Axway MailGate 3.7

The MailGate email security and content management solution is a hardware appliance which offers inbound and outbound protection for downstream SMTP architectures. The appliance bundles anti-virus, anti-spam, content filtering, policy management and encryption capabilities together in one appliance.

Installing the appliance couldn't have been easier. After we were up and running, we were very impressed with the overall interface for the product. It's an interesting combination of excellent usability and simplification of common tasks. In fact, there really aren't that many browser tabs to navigate in the grand scheme of things. Every feature and option (and there are many) is easily accessible. The dashboard presents the information very well and overall this is definitely one of the better interfaces we've used.

Aside from the aesthetics, MailGate delivers on all of the common protections for anti-spam, anti-virus and overall content management. Security for encryption is handled nicely as well. The common SMTP over TLS is available, but messages can also be secured using S/MIME. All of the encryption decisions are triggered off of policy enforcement options and configurations. An interesting and useful feature is the ability to convert sensitive MS Office-type documents into secure PDF files. The PDFs are secured with a password and functions - such as copy/paste, print or even editing the document - can be suppressed if needed to preserve the integrity of the message. MailGate can also remove metadata and edit outbound messages to preserve corporate policy. Overall, we feel the appliance itself has a very strong set of features and options for the price.

 Documentation on the Axway website is excellent. Axway offers customer support portals both for its current line and also the legacy Tumbleweed customer portal.

Gold (eight hours a day/five days a week) and Platinum (24/7) support options are available as part of the bundled product at various fee schedules on a per-year basis. Dedicated account management and support options are available as well.