MessageFlow is a spam filtering service from Room101 that routes email through its servers before delivering to clients. It uses real-time blacklists, valid user checks, and proprietary content filtering to block around 99% of spam, reducing strain on clients' networks. MessageFlow also provides increased email reliability by storing messages if the client's connection is down. Pricing is £250 per year per client, or £175 for resellers.

1. 08
Information sheet:
Using the Room101
“MessageFlow” service
to clean up your email
Room101
Call Richard Fincher now 0845 0036 101 internet services
The best of both worlds MessageFlow spam filtering techniques
As a Microsoft Small Business Specialist, When it comes to spam, MessageFlow uses three methods of
installing and supporting Microsoft filtering. Firstly, our mail servers are linked 24 hours a day to
Small Business Server is a good choice some of the industry’s leading Realtime Blackhole Lists (RBLs).
for your clients with 5 or more users. It This type of filtering (by-reputation) is very effective, and
certainly makes a lot more sense than currently our servers intercept about 3.5 million spams per
having all those pesky POP boxes on month using this method. There is an opt-out which clients can
some random consumer ISP! However, use temporarily if a key contact of theirs is sending from the
what if there were a hosting service product designed from the network of a currently blacklisted ISP .
ground up to work in co-operation with Microsoft Exchange,
rather than attempting to provide a low-cost and poor Secondly, we run the incoming emails against an up-to-date list
alternative to it? Enter MessageFlow from Room101 Ltd. of valid users. This beats all those “guessed email address”
spammers (and there are a lot of them!)
“Unrouteable address” errors - how to avoid these
Finally, we have a proprietory content filtering system which
It is best practice in the internet industry for a domain name to updates every minute with news about the content of current
be setup with two MX record servers for relaying email. This is spamming campaigns. A typical spam mailshot these days is a
because when one is heavily conjested or down, the other will billion or more recipients - unless your client is in the first 1000
accept the mail instead. Most clients with a basic SBS setup will or so emails spammed to, MessageFlow
simply have a single MX record pointing directly at their ADSL will recognise the content of a spam
line, on which Microsoft Exchange is listening to the whole which may have made it past the other
world. With Room101’s “MessageFlow” service, email is first checks. It can then either wipe it, tag it or
routed through one of our two Towers, thus providing a much dump it in a special SpamBox webmail
more resilient network topology, and also ensuring that even system for the client’s perusal, should they
hours of ADSL downtime will not result in emails to your client wonder if a genuine email has been
bouncing back to the sender. (In these times of uncertainty, wrongly intercepted. (Tagging is great for
receiving an “Unrouteable address” bounce back for any testing purposes, or whilst the client is
company can cast a shadow over the company’s reputation. getting used to the system).
Perhaps they went bust?) MessageFlow will store and forward
emails until the ADSL connectivity problem is resolved. What are the limitations of MessageFlow?
Mail cleaning with MessageFlow We recognise that clients and resellers hate “per user” charges,
therefore, we charge instead per block of 5 domain names.
There are many good spam filtering solutions which work on Additional blocks of 5 domain names can be added to the basic
Exchange Servers, so why did we build a spam filtering service for £50 +VAT.
component into MessageFlow which works on hosted servers?
Well, now that spam is about 99.9% of all emails, it can severely The MessageFlow pricing options
reduce ADSL speed if each of these emails has to come into
your client’s office before being rejected. Having Exchange- The recommended resale price of MessageFlow is £250 + VAT
based filtering is important, because it can keep a junk folder on per annum. There is no setup fee. However, we’ve found thusfar
your users’ systems which they can examine. But let’s save that that most of the signups have been through IT Support
for the emails which might be genuine, and let MessageFlow Companies, who are reselling the product to their own clients.
remove the stuff which is OBVIOUSLY spam, such as made up For these, we’ve introduced a generous reseller discount of 30%,
usernames (eg webmaster@yourclient.com) Basically, we cut making your price £175 + VAT per annum.
down about 85% of spam; the remaining 15% is filtered locally.
Room 101, Erico House, 93-99 Upper Richmond Road, Tel: 0845 0036 101 Fax: 0845 0037 101
Putney, London SW15 2TG email: info@room101.co.uk www.room101.co.uk

2. Information sheet:
Using the Room101
“MessageFlow” service
to clean up your email
Room101
Call Richard Fincher now 0845 0036 101 internet services
Room 101, Erico House, 93-99 Upper Richmond Road, Tel: 0845 0036 101 Fax: 0845 0037 101
Putney, London SW15 2TG email: info@room101.co.uk www.room101.co.uk