With an ever-increasing amount of spam beating a path to your inbox, you'd probably suffer a repetitive strain injury if you tried to delete every unsolicited email yourself.

Lucky, then, that there is a plethora of anti-spam solutions available. We find out whether paid-for services or their free counterparts offer better value, and which approach to spam-management is the most successful.

CLOUDMARK SPAM NET 1.0
The creators of Spam Net have used list-based spam filtering to build a peer-to-peer spam blocking solution that operates on the premise that there is safety in numbers.

Spam Net relies on a community of users who report unsolicited messages which arrive in their inboxes.

Each reported message is then added to a centralised database and, whenever that individual email message is sent to a Spam Net user, it is recognised as spam and moved to a spam box.

As this simple yet effective solution is based on message tagging rather than filtering, spam is not deleted or even blocked, and it is up to you to remove it from your system.

If you are worried about legitimate emails getting blocked by filters and would rather sift through a spam inbox yourself, then Spam Net, which is only compatible with Microsoft Outlook accounts, may suit your needs.

Price: Free to download

Contact: Cloudmark
www.cloudmark.com

System requirements:

Peer-to-peer spam blocking; spam is not deleted.

Cons:
You can't block a whole domain address.

Overall:
****

MAILWASHER
Unlike Spam Net, which relies on a large community of users, Mailwasher is a filter-based, self-contained anti-spam solution with no centralised database of blacklisted addresses.

Instead, you build up your own personal blacklist of individual addresses or entire domains, so the longer you use the software, the more effective it becomes.

If you are running Mailwasher, a small icon appears in the system tray whenever new mail arrives on your server. Double-click on the icon and a window displaying new emails opens.

You then get to choose which action you wish Mailwasher to execute: delete, blacklist the sender or the sender's entire domain or bounce back the email so that the sender believes your address is invalid.

You can also choose to block spam by activating keyword-based filters which will check for keywords in the subject field, message header or body text.

Mailwasher has a default list of keywords, though you can select your own. It also offers the option to instruct Mailwasher to only accept emails containing certain words from specific email addresses.

Price: Free to download

Contact: Mailwasher
www.mailwasher.net

System requirements:

Domain blocking.

Cons:
No spam inbox.

Overall:
****

MCAFEE SPAMKILLER 4.0
McAfee's Spamkiller 4.0 uses both a rules-based and a list-based approach and offers automatic and custom options.

Preset filters check the subject lines as well as the body text for keywords that commonly appear in spam messages.

Spamkiller is also capable of filtering messages according to the sender's address, message header or the country of origin. Custom filters are relatively easy to set up using the filter wizard and allow you to choose which parts of incoming emails you want to scan.

Any emails that are identified as spam are held in a separate spam inbox for 30 days, and are then deleted.

Spamkiller 4 works with MSN and Hotmail email accounts and includes the kind of features you would expect, including a friends list to which you can add addresses you are sure you want to receive mail from.

When it comes to value, Mailwasher wins hands down, although some may find the lack of spam inbox a worry.

In this case, Spam Net would be our preferred alternative, as its original concept and similar ease of use put it ahead of Mcafee's £20 asking price.

Price: £19.99 (£17.02 ex VAT)