Cost of Spam Calculator

The results can be sobering.

If someone is receiving just 60 spam emails each day, it takes 10 seconds to deal with each one and they value their time at $35 an hour then spam would cost them about $2100 worth of their time over the course of a year. One estimate claims that spam costs U.S. businesses roughly $70 billion each year.

For many individuals this may or may not really be money lost. It may be time they'd be spending recreating, socializing or working on a project around the house. Still, there's a long list of activities preferred by most humans over sorting through ads for imitation watches.

For companies, the cost is more directly linkable to money going down the drain. If each employee is spending 10 minutes cleaning out their inbox each morning - that's 10 minutes they're not writing code, making sales or engineering a new widget.

What's missing in this exercise is the potential value of using a spam filter program. Today, there are a myriad of products available to deal with the problem. Most of them can save end-users or organizations money.

SpamButcher only costs $29.95 and is a one-time purchase. If SpamButcher removes 95% of the above mentioned example user's spam - it would save them $1965 during the first year of use - even factoring in the purchase price.

For larger companies, implementing a server-based spam email filtering system may make the most sense. With a large number of desktops and users, centralizing administration can help keep costs low. However, For smaller companies and individuals, a client-based program offers the advantages of lower initial cost and better customization options.

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