---
title: "When it Comes to Spam Filtering You Pretty Much Get What You Pay for | DuoCircle"
description: "Everyone uses Gmail. After all, it’s free. And what’s even better is that it comes with free spam filtering."
image: "https://www.duocircle.com/images/og-default.png"
canonical: "https://www.duocircle.com/blog/spam-filtering/when-it-comes-to-spam-filtering-you-pretty-much-get-what-you-pay-for/"
---

Quick Answer

Free spam filters fail at scale. In July 2020, Gmail's spam filter broke for many users, flooding inboxes with spam, malicious phishing, and NSFW content for hours before Google patched it. The incident exposed the limit of consumer-grade filtering: a single vendor outage takes everyone down at once, with no escalation path. Enterprise-grade spam filtering offers what Gmail's free tier does not: whitelisting and blocklisting per organization, malicious attachment blocking, custom rule engines, activity logs, smart quarantine with user release workflows, redundant servers across multiple data centers and continents (so a regional outage does not stop mail), and live 24/7 technical support. For a few dollars per user per month, businesses get filtering that integrates with Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace and survives the outages that take down free services.

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![Spam Filtering](https://media.mailhop.org/duocircle/images/2020/07/email-smtp-service-7326.jpg) 

Everyone uses Gmail. After all, it’s free. And what’s even better is that it comes with free **spam filtering**. Of course, the old adage you get what you pay for still applies, and _that was never more apparent than this week when Gmail’s spam filtering broke down and stopped working_.

It was apparent almost instantly. From [Newsgram](https://web.archive.org/web/20211127231338/https://www.newsgram.com/users-complain-spam-emails-gmail-filtering-issues), “_Gmail users around the world were complaining about spam messages flooding their inbox over the weekend as the Google service was apparently suffering from a widespread problem with its email filters_. Several Gmail users took to Twitter and other social media platforms like reddit to convey they were being bombarded with **spam messages**.”

Most users don’t think much about their spam filter, that is, until it stops working. “_This was something many Gmail users realized after a glitch in Gmail’s spam filter let dangerous, malicious, not safe for work messages to be sent to their inbox._” according to [eHacking News](https://www.ehackingnews.com/2020/07/gmail-spam-filter-breaks-down-warning.html?m=1).

[![eHacking ](https://media.mailhop.org/duocircle/images/2020/07/buy-smtp-7328.jpg)](https://media.mailhop.org/duocircle/images/2020/07/buy-smtp-7328.jpg)

“_The problem was picked up by Android Police when a remarkable number of individuals posted the spam issue on Twitter and Reddit_. They complained about spam messages being sent to their inbox, even promotional and update alerts. Though Google did acknowledge the problem saying a notable number of users faced the problem but the issue is now fixed and accounted for but some of the users are still complaining of filter and category problems on social media.”

The problem with spam nowadays isn’t just the spammy emails trying to sell you something you don’t want. _It’s the emails that are actually malicious **phishing emails** that can steal something from you_. “A major problem which spam mails could contain is **malicious malware** files and phishing emails which users thinking as primary mail could open and trigger and attach, though Google reassured in their statement that none of the accounts were compromised or hacked.”

_The frustrating thing is you can protect an entire organization of employees from spam_, with enterprise-grade **spam filtering**, for a few pennies per month per user from companies like [DuoCircle](/).

**Enterprise-grade spam filtering** comes with features like whitelisting/blacklisting, malicious attachment blocking, customer filtering rules, activity logs, smart quarantine and 24/7 live technical support. Perhaps more importantly, enterprise-grade spam filtering is powered by redundant servers at data centers on multiple continents, _so the chances that spam filtering “stops working” like what happened to Gmail is extremely remote_.

[![Spam filtering](https://media.mailhop.org/duocircle/images/2020/07/spf-validator-7329.jpg)](https://media.mailhop.org/duocircle/images/2020/07/spf-validator-7329.jpg)

[Spam filtering](/email/spam-filtering) from DuoCircle integrates seamlessly with on-premises email solutions, as well as all the popular hosted email services like Office 365 and GSuite. _There are no message overage fees or per message fees_. You know exactly what you’ll pay ahead of time. Request a quote, get a demo or start your **30-day free trial** today.

![Brad Slavin](https://media.mailhop.org/dmarcreport/images/team/brad-slavin.jpg) 

Brad Slavin 

General Manager

General Manager at DuoCircle. Product strategy and commercial lead across the email security portfolio.

## Secure your email infrastructure

Protect, authenticate, and deliver. Contact our team to find the right solution.

[Contact Sales](/contact/) [Explore Products](/products/) 

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