Spamassassin is slow - any tips or good commercial alternative?

[Richard Frovarp]

Charlie wrote:
>>  >If it is a load problem you should try to reduce the amount of mail
>>  >reaching SpamAssassin in the first place. RBLs come to mind. Or (since
>>  >you asked for a commercial solution) have a look at BarricadeMX from
>>  >FSL. BMX will greatly reduce the amount of mail reaching your MTA.
>> Our userbase means that over 99% of emails sent through the server are
>> *not* spam, so any limiting of the emails reaching the MTA would not help.
>>
>> So if 99% of your mail isn't spam, then why bother using >spamassassin?
>> I would dare to say that 65 - 75% of the mail that "attempts" delivery
>> here IS
>> spam. Some days it is over 90%, especially on the weekends when >we get very
>> little legit mail.
>>     
>
> The reason I wanted to catch the 1% that is spam is so the server doesn't
> get blacklisted. People are paying money for the service, hence I need to
> pay more attention to making sure it stays off blacklists than if I was
> just an ISP offering a free service.
>
> I'll try all the suggestions on Monday and provide an update then - thanks
> for all the assistance!
>
>
>   
Why would you be blacklisted? Is this an incoming or out going server? 
Accepting spam won't get you blacklisted. Unless you are passing the 
mail onto other systems which may blame your server.

Anything under a minute is good. Check if you are swapping when your 
queue starts to back up. You can see what is going on by using 
mailscanner-mrtg. Sometimes running smaller batches or fewer processes 
will actually make it faster. And of course make sure you only accept 
mail for legit addresses and reject everything else at SMTP.