MXToolbox

MxToolbox is a blacklist, DNS monitoring and email delivery application that can track multiple inboxes simultaneously. The software has been refined over the course of around a decade, though it's kept up with many of the changes that have altered the way that email is sent these days. As a result, it's a great tool for anyone who wants to ensure that their outbox structures are protected against outgoing spam and other kinds of attacks.

Since MxToolbox can block senders at the DNS level, it should be able to stop almost any kind of outgoing email threat that you might run into. As the name suggests, it examines the physical mail exchanger records, you'll know right away who sent a particular piece of mail. While MxToolbox isn't designed to protect against incoming spam attacks, it'll certainly let you know whenever someone is trying to send outgoing spam from your address.

Technicians can use this information to immediately locate the source of unnecessary bulk messages and put a stop to it. That's a great way to find compromised outboxes. Once you find one, all you'll have to do in order to patch up the situation is request that your client change their password in most instances. Administrators can use the information provided by MxToolbox to decide if they want to temporarily disable an outbox.

This information tends to be quite verbose, which is good for those who are doing serious email administration work. Since everything appears as standard text objects, though, you shouldn't have any difficulty searching through it with a single keyboard shortcut. You'll know right away if people are sending email that claims to be from your domain even if it isn't.

Administrators can also learn what the reputation of their sender's IP address is and then propose a geolocation study to see where they are. Depending on how prevalent they were in the past, you might even find a group of blacklists that their IP addresses were already placed on. Once you know more about who has blocked them in the past, you can configure your own block system and have them blacked out of your network.

SPF, DKIM and DMARC monitoring comes bundled with the system as well. MxToolbox will tell you if your setup is underperforming so you can make adjustments to it. The app will automatically notify you if some of your senders have started to fail a traditional SPF verification or if they don't meet the rules configured for your DKIM test. Eventually, the app will tell you whether or not you need to set restrictive DMARC policies to reduce the amount of spam sent from your service.

On-going server maintenance is complicated and few people want to manage ports just so that they can ensure a high level of email deliverability. With MxToolbox, though, this chore seems much more manageable.

Pros

• Adaptive blacklists
• Multiple outbox message monitoring
• Built-in encryption

Cons

• Only supports outgoing email messages
• Works best with self-hosted inboxes