Two Montreal Startups Launch: Defensio and CakeMail
It’s great to see how alive the Montreal tech scene is quickly becoming. I’m not sure you can call us “Silicon Valley North” just yet, but it’s still exciting to see companies getting funded and companies launching.
Two cool companies launched recently that I want to bring people’s attention to, because I think you could find the services valuable (as entrepreneurs, business people & bloggers.)
The first is Defensio. I’ve mentioned them before since I was an early alpha tester. According to Defensio, they’ve filtered out over 100,000 spam comments in that time.
I like Defensio a lot. They’ve got a few cool features beyond Akismet that make it worth switching. If you’re using WordPress, I’d encourage you to give it a try: it’s free and easy as any plugin out there to setup.
For additional information & coverage on them, check out:
- Defensio Sorts Blocked Comments by “Spaminess” (from TechCrunch)
- Startups: Challenge the Market Leader or Ride With It?
- Defensio Spam Filter: A First Look
The second company is CakeMail. CakeMail is a white-label email marketing platform targeted to small and medium-sized Web agencies. One cool thing about CakeMail is that it supports many languages, including: Quebec French, American English and Russian, with additional versions in the works, including French (France), Canadian English, Latin American Spanish, Greek and Romanian. I haven’t used CakeMail yet, but I know we were looking at it for some things related to Standout Jobs.
For more information on CakeMail and what it’s all about:
- Letting Agencies Bake Their Own With CakeMail (Web Worker Daily)
- CakeMail: Ready for Resale (StartupNorth)
Both Defensio and CakeMail are run by very small teams. That’s a testament to what a few guys can do. And both (if I’m not mistaken) are self-funded.
Congrats on the launches!
Shall certainly visit both and see what they are up to. I am sure that Montreal will grow. All the best for all of you there.
For the record, we launched with roughly 400,000 comments processed. We grew pretty fast since we announced the 100k mark.
But yeah, I agree with you Ben, Defensio is great
@Carl: I was referring to the comments filtered on my blog, not in total.
I should also mention that I personally tried CakeMail (via courrielleur.com). It’s great!
I called them directly to setup the service and I got prompt and professional answers. I advice everybody to try their service, it really is that great.
Ben: my mistake!
@ Ben: Yes, we definitely feel like we are in some pretty awesome company right now in the Montreal tech scene. We’re starting to build a developer community and look forward to working with the Standout Jobs crew!
@ Carl: We really appreciate your vote of confidence, and congrats for the Defensio profile on TechCrunch yesterday!
Oh, and I should mention that CakeMail is for resellers of all sizes. The platform’s flexibility means the basic white labelling feature set may be enough for most small shops, while larger outfits with serious volume can use the API to hook into the CRM and analytics systems that their customers require–or do totally new things that older systems wouldn’t allow them to accomplish.
I thought it was “Notre-Dame de la Vallée du Silicium”.
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