AV Software licensing policy

Carl Hogue carl at CAPAHO.COM
Thu Jan 10 14:30:54 GMT 2002


On Wed, 9 Jan 2002 11:48:35 -0000, Paul Welsh <paul-w at BLUEYONDER.CO.UK>
wrote:

>I'm using the currently beta (and therefore free) F-Prot AV software on a
>single server hosting multiple domains.  Presumably F-Prot won't be beta
>(and therefore free) forever though.  I contacted Frisk to enquire as to
how
>long it was likely to be beta for and they said they didn't know, nor had
>they established pricing for the non-beta product.
>
>I know from purchasing AV software for MailSweeper running on NT that most
>AV vendors specify you buy a licence for each user that's protected, rather
>than a  licence for each physical mail server.  I know that is the Sophos
>policy.  Does anyone know whether any of the licensing and pricing policies
>of the other supported scanners, namely:
>
>"mcafee"    from www.mcafee.com
>"command"   from www.command.co.uk
>"kaspersky" from www.kaspersky.com
>"inoculate" from www.cai.com/products/inoculateit.htm
>"f-secure"  from www.f-secure.com

I initially tested MailScanner with Sophos and liked the way it worked, but
Sophos licensing schemes were a bit confusing, inflexible and expensive for
our needs.  It worked out to about USD $450 for a one-year 25-user SAVI
license, which I was told is the minimum for using Sophos on a mail
server.  The SAVI license, however, does not permit use on desktops.
McAfee, NAV, and F-secure all have similar licensing schemes for commercial
users.  There doesn't seem to be a significant price difference between
them when you get into the details.

I am now evaluating MailScanner with f-prot and the latest release is
working as well as it did with Sophos.  The Linux beta version of f-prot is
free, but once it reaches final release version, if the licensing scheme is
the same as for the Windows version, that will be much more acceptable to
our small company than the others.  For the Windows version, Frisk charges
$2 per computer with a 20 computer minimum, so that comes to $40 per year
for a minimum users license.  Hopefully, the Linux version licensing for f-
prot will be consistent with the Windows version.  If it is, f-prot will
definately be our choice.

Best Regards,
Carl Hogue



More information about the MailScanner mailing list