it gives junk filtering abilities to email programs that never had the ability to spot junk mail.

• April 2005 - The Apple Blog reviews SpamSieve 2.3:

  [SpamSieve] is the answer to spam on Mac OS X.…I don’t normally go for shareware in the fairly rarefied over-$20 realm, but SpamSieve is absolutely worth it. Eudora users will find it half the cost of an upgrade to Eudora’s Paid mode (which is required to use the vastly inferior built-in junk mail filters). SpamSieve will pay for itself within a month by freeing you from worrying about whether or not your junk mail filter(s) caught anything important.

• March 2005 - Jason Fried at 37signals recommends SpamSieve:

  SpamSieve (Mac OS X) is the best spam filter I’ve ever used. Unreal accuracy and it keeps getting better. So far it’s 99% accurate over 8000 messages. Really great.

• February 2005 - SpamSieve is on Daring Fireball’s short list of Apps of the Year, 2004:

  Michael Tsai’s SpamSieve epitomizes the idea of utility software that does one thing, and does it well. What SpamSieve does is identify spam in your email, and it does so with accuracy that approaches perfection.

  SpamSieve 2.2 was released in August, ostensibly as a relatively minor feature to SpamSieve 2.x. My results with 2.2 (and continuing up through the current 2.2.4 release) have been a decided and noticeable increase in accuracy. SpamSieve went from great to really great.

• February 2005 - SpamSieve is on Surf-Bits’s Top Ten Software Picks
• January 2005 - Michael Alderete surveys anti-spam tools:

  [SpamSieve] only took a training pass at my archived spam and Inbox (a few thousand messages between them), and a couple of days use proved that it was noticeably better than SpamWatch.

  Its final fault gone, and with the best scoring engine and perfect integration with Eudora, it is by far the best tool I’ve used for managing the amount of spam I get, and I’m happily using it today. Compatible with virtually every e-mail client running on Mac OS X, it totally deserves its reputation as being the best anti-spam tool available on my platform of choice. Highly, highly recommended.

  If you like Mail.app, since you can use SpamSieve with it, that’s what I’d recommend doing, and blow off the built-in junk mail controls.

• November 2004 - Mac Annoyances by John Rizzo recommends SpamSieve (p. 26):

  The easiest, most effective Bayesian filter is SpamSieve.…Mail’s built-in filter is pretty good, but SpamSieve is more accurate and catches more spam than Apple Mail. SpamSieve is also safe—in the 11,000 messages SpamSieve has filtered for me, it has only once incorrectly identified a legitimate message as spam.

• November 2004 - Australian IT writes:

  We opened a bottle of good Aussie bubbly here at The Barrow the other day to celebrate the first day in several years that we hadn’t received a single spam message in our email inbox.

  We raised a glass to US software developer Michael Tsai, the man behind SpamSieve, a program that has changed our office life and promises to restore our sanity.

• November 2004 - macHOME (p. 42) writes:

  Mailsmith has excellent spam protection. In fact, it too can be tightly integrated with SpamSieve, just like PowerMail. We think she’d love how it would handle her junk mail easily, and with only a minimum of configuration. (“I don’t have to think about it? Great!”)

• October 2004 - Macworld E-Mail Survival Guide (p. 68) writes:

  [SpamSieve] is superior in many ways to what you’ll find in Mail or Entourage.

• October 2004 - Macworld (p. 75) says:

  One of our favorite add-on spam filters is Michael Tsai’s $25 SpamSieve…a powerful, accurate, and highly configurable statistical filter.

• August 2004 - MDJ 2004.08.30:

  [SpamSieve is] the easy choice of the vast majority of current and former MDJ staffers, not only due to its tight integration with Mailsmith 2.1 and later, but also because it mostly just works—accurately identifying over 99% of spam messages that slip through to our production system, for example. There are lots of tiny shareware “spam filters” out there, but only SpamSieve won the 2003 Macworld Editor’s Choice Award, and we think there’s a reason for that.

• July 2004 - TidBITS#736:

  We of course hope that Postini will be equally as accurate as the client-side filters many of us already use; Michael Tsai’s SpamSieve remains about 99.6 percent effective for me…

• June 2004 - Degunking Your Mac by Joli Ballew recommends SpamSieve (p. 143).
• May 2004 - The Mac Night Owl:

  After about a week of use, SpamSieve settled had reached 99.2% correct identifications of spam, and accuracy continued to increase in tiny increments. Yes, there are other applications that promise to accomplish the same result, but SpamSieve is regarded as the most effective solution out there.

• May 2004 - Cheryl K. Olson writes in the Wall Street Journal Online:

  I am incredibly happy with a product called SpamSieve, which—once “trained” by feeding it examples of good mail and spam—has virtually no false positives or negatives.

• April 2004 - My Mac reviews SpamSieve:

  If you’re encountering spam problems and you’re at your wits end, I highly recommend that you check out SpamSieve if you have one of the email programs that I’ve listed above. For the price, it’s the best expenditure of money for peace of email that I can think of. My Mac Rating: 5 out of 5.

• March 2004 - macCompanion reviews SpamSieve:

  Now, are there competitors to SpamSieve? Good heavens, yes! Lots!! But none I’ve seen so far go as far or work as well.… I sure hope Apple auto-installs SpamSieve as an add-on to [Apple Mail] in the next release of Mac OS X.

• February 2004 - Macworld names SpamSieve “Software of the Year” (p. 77).

  The best way to keep these obnoxious messages at bay is the heroic Michael Tsai’s SpamSieve 2.0.…Unlike other programs, which force you to check a separate program for mismarked mail, you use SpamSieve right inside your everyday e-mail program. Forget spam about reducing body parts, and use SpamSieve to reduce something else: your spam count.

• February 2004 - MacOPINION:

  SpamSieve is smart. I did have a plentiful supply of good and bad emails for it to sample initially, but literally within a day it was achieving 99% accuracy.

• February 2004 - MacAddict reviews Eudora 6.0.1 (p. 49).

  With average accuracy in the low 90-percent range, [Eudora] SpamWatch isn’t as good as our preferred third-party spaminator, SpamSieve 2.0.

• January 2004 - TidBITS notes an increase in spam volume.

  Luckily, Michael Tsai’s SpamSieve is doing a swell job of identifying and extracting the spam from my Eudora mailboxes; it’s currently 99.6 percent correct in identifying spam.

• January 2004 - O’Grady’s PowerPage awards SpamSieve 2.1.1 the first O’Grady PowerPick of 2004.

  I was pretty happy with Mail.app's Spam filtering until I realize that it is rather stagnant, not dynamically learning about new Spam with use. As spammers get better at defeating Mail's Junk Mail rules, more wound up in my In Box.…SpamSieve is like a light at then end of the Spam tunnel. Installing and training it has reduced my Spam to zero (literally).

• January 2004 - Macworld features SpamSieve in its “Shop Smart: Software for Less” article.
• January 2004 - Macworld reviews Eudora 6.0 (p. 34).

  SpamSieve was a more effective spam blocker than Eudora 6’s built-in filters.

• December 2003 - MacInTouch readers choose SpamSieve as a runner-up for best communication product.

  It’s awesome, easy to use, catches 99.9% of my spam now with the latest version. Integrates perfectly with Entourage (which is what I use). It has so radically reduced the amount of spam I deal with, it is absolutely a necessity!

• December 2003 - Macworld gives SpamSieve an Editors’ Choice Award.
• November 2003 - MDJ 2003.11.14 says:

  Eudora remains an outstanding mid-range E-mail client…but we’d still pick the US$25 SpamSieve 2.0.2 for junk mail filtering over paying US$50 to avoid ads and use Eudora’s more limited junk mail filtering.

• November 2003 - MacAddict reviews Mailsmith 2.0.1.

  [Mailsmith] Version 2 brings seamless integration with Apple’s Address Book app, PGP encryption, the excellent SpamSieve junk-mail detector, and SpamCop reporting.

• October 2003 - MacAddict writes (p. 38):

  One you train it, SpamSieve’s accuracy is fantastic. This accuracy, plus the fact that SpamSieve integrates right into your email program, makes it our preferred filter.

• October 2003 - MacUser UK reviews SpamSieve 2:

  If the level of spam you receive is high, then SpamSieve is an excellent option. What’s more, at $25, it’s a bargain.

• September 2003 - MacCentral writes:

  I get a large volume of spam, as my e-mail address is in plain sight for any Web crawler or harvesting out there—upwards of 2,000 or more pieces a day on average, not counting all the recent blowback from SoBig.f and related e-mail server bouncebacks. I’ve been using SpamSieve regularly since earlier this year and find it very, very effective.

• September 2003 - Jim Dalrymple compares SpamSieve 2.0 and Apple Mail’s spam filter.

  If you receive a lot of emails and are constantly fighting with spam, there is no reason to fight any longer. For a small Shareware fee you can be rid of junk email in your Inbox (mine is 99.2 percent effective) for good.

• September 2003 - Other World Computing reviews SpamSieve 2.0:

  SpamSieve is a fast, efficient, and easy way to help deal with the problem. It gets high marks where most competing products fail to live up to expectations.

• September 2003 - Macworld Sweden reviews SpamSieve, giving it 5/5 mice.

  Are you looking for a competent spam protection for your Mac, which also is well integrated with most e-mail clients for OS X? Stop looking—SpamSieve 2.0.2 gives you everything you need for a paltry sum. (Translation by Max Gossell)

• September 2003 - Daring Fireball interviews SpamSieve’s developer.
• September 2003 - MDJ writes:

  If you’re suffering a deluge of spam you can’t filter out, and you haven’t tried SpamSieve, you’re wasting your time.

• June 2003 - The Seattle Times says SpamSieve is its “final line of defense.”
• May 2003 - The Pioneer Press recommends SpamSieve.
• May 2003 - Mac Guild reviews SpamSieve 1.2.2.

  Overall, I have found SpamSieve very easy to install and use.…The performance of the filter is very good with few false positives and negatives.

• April 2003 - MacGeneration reviews SpamSieve 1.3 (English translation).
• April 2003 - TechTV reviews SpamSieve.

  On my machine, SpamSieve has processed 8,018 spam messages and 48,195 good messages with a 98.7 percent accuracy rate.…It’s the best I’ve found to date.

• March 2003 - Your Mac Life interviews SpamSieve’s developer.
• March 2003 - MacFixIt recommends SpamSieve.

  The first aspect you will appreciate about this product its comprehensiveness and professional execution. More than just a crude hack to implement an open-source offering as a Mac OS X application, SpamSieve includes some of the best documentation we have ever seen in a US $20 shareware product. Not only is there a detailed explanation of how exactly Bayesian filtering works, explanation of the already straightforward features is excellent.

• April 2003 - Macworld’s cover story on anti-spam software awards SpamSieve 1.2.2 four mice, higher than all the other products reviewed (p. 64).

  This program lets you stay within your familiar e-mail application, so you usually don’t have to change the way you manage mail to take advantage of SpamSieve.

• February 2003 - TidBITS reviews SpamSieve 1.3 (#667).

  I’d strongly encourage you to take a look at SpamSieve. Michael Tsai is developing it actively, and has been extremely responsive to comments and suggestions.

• February 2003 - The New York Times Magazine mentions SpamSieve.
• November 2002 - About.com reviews SpamSieve.
• November 2002 - MDJ writes:

  Nearly 29% of our E-mail is spam, and SpamSieve identifies it correctly 97.7% of the time. […] It’s all handled by AppleScript, so if you want new behavior—playing a sound for spam, automatically moving it to a special mailbox, or logging the senders or recipient addresses—just modify the scripts to your liking in your favorite script editor. […] Thanks to AppleScript and SpamSieve’s support of the top five scriptable E-mail clients, you can use any of these programs and retain your customized spam filtering. Want to move to Entourage from Eudora? Just add SpamSieve’s scripts and go—the thousands of messages you’ve already trained keep working for you in the new client. At first, we thought E-mail clients should build in functionality like SpamSieve, but the more clients it supports, the more flexibility you have.

• October 2002 - MacGroup-Detroit reviews SpamSieve 1.1.
• October 2002 - Cuk reviews SpamSieve (English translation).
• October 2002 - Paul Graham lists SpamSieve on his page of filtering software.
• October 2002 - Kaitlin Duck Sherwood lists SpamSieve among her recommended anti-spam tools.
• October 2002 - Mac OS X Hints offers some tips for using SpamSieve.
• October 2002 - TechTV mentions SpamSieve.
• September 2002 - TidBITS mentions SpamSieve in an article about Mailsmith filtering.