Here’s a measure of how much people like MailFrontier’s antispam software: Even a customer who says the company misrepresented the terms of its deal with him raves about its product.
Saburo Usami, director of networking at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Conn., says he believed that in return for providing favorable recommendations of MailFrontier’s software to other universities, the company would extend the length of his contract without charge—a request, he says, MailFrontier “flatly refused.” MailFrontier spokeswoman Deanne Phillips denies that Sacred Heart was ever offered such a deal: “We do not provide compensation of any kind to customers in exchange for favorable recommendations.”
Nevertheless, Usami says he’s “very pleased with the MailFrontier suite in all its functionality” and that it has required very little maintenance. “In spite of my poor opinion of their management, the product itself has proved to be robust,” he says.
Others say MailFrontier’s Gateway Server software has been an unqualified hit. “It’s one of the few products we put in that I get praise about from people, because it’s helping them do their job,” says Bill Zondler, senior director of information technology at biotechnology firm Diversa.
Zondler says MailFrontier’s software is very accurate, tagging 84% of incoming e-mail as spam, compared with his company’s previous spam-filtering software, from SurfControl, which blocked 60% as junk. SurfControl’s system also didn’t let users see which messages were being tagged as spam. “It wasn’t very comforting for folks,” Zondler says. By contrast, MailFrontier lets him send each employee a daily summary at 7 a.m. listing spam the system caught—a feature that has nearly eliminated gripes about lost mail, he says.
And MailFrontier’s support is better than its 65-person staff might indicate, says Mike Carnesale, manager of network operations at Burton Snowboards in Burlington, Vt. “You’d never know they were a small vendor,” he says. “The professionalism of their sales and support group is outstanding. They really know the product.”
Larry Plamann, director of technical support at clothing maker OshKosh B’Gosh, also praises MailFrontier’s above-average customer relations: “I give them high marks for everything we’ve asked of them.”
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FinancialsRevenue, 2003 (est.): $13.4M
Funding to date: $23M in three rounds
Enterprise customers claimed: 900
Individual users claimed: 825,000
Investors
New Enterprise Associates (NEA), Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Menlo Ventures
Major Partners
Cyveillance (fraud detection), Kaspersky Labs (antivirus software), McAfee (antivirus software)
Sources: Company reports, OneSource
Other Enterprise Customers
Financial: AG Edwards & Sons
Manufacturing: Anixter International
Media: CNN, Copley Press, NBC Universal
Retail: CDW, Peet’s Coffee & Tea, Pier 1 Imports
Entertainment and Hospitality: San Francisco Giants, Wyndham International
Health Care: Kaiser Permanente, Riverside Health System
Government: State of Oregon Dept. of Corrections
Company Milestones
2002 February: Founded by Pavni Diwanji and Brian Wilson
2003 August: Lands $10 million in second-round funding
October: Announces 100th enterprise customer
2004 June: Names Anne Bonaparte president and CEO
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