SmarterMail Licensed Add-ons
SmarterTools' add-on licensing system lets administrators extend a SmarterMail installation with capabilities beyond the base product — typically additional antispam/antivirus detection engines or client-synchronization protocols. Add-ons are licensed separately from the core SmarterMail license, and most can be trialed before purchase. Activation status, trial eligibility, and current usage against any licensed cap (for example, mailboxes using ActiveSync) are all managed from the Licensing and Activation page.
The following paid/licensed add-ons are available for SmarterMail:
- EAS
- MAPI & EWS
- Message Sniffer
- Cyren Premium Antispam and IP Reputation
- Cyren Zero-hour Outbreak Detection
- SpamFoo Antispam
In addition to these licensed add-ons, every SmarterMail installation also includes SpamFoo Email Classification at no cost. It isn't purchased or trialed like the items above, but because it's closely related to the SpamFoo Antispam add-on, it's covered below as well so administrators understand the distinction between the two.
EAS
EAS (Exchange ActiveSync) is a data synchronization protocol that pushes email, calendars, tasks, and notes to virtually any iOS or Android mobile device. EAS is primarily valuable today for keeping phones and tablets synchronized with a mailbox, rather than for desktop clients.
Example: A sales team that lives on their phones can enable EAS so that new email, calendar invites, and contact changes push to their devices immediately, the same way they would against an Exchange ActiveSync-enabled Exchange server.
MAPI & EWS
This add-on actually licenses two related synchronization technologies, and which one a given client uses depends on the client itself:
- MAPI provides native Microsoft Outlook synchronization and functionality at the server level, for Outlook 2016 and later on Windows. Beyond basic syncing of email, calendars, contacts, tasks, and notes, MAPI also enables the advanced Outlook/Exchange-style features administrators expect — delegation, contact groups, Public Folders, and more.
- EWS (Exchange Web Services) syncs mail, contacts, calendars, and tasks to third-party clients such as Apple Mail on macOS and eM Client on Windows and macOS. EWS is built for fast client/server communication and also supports advanced features like delegation and contact groups.
Example: An organization migrating off Exchange licenses MAPI & EWS so that Windows users keep using Outlook exactly as before, while their few Mac users continue using Apple Mail, all against the same SmarterMail server.
Message Sniffer
Message Sniffer complements SmarterMail's built-in antispam functionality, catching additional spam, viruses, and malware on top of what SmarterMail's "out of the box" protection already stops. It learns about your specific mail environment automatically, tuning its own performance and accuracy without administrator intervention, while still allowing manual customization when needed. Because it evaluates all of its detection signatures locally rather than querying an external service, Message Sniffer adds detection without adding the latency of an outbound lookup. Its local signature database is updated automatically and regularly to keep pace with new spam and malware campaigns.
This add-on can be purchased directly from the SmarterTools website by logging into your account and adding it to any SmarterMail license.
Cyren Premium Antispam and IP Reputation
The Cyren Premium Antispam add-on uses Recurrent Pattern Detection (RPD) technology to protect against spam outbreaks in real time as messages are mass-distributed across the internet. Rather than inspecting the content of any individual message, the Cyren Detection Center analyzes large volumes of global internet traffic in real time, recognizing an outbreak pattern the moment it emerges — often before a signature-based engine has even seen a sample.
Cyren Premium Antispam also includes, at no additional cost, Cyren IP Reputation checks. IP Reputation builds on what standard RBLs and URIBLs already provide by covering the large gray area of IP addresses with little or no established history — for example, machines hijacked by a botnet that dynamically abuses the otherwise-innocuous IP addresses assigned to them. Because Cyren analyzes hundreds of millions of messages daily, it can classify, and continuously re-classify, the reputation of each sending IP in near real time.
This add-on can be purchased directly from the SmarterTools website by logging into your account and adding it to any SmarterMail license.
Cyren Zero-hour Outbreak Detection
The Cyren Zero-hour Outbreak Detection add-on identifies brand-new, "zero hour" viruses based on their distribution patterns rather than a known signature, providing a complementary shield to conventional antivirus scanning. This protects users during the earliest moments of a malware outbreak, before traditional signature databases have caught up, and continues offering protection as new variants of the same outbreak emerge. Cyren Zero-hour is designed to work alongside — not replace — a conventional antivirus engine, such as SmarterMail's native ClamAV implementation.
This add-on can be purchased directly from the SmarterTools website by logging into your account and adding it to any SmarterMail license.
SpamFoo Email Classification
SpamFoo is an AI-driven engine that actually provides two related but separate capabilities: a classification engine and an antispam engine. Classification is the piece covered in this section, and unlike every other item on this page, it is not a purchased add-on. Email classification is included with every SmarterMail installation by default, at no cost, and its licensing card on the Licensing page always shows as active rather than offering a trial or purchase option.
Once a system administrator enables SpamFoo classification, each individual mailbox automatically has its incoming mail sorted into categories that mirror the tabbed inbox experience users expect from modern webmail: Primary, Transactions, Updates, and Promotions. Because the classification model factors in message intent rather than relying solely on sender or keyword rules, it can, for example, tell the difference between a shipping notification (Transactions) and a marketing email from the same retailer (Promotions).
Users can correct SpamFoo's classification decisions directly in webmail by dragging a message onto the correct tab, and SpamFoo learns from that correction going forward. Every user also gets a personal SpamFoo Dashboard showing how their mail has been categorized, and system administrators get a server-wide dashboard showing classification trends across every domain and mailbox.
Example: A user notices a vendor's invoices are landing in Promotions instead of Transactions. Dragging one of those messages onto the Transactions tab retrains SpamFoo so future invoices from that sender land in the right place automatically.
SpamFoo Antispam
SpamFoo Antispam is the licensed, paid counterpart to SpamFoo Classification, and it is the item that actually appears as a purchasable add-on card on the Licensing page. Where classification sorts mail that's already considered legitimate, SpamFoo Antispam is a local, AI-driven detection engine that decides whether a message is spam or phishing in the first place. Rather than matching keywords or fixed patterns, it evaluates the intent and context of a message, which allows it to catch sophisticated spam and phishing attempts that pattern-based engines can miss.
Because SpamFoo needs the complete message body to evaluate intent and context, it can't make a determination at the SMTP connection stage the way a connection-level check can. Instead, it runs during spool/content filtering, after a message has been fully received. This means that, unlike Cyren Premium Antispam or Message Sniffer, SpamFoo Antispam does not offer an Inbound or Outbound SMTP Blocking option — its result is only ever applied through spool filtering. On the Spam Checks configuration page, administrators can tune two values for the engine:
- Spam Weight — The score SpamFoo contributes to a message's overall spam rating when it determines the message is spam. Defaults to 20.
- Not Spam Weight — The score SpamFoo contributes when it determines a message is legitimate. Defaults to 0, but can be set to a negative number to actively reduce a message's overall spam score.
SpamFoo Antispam also powers the Business Email Compromise (BEC) and impersonation protection features available from the SpamFoo dashboards — Protected Identities and Delegated Senders — which let administrators flag high-value roles (a CEO, CFO, or payroll manager, for example) for extra scrutiny against spoofing, while still allowing legitimate systems that send on their behalf (such as QuickBooks sending invoices for an AP manager) through cleanly.
Example: A phishing email impersonating a company's payroll manager, requesting an urgent change to direct deposit details, is a classic pattern-matching blind spot because it contains no malicious links or attachments. SpamFoo Antispam's contextual analysis, combined with a Protected Identity set up for that payroll manager, is designed to catch exactly this kind of attack.
Note: Because SpamFoo Antispam and SpamFoo Classification are related engines from the same provider, enabling one does not automatically enable the other. Each is licensed and configured independently — classification is free and always available, while the antispam engine requires an active trial or purchased license.