I've been using Fastmail for a little while (I'm still migrating from Gmail), and I love their service.
I've talked to support before and asked questions that got replies from a real person, which was refreshing coming out of Google's ecosystem. Their web UI is fast. Their support for custom domains is great, I can be receiving emails from a new domain in minutes.
One of their most underrated features is aliases. You have up to 500 email addresses on each account, which means all of your subscriptions can be a different email account, and those accounts can't be correlated by 3rd-parties.
With Gmail you can only use `+` and `.`, which makes it easy to derive the base email. With Fastmail, my main email can be something like `[email protected]` and my Walmart account can be `[email protected]`. I didn't realize how useful that would be until I started using it, but it's quickly morphed into a killer feature.
I migrated about one year ago and this is a feature I really love. Every service has unique address and goes to separate folder via rules.
Also, there are automatic aliases when you use your own domain. Say, you have [email protected], then all *@name.domain.com are also working aliases, like [email protected]. Really neat feature.
The problem with aliases is that it's effectively a way to ensure vendor lock-in even for people with custom email domains. If one of the reasons to use a custom email domain is to preserve flexibility in choosing an email provider, good luck switching providers when you have hundreds of aliases set up in the hands of hundreds if not thousands of third-parties and your strategy for managing your inbox depends on these aliases continuing to function.
It may not be nearly as strong of a lock-in as a @gmail.com address, but I'd be curious to hear how many heavy alias users are paying Fastmail on a month-to-month basis.
> One of their most underrated features is aliases. You have up to 500 email addresses on each account, which means all of your subscriptions can be a different email account, and those accounts can't be correlated by 3rd-parties.
This is an amazing feature that I utilise all the time. I just however wish I could easily reply from that alias, as opposed to my primary one.
Yes, I know you can have a wildcard send-from address like *@account.yourdomain.com, but it will default to [email protected] and you have to manually select and replace the wildcard with the email you want to send from. As opposed to just auto-filling out the From field with the address that initially received the email.
I run a paid service called Kopi that lets you do a similar thing, but it lets you avoid being locked in to your mail provider.
One of the reasons I started building it was so I could transition off GMail to something else like Fastmail. I worried that I needed to get off GMail sooner rather than later because the GMail address was slowly spreading out across my online presence and I was getting concerned about the massive hassle that it would be if some Google automated process decided to close my account. But I never got around to it because I couldn’t decide on a mail provider and didn’t want to go through the hassle of changing over all those addresses. Instead I was able to slowly transition all my accounts, etc. over to Kopi addresses. Now that I’m running my mail through Kopi though, I’m not really worried about a Google account shutdown - though I should probably still get off GMail, just feels less urgent now.
Kopi works by acting as a “mail forwarder” in between the sender and whatever mail provider you want to use. Of course, you’re still locked in if you use a shared domain like kopi.cloud, kopimail.net, etc. - but you can bring your own domain if you want - you don’t have to be locked in to Kopi.
Fastmail support are slow but excellent. I asked about an obscure IMAP oddity that I was seeing in Mutt. They escalated to an expert who said it was doing things the old way and cited relevant RFCs about how to do things the new way. I managed to patch Mutt default behaviour in handling IMAP the correct way - all thanks to FM support.
Might be better to generate random addresses for web account signups, so other users can reserve readable addresses for their main email. It would suck if all the good addresses were taken by a few people. I hope a trend like that wouldn't cause Fastmail to limit the feature.
No no, you don't need aliases for that. You can set up a catch-all at something like [email protected] and have as many of those as you like, no 500 limit.
Fastmail is fantastic, no complaints at all.... besides the mobile app.
I don't care about the speed or glitches or whatever others may complain about, but I travel way too much to have no offline email access on my phone.
So this turns into me having 2 email apps on my phone (Android); one to do stuff in (Fastmail) and another (K-9 which is not great to write/do stuff in) that just sits there, likely hogging battery life, receiving emails and storing them so that I can read them / access them while in an airplane/foreign country/bad connection spot.
The mobile app is just a native shell around a browser serving up the mobile website -- why can't they have an array of account credentials and allow switching accounts? It's the little things like this that have me annoyed that I'm not just paying cash but also in terms of time and efficiency because of the features Fastmail lacks.
I would love a native Fastmail app instead of their current one, which seems like just a wrapper around their website. Not only is there no offline access, but it misses out on so many native interactions (on iOS at least) that make it feel super janky.
I've used fastmail for 19 years now. Way back in 2000 I was travelig India for 6 months. At that time I was reading email on my university through a telnet connection with the pine client. Quite a hardcore experience! So I decided to get with the program and get a webmail. Hotmail was the hottest those days, but I never liked it. So I picked up a computer magazine on the street in Delhi and came across a review of web based email providers. Guess what. The ranked fastmail as #1! Above all the others. Never looked back since then :)
Why would they move? The A&A bill doesn't affect them:
> Fastmail won’t be making changes to our technology or policies in response to this bill. Law enforcement has always been able to request information from us through the Telecommunications Act with a lawful warrant. Because we have the ability to decrypt all data, there is no need to make changes that circumvent encryption.
Yeah, I just recently shutdown my account. Moved over to mailfence. I already miss fastmail's functionality, and that fea.st domain was pretty fun. Still... Australia.
A lot of people probably don’t know that Fastmail was started by Jeremy Howard, one of the creators of https://www.fast.ai which is by far the best way to learn deep learning IMHO :)
Thanks! I haven't been involved involved with Fastmail for the last 10 years, so I can take no credit for how amazing they've been throughout that time - but I'm thrilled to see that they're still doing well. I'm still a very happy Fastmail user :)
So many little things are done right, and all with open standards.
I have been thinking about moving to Fastmail from Gmail for a long time, as I'm worried that someday an algorithm will suddenly decide that my account should be closed, and as you can't get in contact with a human at Google, this is game over.
To others that have changed provider from Gmail, did you enable forwarding to your new E-mail address? I can't decide if it's a good idea to give Google the new address, or you should just cut the ties even though it makes the shift more troublesome.
1. Start now. But don't use @fastmail.com as your email address. Get a personal domain and email address (i.e. [email protected]), and forward it to fastmail.
I just left gmail for Fastmail this past month, and I have to say I've been really pleased with it. Their web interface has less frills but somehow feels a lot easier to get organized than gmails bloat of features. I use the Mail app on my phone for mobile support, and all the syncing is really seamless.
I'm a customer since 2011.
I love all the features they added during these years (new UI, 2-step auth, mobile App, etc.) and the fact they actively develop their product is reassuring.
The two or three times I contacted the customer support the assistance was excellent, once I even got a response from one of the founders.
Since they switched to the new interface a few years ago they gradually turned off features from the classic interface and then they completely switched it off. I rarely used it since the new UI was introduced, but I liked to have the option for slow connections while traveling abroad.
I enjoy reading their blog and I appreciate the open source contributions.
Offline access to e-mails and calendars with official app would be nice, but I understand it's developed as a "mobile GUI" for the webmail.
The only complain I have is that they stopped offering family plans. Once a second account was +5$ [1], now I have to pay 50$ + VAT for a second e-mail address.
Fun seeing Fastmail on the front page of HN the day after I started trying it out. I setup a free trial with a domain I manage through Route53, had some hickups setting the correct DNS records and reached out to their support. They were quick to respond and provided awesome, detailed technical support/hand-holding and ultimately got me up and running. The experience convinced me the love I keep reading about on here is real -- highly recommend em!
While Fastmail will not save us from the slow, declining viability of self-hosted individual and small business mail servers, their positive effect on the e-mail ecosystem is wonderful. My decision to use their service (even though it is quite pricey, and a cheaper host would do the job for my meager needs) is because of that societally beneficial work.
A hearty thank you to all the Fastmail devs who read this; thank you for your good work!
Yay very cool! Been using them for 5+ years now and I love it. Happy to pay. Their web interface has stayed very fast and well organized I think. Love the fact that you get a huge list of domains to choose for your email(s)! imap.cc is one of my favorites. ^_^
I love Fastmail for email, but moving all my contacts there was also awesome. I can now easily sync a subset of my contacts to my work phone without having to log in to my personal Google or Apple accounts. Feels like as soon as you add a Google connection somewhere you never know what else will be synced.
It's true that the email service is fast. You might think the price is steep for email service that you can get for free elsewhere, but that's not all you get. I use their webdav storage to sync my Joplin notes. It's very easy to set it up and works without any problems. (My plan comes with 5 GB of storage, which is more than I'll ever use. No limits on devices either.)
Anyone have opinions comparing Fastmail with Protonmail? I know they're not going for the exact same market, but in the more generic market of "email services for people who don't want to use Gmail" I'd be interested in someone's comparison.
Proton does not offer SMTP or IMAP (except through a special tool which can't be used on mobile devices) so as far as I am concerned they're not a real "email" provider at all.
I totally understand why they do that. It's just not for me.
Fastmail is a direct competitor to Gmail. That is Fastmail is Gmail but different. Fastmail is opposed to E2E e-mail encryption as this makes some of their features impossible (e.g. full text e-mail search).
Protonmail on the other hand has OpenPGP encryption that can be used even cross providers (on https://beta.protonmail.com composing an e-mail to Werner Koch <wk at gnupg.org> will enable encryption). But they don't support all usual e-mail features like IMAP and SMTP (there are bridges but...).
Fastmail lets you receive emails for the domains you own. Not forward, but actually be delivered there. Plus you can create other free addresses with domains such as fastmail.us etc.
All of which can be seamlessly connected to the same single account - you can then use rules to distribute the incoming emails as you see fit.
Switched from Gmail some five years ago, I have been happy with the choice every since!
Fastmail is probably the more 'open' of the two; in the sense that you can use any mail client to access your emails without a need for a bridge or anything.
Been with Fastmail for a half year now and loving it.
I can send emails from 10+ different domains and host files there super easily.
Although I'd like to see some algorithm place important emails at the top (somewhat like Gmail) and have scheduled send, Fastmail is a pretty bare-bones service!
I wanted to give a genuine praise for Fastmail in this post but upon looking up my signup year at Fastmail service (2014), I have noticed that they have increased the yearly price of my old (not available anymore) Family plan from $25 to $30. I guess it was not sustainable but I would have liked an notification about it ...
Now that I think about it, I have kind of rolled my eye when they announced that their new "snooze" feature was only available to their latest plans or big legacy account [1]. Not a move I was expecting for Fastmail.
In a very slow migration process off as many Google properties as possible, including Gmail- and Fastmail is where I've landed for email. Will be using it with a custom domain to permanently avoid any kind of "lock in".
I have a free-tier protonmail account for any instance where I think a higher level of privacy is necessary (or any email/registration that I just want to separate into its own special zone).
But for regular standard daily email, Fastmail seems to be the sweet spot for me.
Once you've had an email address for so, so long, you realize how "locked-in" you become. I once had a hotmail address as a main email, and I closed it too early, without migrating some online accounts that still used it. As a result, I completely lost access to those accounts because the companies involved said that I had to use that no-longer-existing account to confirm account deletion (or email change). I'm avoiding that mistake this time around.
If only they could implement labels in the same way that ProtonMail and Gmail have! I want incoming emails to show in my inbox while being tagged with a certain label or category; this ins't possible in FastMail, only the ability to move the message to another folder entirely which raises the chance of missing messages altogether.
Happy Fastmail user for 3.5 years so far. I particularly like (and am happy to support with my subscription fee) that they have active engineering staff building new technology and contributing it back -- in particular, their JMAP protocol work, which is an open standard [1], and behind the scenes their work to improve and contribute back to the Cyrus mail server [2]. Thanks and keep it up!
[+] [-] danShumway|6 years ago|reply
I've talked to support before and asked questions that got replies from a real person, which was refreshing coming out of Google's ecosystem. Their web UI is fast. Their support for custom domains is great, I can be receiving emails from a new domain in minutes.
One of their most underrated features is aliases. You have up to 500 email addresses on each account, which means all of your subscriptions can be a different email account, and those accounts can't be correlated by 3rd-parties.
With Gmail you can only use `+` and `.`, which makes it easy to derive the base email. With Fastmail, my main email can be something like `[email protected]` and my Walmart account can be `[email protected]`. I didn't realize how useful that would be until I started using it, but it's quickly morphed into a killer feature.
[+] [-] kornakiewicz|6 years ago|reply
Also, there are automatic aliases when you use your own domain. Say, you have [email protected], then all *@name.domain.com are also working aliases, like [email protected]. Really neat feature.
[+] [-] solatic|6 years ago|reply
It may not be nearly as strong of a lock-in as a @gmail.com address, but I'd be curious to hear how many heavy alias users are paying Fastmail on a month-to-month basis.
[+] [-] Mayzie|6 years ago|reply
This is an amazing feature that I utilise all the time. I just however wish I could easily reply from that alias, as opposed to my primary one.
Yes, I know you can have a wildcard send-from address like *@account.yourdomain.com, but it will default to [email protected] and you have to manually select and replace the wildcard with the email you want to send from. As opposed to just auto-filling out the From field with the address that initially received the email.
[+] [-] Shorn|6 years ago|reply
One of the reasons I started building it was so I could transition off GMail to something else like Fastmail. I worried that I needed to get off GMail sooner rather than later because the GMail address was slowly spreading out across my online presence and I was getting concerned about the massive hassle that it would be if some Google automated process decided to close my account. But I never got around to it because I couldn’t decide on a mail provider and didn’t want to go through the hassle of changing over all those addresses. Instead I was able to slowly transition all my accounts, etc. over to Kopi addresses. Now that I’m running my mail through Kopi though, I’m not really worried about a Google account shutdown - though I should probably still get off GMail, just feels less urgent now.
Kopi works by acting as a “mail forwarder” in between the sender and whatever mail provider you want to use. Of course, you’re still locked in if you use a shared domain like kopi.cloud, kopimail.net, etc. - but you can bring your own domain if you want - you don’t have to be locked in to Kopi.
https://kopi.cloud
[+] [-] commandersaki|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] jolmg|6 years ago|reply
Might be better to generate random addresses for web account signups, so other users can reserve readable addresses for their main email. It would suck if all the good addresses were taken by a few people. I hope a trend like that wouldn't cause Fastmail to limit the feature.
[+] [-] ccvannorman|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] glofish|6 years ago|reply
- fastmail.us
- fastmail.to
...
- hailmail.net
- mailworks.org
...
dozens of domains. they must be spending a bundle just on renewing domains ... :-)
etc this makes filtering your email even simpler.
[+] [-] StavrosK|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eatwater123|6 years ago|reply
I don't care about the speed or glitches or whatever others may complain about, but I travel way too much to have no offline email access on my phone.
So this turns into me having 2 email apps on my phone (Android); one to do stuff in (Fastmail) and another (K-9 which is not great to write/do stuff in) that just sits there, likely hogging battery life, receiving emails and storing them so that I can read them / access them while in an airplane/foreign country/bad connection spot.
If they fix this I would be overjoyed.
[+] [-] jhrmnn|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mikece|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] machello13|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Klonoar|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fractalf|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tenpies|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dsissitka|6 years ago|reply
> Fastmail won’t be making changes to our technology or policies in response to this bill. Law enforcement has always been able to request information from us through the Telecommunications Act with a lawful warrant. Because we have the ability to decrypt all data, there is no need to make changes that circumvent encryption.
Source: https://fastmail.blog/2018/12/21/advocating-for-privacy-aabi...
I'm just some boob on the internet that doesn't speak legalese but a quick Google suggests that Gmail [0] and Outlook [1] are subject to similar laws.
[0] https://support.google.com/transparencyreport/answer/7381738...
[1] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/corporate-responsibility/law...
[+] [-] LeoPanthera|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] umyemri|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] UI_at_80x24|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alexcnwy|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jph00|6 years ago|reply
So many little things are done right, and all with open standards.
[+] [-] efiecho|6 years ago|reply
To others that have changed provider from Gmail, did you enable forwarding to your new E-mail address? I can't decide if it's a good idea to give Google the new address, or you should just cut the ties even though it makes the shift more troublesome.
[+] [-] tito|6 years ago|reply
2. Setup fastmail as the host for [email protected]
3. Have your gmail account forward to [email protected]. When people ask for your email, or you setup a new account, start using [email protected]
That way if you later switch away from fastmail (like I did), your email address stays the same, [email protected].
[+] [-] par|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] manuelmagic|6 years ago|reply
Since they switched to the new interface a few years ago they gradually turned off features from the classic interface and then they completely switched it off. I rarely used it since the new UI was introduced, but I liked to have the option for slow connections while traveling abroad.
I enjoy reading their blog and I appreciate the open source contributions.
Offline access to e-mails and calendars with official app would be nice, but I understand it's developed as a "mobile GUI" for the webmail.
The only complain I have is that they stopped offering family plans. Once a second account was +5$ [1], now I have to pay 50$ + VAT for a second e-mail address.
[1] https://www.fastmail.com/help/ourservice/pricing-legacy.html
[+] [-] j-me|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aladine|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jml7c5|6 years ago|reply
A hearty thank you to all the Fastmail devs who read this; thank you for your good work!
[+] [-] dsalzman|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] deadcast|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jacobr|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bachmeier|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] acheron|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LeoPanthera|6 years ago|reply
I totally understand why they do that. It's just not for me.
[+] [-] Leace|6 years ago|reply
Protonmail on the other hand has OpenPGP encryption that can be used even cross providers (on https://beta.protonmail.com composing an e-mail to Werner Koch <wk at gnupg.org> will enable encryption). But they don't support all usual e-mail features like IMAP and SMTP (there are bridges but...).
[+] [-] glofish|6 years ago|reply
All of which can be seamlessly connected to the same single account - you can then use rules to distribute the incoming emails as you see fit.
Switched from Gmail some five years ago, I have been happy with the choice every since!
[+] [-] eatwater123|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wp381640|6 years ago|reply
Both with custom domains and aliases on PM for throaway stuff
They're both very good - the upside with PM is privacy while the downside is compatability. Fastmail I just assume my email is archived and read.
[+] [-] sdan|6 years ago|reply
I can send emails from 10+ different domains and host files there super easily.
Although I'd like to see some algorithm place important emails at the top (somewhat like Gmail) and have scheduled send, Fastmail is a pretty bare-bones service!
[+] [-] x2f10|6 years ago|reply
This is a benefit, IMO. However, I do agree with the features you suggested sounding nice.
[+] [-] alibert|6 years ago|reply
Now that I think about it, I have kind of rolled my eye when they announced that their new "snooze" feature was only available to their latest plans or big legacy account [1]. Not a move I was expecting for Fastmail.
[1] https://www.fastmail.com/help/receive/snooze.html
[+] [-] kup0|6 years ago|reply
I have a free-tier protonmail account for any instance where I think a higher level of privacy is necessary (or any email/registration that I just want to separate into its own special zone).
But for regular standard daily email, Fastmail seems to be the sweet spot for me.
Once you've had an email address for so, so long, you realize how "locked-in" you become. I once had a hotmail address as a main email, and I closed it too early, without migrating some online accounts that still used it. As a result, I completely lost access to those accounts because the companies involved said that I had to use that no-longer-existing account to confirm account deletion (or email change). I'm avoiding that mistake this time around.
[+] [-] mikece|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cfallin|6 years ago|reply
[1] https://fastmail.blog/2019/08/16/jmap-new-email-open-standar... [2] https://fastmail.blog/2016/12/12/why-we-contribute/