There are plenty of reasons to switch to another host from Gmail, but this oft-expressed one is not great:
"Getting my data back under control
In the past months we’ve had a lot of scary revelations about privacy violations, the biggest being of course the NSA spying scandal. It became urgent to regain control of my data."
If someone else is hosting your e-mail, then you do not have your data "under your control". A government can still compel Fastmail to turn over e-mails via legal process (as they should be able to, to be honest). Additionally, there's no evidence that FastMail (or any other e-mail provider) is better protected from NSA infiltration [1].
It seems like the author has plenty of other reasons to switch, but this one lends nothing but a false sense of security [2].
[1] Possible exceptions being Lavabit-esque systems that do client-side encryption or Google itself, which has begun encrypting their internal as well as external traffic.
[2] Not that I really recommend running your own e-mail server either. Setting one up (and maintaining it) is so error-prone that you're probably even less safe than before.
There's two types of "data under your control" at play here.
The first (and for most users, more important) is about not giving away your data to marketing companies. Switching to Fastmail accomplishes that (probably?).
The second is about securing your data from governments/state actors. That battle seems kind of futile to me. Even if I were running everything on my own server in my own basement, with my own ISP, I'm almost certainly not qualified to sysadmin a machine that needs to be secure against the NSA.
> A government can still compel Fastmail to turn over e-mails via legal process
If they get a court warrant, you should either give in or fight against it. I think most reasonable people would find that reasonable as opposed to secret surveillance (e.g. NSA).
I think it is necessary to realize that email communication is at least bi-direction. So if one side is vulnerable to attack, there is no privacy or security. The best we could do is of course encrypt the message.
If you're using email then various governments (UK, USA) have it no matter where it's hosted. It's not under your control while in transit. At best you can encrypt it, but they'll take a copy of it anyway and burst it open if they need to.
"as they should be able to"? That's it? we are living in a world where privacy and freedom aren't ours to demand? Governments "should be able" to kill off our freedom? I haven't noticed we've gone that far away.
I'm so glad someone wrote this up. I've been meaning to.
Of all the tech changes I've made in the last few years, moving from Google Apps mail to Fastmail is the one that's made me the happiest, every day.
The webmail is absolutely amazing. So fast, rock-sold, clean, minimal, focused.
Having your webmail experience be completely ad-free and snoop-free, and, well, Google-free is priceless.
Choose the Business email option - https://www.fastmail.fm/signup/business.html - if you want them to keep an automatic archive of the emails you download via POP. When I signed up under the Personal Email option I found they didn't have this archive option, but they switched me over to the business account on request.
It's so worth the measly $15/year, considering the importance a good email/webmail experience, and how much it affects your every-day life.
I've helped a few friends switch over, and they've all been thrilled with it.
Same here! Have been using fastmail for ~6 months now. I was hesitant, thought I'd miss push mail on iOS but it has been just fine. Also, there are some iOS mail clients that can push on FastMail (http://mymail.my.com) I always hated Gmail's slow/weird IMAP behavior. Switched to Office365 at some point. Exchange was great but so freaking slow. FastMail has standard, fast IMAP.
I also use the included DNS server for a couple of domains that had been lying around and the static file host for some http placeholder pages and stuff.
While I'll agree that the interface is beautifully simple why not host your own? Aside from software updates I've had to perform zero maintenance and find comfort in the fact that I host my own.
Does Fastmail provide a matrix of all offers? I have for example never understood why business accounts have a USD 15/year management fee while family accounts have not …
I have been using Google Apps and actually have an "evil" thought whenever I heard someone is switching off of Google: maybe, the more people leaving Google, the better its performance will be (for the ones who stay) (ie: their servers will be less busy)
I moved to from Gmail to Fastmail last April, but this April, I moved back to Gmail. I have an email address (on my own domain) that I've used since the late 90's. It's all over the Internet in newsgroup archives, forums, etc. from before anyone was hiding emails from spam scrapers. Consequently I get several hundred spam per day. The FM spam filtering is no where near as good as G filtering. I had to manually flag as spam a couple dozen mails every day as well and go through the spam filter and pick out the false positives. I have no problems with G's spam filtering. The other problem with FM is administering multiple accounts on my domain. While it true it's only something I need to do once, as has been mentioned already, the settings/administration leaves much to be desired. Overall, using Gmail is just more pleasant to me, enough so that it outweighs the concerns (read: Google being creepy) that caused me to leave last April.
Did you train the spam filter with the minimum number of e-mails that is required to activate your personal bayes classifier?
Once your personal database has seen more than 200 spam and 200 non-spam emails, we automatically start using it to classify your incoming mail. Because it's been trained by the exact type of messages you receive, it is normally significantly more accurate at classifying spam than our general database. However, it can only do so once it's been properly trained, which is why we have to wait until it has seen 200 of each type of message before it is activated.
I also recently switched from Gmail to Fastmail and haven't looked back. The webmail is fantastic, they're not scanning my email to show me ads, IMAP works great across all of my devices (which makes me more inclined to use OpenPGP when I can), and I can use it with my own domain rather than gmail.com. They're also working on CardDAV and a web calendar (with CalDAV support), which will get me completely off of google once completed.
The only thing I really miss is push notifications to my phone, but I've found that 15 minute fetching works well enough for the time being.
Overall I've been really happy with it over the last 3 months. Definitely worth the $40/yr in my eyes.
The webmail is fantastic, they're not scanning my email to show me ads, [...] and I can use it with my own domain rather than gmail.com.
In all fairness, if you use Google Apps for Business ($50 per year), you can also use e-mail with your domain and they are not scanning your e-mail to show you ads.
If you want CardDAV and CalDAV support, you should take a look at Fruux [1]. They are a "headless" contact/calendaring server, no GUI, just the API. I moved to them (off Google Calendar) around the same time as I moved from Gmail to Fastmail, and I'm extremely satisfied.
IMAP IDLE works great, it's not as efficient as push on mobile because of the battery drain but at least you'll get instant notifications. That's what I use with K-9 on Android.
I've also done the same recently-- though I always liked Gmail, FastMail has just been much better in terms of usability with the web client (e.g. no ads, it's fast, etc.)
Never heard of FastMail before this post, and I'm considering switching now. I have a personal mail server, but it was a PITA to set up, and it probably needs AWS SES (since everything I send mostly ends up in people's spam folders), and there's always the possibility of the VPS going offline for some time.
I made up my decision and finally made the switch this evening, after reading this post. So far I'm pretty happy about it. Thanks etix!
Several things I'd like to share here:
1. XMPP
Fastmail actually comes with a XMPP server. This is a big bonus feature that I didn't expect. It can also keep chat logs in an IMAP folder named 'chat'. Read more here: https://www.fastmail.fm/help/clients/chat.html
2. External Account
If you want to manage other email accounts (receive emails from them), Fastmail seems only support POP (in contrast to Gmail supporting both POP and IMAP). Also, unlike Gmail which checks email with a dynamic frequency based on how many emails you receive at the time, Fastmail uses a fixed interval for checking emails from external account. The minimum interval you can set is 1 hour. I couldn't find a way to manually trigger a POP check in Fastmail either.
One hour is a bit too long for me, but fortunately I adapted to a better way than using external account. I simply set an auto-redirect rule in my other email accounts (e.g. my school uses MS Exchange) and that actually results in instant delivery of emails from external account. I guess this is the right way to handle the problem (other than making your primary email service pull emails from external account like what I did in Gmail before).
"IMAP was working less reliably and I felt more like the product than the customer"
This is the key for me. (1) IMAP not working well and in particular, (2) feeling more like the product than the customer.
With fastmail.fm their business model is they provide a service (email) and in return I give them money. They succeed as a business by getting more money. I am happy to give them money in return for a high quality product.
With Gmail their business model is they provide a service, and in return I give them permission to scan the content of my emails, to data-mine my contacts' names and addresses, and use that information to (a) serve me ads, (b) make money by selling it to third parties, and (c) who knows what else. Gmail succeeds by obtaining (and selling) more and more personal information.
I don't like this and frankly I persist in my surprise that Gmail users accept this transaction.
Sure, in principle, fastmail.fm could be surreptitiously selling my personal information as well ... but the point is that (a) they say they don't do this, and (b) their business model and their success (presumably) don't depend on this. If it was found out they were doing this, (presumably) their business would suffer greatly.
Anyway I recently switched over to fastmail.fm from Gmail as well, like the OP. So far I am extremely happy with it. A MUCH better experience on iOS and on OS X Mail.app.
I recently switched from Gmail to Fastmail as well, and I like it so far.
For me, scanning my email to show me ads didn't really bother me that much. But the thing that I really like with Fastmail is that my outbound email alias works the way I want.
The university I graduated from gives us email aliases for life, and I prefer to use my university alias instead of my Gmail address. It obviously works fine when I receive mail, but when I send mail from Gmail it would say "from [email protected] on behalf of [email protected]" (or whatever). And so for a lot of people, when they would add me to their address books they'd end up adding my gmail address because that's how it was presented to them.
With Fastmail everyone just sees my jhu.edu address as I prefer.
You can configure Gmail to use your university's SMTP server and then Gmail is simply an e-mail client. They steer you away from that option but it's available.
I'm currently reading Glenn Greenwald's new book, NO PLACE TO HIDE, and I have to say that a person should take much comfort in the fact that Fastmail is in Australia rather than the U.S. Australia is a member country in what the NSA terms the "Five Eyes" (U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.) These countries are thick as thieves when it comes to sharing signal intelligence.
Fastmail should really invest in some better domains. While I can use google to find a company's website, I still have to communicate my email address literally on a regular basis. I'd rather not have to spell out a weird domain.
As someone who actually switched from Fastmail TO Gmail several years ago, this definitely resonates. "Fastmail" is not easily recognized by most people and becomes especially unclear if you're reciting your email address over the phone.
Fastmail doesn't even own fastmail.com! They do have many domains available [1] but none are that great.
You should be using your own domains regardless of who is your email provider. That way switching email provider is only one MX record change away if the need ever arises.
Fastmail is great for email, but what really makes them awesome is they can also provide static web hosting, custom DNS services, and even a Jabber/XMPP service for no additional charge.
If you want to host a personal home page + your own email, this is really compelling. Much more power-user friendly than Google Sites, much more reliable than most virtual webhosts, and much cheaper/easier than AWS.
The GET part of the fastmail link in this blog post suggests this is a fastmail sponsored ad rather than honest opinions of an unbiased user:
http://www.fastmail.net/?STKI=12089553
Also, I don't see how "Getting my data back under control" is achieved by shifting from a free service to a paid service; if you're serious about this, you should rather setup your own mail server on a spareable machine (Raspberry Pi etc. + an ordinary desktop mail client + Roundcube etc).
And unless you use something like GPG, your email data is as secure as your corresponding mailbox.
But the Terms is pretty strict, i.e. they can terminate you without notice, not a warning, also they don't really care about refunds, no matter whatever the reason is?
I'm hesitated again. Is the hosting-your-own-mail-server the only way out?
8. TERMINATION
The Service Provider may terminate your access to any part or all of the Service and any related service(s) at any time, with or without cause, with or without notice, effective immediately, for any reason whatsoever, with or without providing any refund of any payments. The Service Provider may also terminate or suspend your account for inactivity, which is defined as failing to sign-in to the Service for an extended period of time, as determined by the Service Provider. The amount of time that the Service Provider currently considers as an "extended" period of time may be viewed from the Help link. Upon termination of the Service, your right to use the Service immediately ceases.
The Service Provider shall have no obligation to maintain any content in your account or to forward any unread or unsent messages to you or any third party.
8.1. NO REFUNDS
Any refunds are at the sole discretion of the Service Provider.
The Service Provider may choose to make a refund at its sole unfettered discretion, however the Service Provider shall have no obligation to refund any portion of any payments, in the event that You wish to discontinue use of all or part of the Service, or in the event that your access is terminated by the Service Provider.
I moved from Gmail to Fastmail too but I am not that happy. And no, Fastmail does not protect you from the NSA since Australia is one of the Five Eyes:
I moved from Gmail to Fastmail because my personal CRM's mail integration depends on Apple Mail. Gmail and Apple Mail do not go well together because Gmail is not IMAP (and Apple Mail has some issues too, even with the latest improvements). So with Fastmail's 'real' IMAP implementation, that issue was resolved. But Fastmail is lacking in comparison to Gmail in many areas, just two examples:
Filtering: Spam, phishing etc. filtering cannot compare with Gmail. And for your own filters, you cannot create them directly from a mail and see immediately the result as you can in Gmail. You have to create your filters via the setting menu and have to manually check if they actually work …
Security: I use 2-factor authentication as often as possible. Gmail has a very balanced approach to 2-factor authentication. Fastmail on the other hand does not allow you to use 2-factor authentication as a general security measure but only as an _additional_ login. And the configuration is not user-friendly. And since it is only an _additional_ login, you do not get (or need) backup codes or another backup way for your 2-factor authentication like SMS.
Fastmail works fine as a very traditional mail provider but that is not far away from what hosting providers offer anyway.
Your mileage might vary of course. If you are looking for a traditional mail provider with reliable IMAP support, Fastmail is certainly a great choice.
Ditched Gmail when it started getting slow, ditched Outlook when it disabled its domain feature. It has a REAL free tier of 5GB + 10 users. (unlike Fastmail's 250MB). Plus their webmail interface is nice and clean.
I recently switched from Gmail to a mail provider called Posteo. They are a German mail provider much like Fastmail. Here is the neat thing: You can create a mail account and physically mail them paper money, without ever giving them your name or address.
I wish more services would be doing that! In particular, I think we sorely need an anonymous way of paying money on the web, like physical money.
The coolest thing about Fastmail is a feature I didn't expect before making the switch: Fastmail is actually faster than Gmail. IMAP is quicker, webmail loads quicker, everything is just snappier. I still use Google mail for a lot of stuff (and actually only have one inbox at Fastmail currently) but I have been extremely impressed with Fastmail so far.
FastMail's server is very standards compliant (except for some weird parts of LIST-EXTENDED that I haven't worked out how to do efficiently yet, so they're still broken in the upstream Cyrus IMAP server)
And we're really blindingly fast for a lot of stuff, particularly if you're just downloading new email. We split every mailbox in to two sets of storage - SSD for messages less than 1 week old and lower than 1Mb in size, and big slower disk for the rest. The index metadata is also on the SSDs, so most common usage patterns can be served entirely from SSD.
Those SSDs are a RAID1 pair of Intel DC3700 drives, which are enterprise drives and very fast even for SSDs. We dropped a chunk of money on moving to this setup, and it's made both IMAP and regular web usage very nice.
So basically, we're optimised for IMAP and we're optimised for speed. Every server has local storage, and the local storage is fast. It gives quite predictable performance, and very fast performance.
That's my story as both the author/maintainer of our IMAP server, and the designer of the server architecture.
That's not saying that GMail is awful, just IMAP isn't so much their focus, and they don't optimise for it.
[+] [-] ender7|11 years ago|reply
"Getting my data back under control
In the past months we’ve had a lot of scary revelations about privacy violations, the biggest being of course the NSA spying scandal. It became urgent to regain control of my data."
If someone else is hosting your e-mail, then you do not have your data "under your control". A government can still compel Fastmail to turn over e-mails via legal process (as they should be able to, to be honest). Additionally, there's no evidence that FastMail (or any other e-mail provider) is better protected from NSA infiltration [1].
It seems like the author has plenty of other reasons to switch, but this one lends nothing but a false sense of security [2].
[1] Possible exceptions being Lavabit-esque systems that do client-side encryption or Google itself, which has begun encrypting their internal as well as external traffic.
[2] Not that I really recommend running your own e-mail server either. Setting one up (and maintaining it) is so error-prone that you're probably even less safe than before.
[+] [-] tjr|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ForHackernews|11 years ago|reply
The first (and for most users, more important) is about not giving away your data to marketing companies. Switching to Fastmail accomplishes that (probably?).
The second is about securing your data from governments/state actors. That battle seems kind of futile to me. Even if I were running everything on my own server in my own basement, with my own ISP, I'm almost certainly not qualified to sysadmin a machine that needs to be secure against the NSA.
[+] [-] chmars|11 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes
[+] [-] yeukhon|11 years ago|reply
If they get a court warrant, you should either give in or fight against it. I think most reasonable people would find that reasonable as opposed to secret surveillance (e.g. NSA).
I think it is necessary to realize that email communication is at least bi-direction. So if one side is vulnerable to attack, there is no privacy or security. The best we could do is of course encrypt the message.
[+] [-] mongrol|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] snird|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sivers|11 years ago|reply
Of all the tech changes I've made in the last few years, moving from Google Apps mail to Fastmail is the one that's made me the happiest, every day.
The webmail is absolutely amazing. So fast, rock-sold, clean, minimal, focused.
Having your webmail experience be completely ad-free and snoop-free, and, well, Google-free is priceless.
Choose the Business email option - https://www.fastmail.fm/signup/business.html - if you want them to keep an automatic archive of the emails you download via POP. When I signed up under the Personal Email option I found they didn't have this archive option, but they switched me over to the business account on request.
It's so worth the measly $15/year, considering the importance a good email/webmail experience, and how much it affects your every-day life.
I've helped a few friends switch over, and they've all been thrilled with it.
[+] [-] masnick|11 years ago|reply
A few things that may be helpful for people considering making the switch:
- If FastMail's IMAP import doesn't work for you, this might (it worked for me): http://protips.maxmasnick.com/export-gmail-to-fastmail-or-an...
- If you want to try FastMail "risk free" so you can switch back to Gmail if you don't like it: http://protips.maxmasnick.com/how-to-test-fastmail-risk-free...
- My own writeup about my experience switching to FastMail from Gmail: http://www.maxmasnick.com/2013/07/19/fastmail/ (discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6069944)
[+] [-] eknkc|11 years ago|reply
I also use the included DNS server for a couple of domains that had been lying around and the static file host for some http placeholder pages and stuff.
I'd never go back to Google at this point.
[+] [-] ikusalic|11 years ago|reply
One of the best tool-related decisions I ever did.
[+] [-] mattkrea|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chmars|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] emiunet|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] YooLi|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] microtonal|11 years ago|reply
Once your personal database has seen more than 200 spam and 200 non-spam emails, we automatically start using it to classify your incoming mail. Because it's been trained by the exact type of messages you receive, it is normally significantly more accurate at classifying spam than our general database. However, it can only do so once it's been properly trained, which is why we have to wait until it has seen 200 of each type of message before it is activated.
Source: https://www.fastmail.fm/help/receive/stopspam.html
[+] [-] stevenleeg|11 years ago|reply
The only thing I really miss is push notifications to my phone, but I've found that 15 minute fetching works well enough for the time being.
Overall I've been really happy with it over the last 3 months. Definitely worth the $40/yr in my eyes.
[+] [-] microtonal|11 years ago|reply
In all fairness, if you use Google Apps for Business ($50 per year), you can also use e-mail with your domain and they are not scanning your e-mail to show you ads.
[+] [-] lobster_johnson|11 years ago|reply
[1] https://fruux.com
[+] [-] daxelrod|11 years ago|reply
I'm sure solutions exist for push notifications. Has anyone had success with any of them?
[+] [-] etix|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andrewmunsell|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kunstmord|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chjj|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] songgao|11 years ago|reply
Several things I'd like to share here:
1. XMPP
Fastmail actually comes with a XMPP server. This is a big bonus feature that I didn't expect. It can also keep chat logs in an IMAP folder named 'chat'. Read more here: https://www.fastmail.fm/help/clients/chat.html
2. External Account
If you want to manage other email accounts (receive emails from them), Fastmail seems only support POP (in contrast to Gmail supporting both POP and IMAP). Also, unlike Gmail which checks email with a dynamic frequency based on how many emails you receive at the time, Fastmail uses a fixed interval for checking emails from external account. The minimum interval you can set is 1 hour. I couldn't find a way to manually trigger a POP check in Fastmail either.
One hour is a bit too long for me, but fortunately I adapted to a better way than using external account. I simply set an auto-redirect rule in my other email accounts (e.g. my school uses MS Exchange) and that actually results in instant delivery of emails from external account. I guess this is the right way to handle the problem (other than making your primary email service pull emails from external account like what I did in Gmail before).
[+] [-] plg|11 years ago|reply
This is the key for me. (1) IMAP not working well and in particular, (2) feeling more like the product than the customer.
With fastmail.fm their business model is they provide a service (email) and in return I give them money. They succeed as a business by getting more money. I am happy to give them money in return for a high quality product.
With Gmail their business model is they provide a service, and in return I give them permission to scan the content of my emails, to data-mine my contacts' names and addresses, and use that information to (a) serve me ads, (b) make money by selling it to third parties, and (c) who knows what else. Gmail succeeds by obtaining (and selling) more and more personal information.
I don't like this and frankly I persist in my surprise that Gmail users accept this transaction.
Sure, in principle, fastmail.fm could be surreptitiously selling my personal information as well ... but the point is that (a) they say they don't do this, and (b) their business model and their success (presumably) don't depend on this. If it was found out they were doing this, (presumably) their business would suffer greatly.
Anyway I recently switched over to fastmail.fm from Gmail as well, like the OP. So far I am extremely happy with it. A MUCH better experience on iOS and on OS X Mail.app.
[+] [-] bratsche|11 years ago|reply
For me, scanning my email to show me ads didn't really bother me that much. But the thing that I really like with Fastmail is that my outbound email alias works the way I want.
The university I graduated from gives us email aliases for life, and I prefer to use my university alias instead of my Gmail address. It obviously works fine when I receive mail, but when I send mail from Gmail it would say "from [email protected] on behalf of [email protected]" (or whatever). And so for a lot of people, when they would add me to their address books they'd end up adding my gmail address because that's how it was presented to them.
With Fastmail everyone just sees my jhu.edu address as I prefer.
[+] [-] spindritf|11 years ago|reply
You can configure Gmail to use your university's SMTP server and then Gmail is simply an e-mail client. They steer you away from that option but it's available.
[+] [-] mariodiana|11 years ago|reply
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes
[+] [-] Aoyagi|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vadvi|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dueprocess|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] microtonal|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sandstrom|11 years ago|reply
It's really sad that they won't offer Icelandic-only hosting, it would give some additional comfort. But perhaps that will change?
[+] [-] tpeng|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joedavison|11 years ago|reply
I have never had a problem communicating it.
[+] [-] psychometry|11 years ago|reply
Fastmail doesn't even own fastmail.com! They do have many domains available [1] but none are that great.
[1] https://www.fastmail.fm/help/legal/ourdomains.html
[+] [-] zokier|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] United857|11 years ago|reply
If you want to host a personal home page + your own email, this is really compelling. Much more power-user friendly than Google Sites, much more reliable than most virtual webhosts, and much cheaper/easier than AWS.
[+] [-] tagrun|11 years ago|reply
Also, I don't see how "Getting my data back under control" is achieved by shifting from a free service to a paid service; if you're serious about this, you should rather setup your own mail server on a spareable machine (Raspberry Pi etc. + an ordinary desktop mail client + Roundcube etc).
And unless you use something like GPG, your email data is as secure as your corresponding mailbox.
[+] [-] ausjke|11 years ago|reply
But the Terms is pretty strict, i.e. they can terminate you without notice, not a warning, also they don't really care about refunds, no matter whatever the reason is?
I'm hesitated again. Is the hosting-your-own-mail-server the only way out?
8. TERMINATION
The Service Provider may terminate your access to any part or all of the Service and any related service(s) at any time, with or without cause, with or without notice, effective immediately, for any reason whatsoever, with or without providing any refund of any payments. The Service Provider may also terminate or suspend your account for inactivity, which is defined as failing to sign-in to the Service for an extended period of time, as determined by the Service Provider. The amount of time that the Service Provider currently considers as an "extended" period of time may be viewed from the Help link. Upon termination of the Service, your right to use the Service immediately ceases.
The Service Provider shall have no obligation to maintain any content in your account or to forward any unread or unsent messages to you or any third party. 8.1. NO REFUNDS
Any refunds are at the sole discretion of the Service Provider.
The Service Provider may choose to make a refund at its sole unfettered discretion, however the Service Provider shall have no obligation to refund any portion of any payments, in the event that You wish to discontinue use of all or part of the Service, or in the event that your access is terminated by the Service Provider.
[+] [-] chmars|11 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes
I moved from Gmail to Fastmail because my personal CRM's mail integration depends on Apple Mail. Gmail and Apple Mail do not go well together because Gmail is not IMAP (and Apple Mail has some issues too, even with the latest improvements). So with Fastmail's 'real' IMAP implementation, that issue was resolved. But Fastmail is lacking in comparison to Gmail in many areas, just two examples:
Filtering: Spam, phishing etc. filtering cannot compare with Gmail. And for your own filters, you cannot create them directly from a mail and see immediately the result as you can in Gmail. You have to create your filters via the setting menu and have to manually check if they actually work …
Security: I use 2-factor authentication as often as possible. Gmail has a very balanced approach to 2-factor authentication. Fastmail on the other hand does not allow you to use 2-factor authentication as a general security measure but only as an _additional_ login. And the configuration is not user-friendly. And since it is only an _additional_ login, you do not get (or need) backup codes or another backup way for your 2-factor authentication like SMS.
Fastmail works fine as a very traditional mail provider but that is not far away from what hosting providers offer anyway.
Your mileage might vary of course. If you are looking for a traditional mail provider with reliable IMAP support, Fastmail is certainly a great choice.
[+] [-] phaed|11 years ago|reply
Ditched Gmail when it started getting slow, ditched Outlook when it disabled its domain feature. It has a REAL free tier of 5GB + 10 users. (unlike Fastmail's 250MB). Plus their webmail interface is nice and clean.
[+] [-] philwelch|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Derbasti|11 years ago|reply
I wish more services would be doing that! In particular, I think we sorely need an anonymous way of paying money on the web, like physical money.
[+] [-] etix|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] napoleond|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _mikz|11 years ago|reply
If I use just IMAP, why use fastmail instead of gmail?
[+] [-] brongondwana|11 years ago|reply
And we're really blindingly fast for a lot of stuff, particularly if you're just downloading new email. We split every mailbox in to two sets of storage - SSD for messages less than 1 week old and lower than 1Mb in size, and big slower disk for the rest. The index metadata is also on the SSDs, so most common usage patterns can be served entirely from SSD.
Those SSDs are a RAID1 pair of Intel DC3700 drives, which are enterprise drives and very fast even for SSDs. We dropped a chunk of money on moving to this setup, and it's made both IMAP and regular web usage very nice.
So basically, we're optimised for IMAP and we're optimised for speed. Every server has local storage, and the local storage is fast. It gives quite predictable performance, and very fast performance.
That's my story as both the author/maintainer of our IMAP server, and the designer of the server architecture.
That's not saying that GMail is awful, just IMAP isn't so much their focus, and they don't optimise for it.
[+] [-] etix|11 years ago|reply