Antispam Startup Sendio Seeks Partners

The two-year-old Newport Beach, Calif.-based company began building a partner program last month and soon expects to drive most of its sales through the channel, CEO Kelly Anderson told CRN Thursday.

Sendio's flagship product is the I.C.E. Box appliance, an enterprise-grade antispam system that employs a sender address verification method -- intercept, confirm and eliminate (hence I.C.E.) -- to block all incoming spam. The process works by not allowing unknown e-mail to be delivered until senders reply to a message asking them to manually confirm, using a quick reply/send command process, that they sent the original message.

Sendio is tailoring new appliances for small-business customers and MSP partners, according to Anderson.

One of Sendio's first partners, David Dadian, CEO of Powersolution.com, a $1.2 million MSP in Ho-Ho-Kus, N.J., said the vendor's sender address verification offers unmatched protection against spam. Dadian said he has looked at e-mail management offerings from Barracuda and Postini and has customers that have used similar products from Symantec and Brightmail, but those products still allowed some spam to trickle through.

What's more, Sendio is working hard to win partners, Dadian noted. "They are really going the length for us to use their product as an MSP platform and sell it as an appliance," he said.

The extra step of sender verification hasn't drawn any complaints from customers, Dadian added. "If your organization is looking to eliminate spam and two or so impatient professionals are going to sway your opinion of [the I.C.E. Box], well, come on, let's be realistic," he said.