by danShumway on 11/21/19, 8:14 PM
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 `ilikecats@fastmail.com` and my Walmart account can be `iheckinhatecats@fastmail.com`. I didn't realize how useful that would be until I started using it, but it's quickly morphed into a killer feature.
by eatwater123 on 11/21/19, 7:36 PM
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.
If they fix this I would be overjoyed.
by fractalf on 11/21/19, 11:03 PM
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 :)
by tenpies on 11/21/19, 7:38 PM
I love Fastmail, but they are ultimately based in Australia. I really thought they would have moved their operations by now.
by alexcnwy on 11/21/19, 7:40 PM
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 :)
by efiecho on 11/22/19, 1:32 AM
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.
by par on 11/21/19, 7:42 PM
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.
by manuelmagic on 11/22/19, 10:44 AM
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.
[1] https://www.fastmail.com/help/ourservice/pricing-legacy.html
by j-me on 11/21/19, 8:10 PM
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!
by jml7c5 on 11/21/19, 7:44 PM
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!
by dsalzman on 11/21/19, 7:34 PM
Awesome. You get what you pay for. And with FastMail you get an awesome email experience. Worth paying money for something we all depend on everyday.
by deadcast on 11/21/19, 7:31 PM
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. ^_^
by jacobr on 11/21/19, 7:41 PM
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.
by bachmeier on 11/21/19, 9:19 PM
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.)
by acheron on 11/21/19, 7:31 PM
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.
by sdan on 11/21/19, 7:36 PM
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!
by alibert on 11/21/19, 8:31 PM
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.
[1] https://www.fastmail.com/help/receive/snooze.html
by kup0 on 11/22/19, 3:46 PM
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.
by mikece on 11/21/19, 8:54 PM
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.
by cfallin on 11/22/19, 12:39 AM
by LeoPanthera on 11/21/19, 7:35 PM
I don't think the Fastmail UI tells me but I believe I joined Fastmail in 2002 and have been using them since then. (Before that I was using Spamcop's hosted mail.)
There have been some minor annoyances over the years, but in general, no major complaints.
Still sad about the loss of the XMPP service a few years ago though.
by AhtiK on 11/21/19, 10:21 PM
Everyone who is happy with Fastmail, what is your "mobile strategy"? As a Fastmail customer, I find Web app wonderful but mobile app on Android severely lacking UX. Switched to Aquamail for client over IMAP but search is unusable/slow. Suggestions/success stories?
by tasty_freeze on 11/21/19, 10:32 PM
I've been using fastmail for a few years now and their reliability has been great, prices reasonable, and their web client is fast and convenient.
But there is one thing I cannot figure out. I have my own domain, say me@mydomain.com. The host for mydomain.com really is just a mail reflection service which sends to me@fastmail.com. When I send an email from the fastmail web interface, my identity is me@fastmail.com, and I cannot figure out how to make it accept me@mydomain.com.
There is a help page on setting up identities, but it doesn't work for me. :-( Other than than I'm 100% happy with fastmail.
by jagger27 on 11/21/19, 7:41 PM
I just switched to Fastmail from GSuite this year and also have no complaints.
by techntoke on 11/21/19, 9:34 PM
I personally would like to see more efforts going into open source self-host alternatives, and cloud providers enabling one-click distributed mail server deployments that enable all the functionality you'd expect from like Gmail. Such as virtual folders (labels), better mobile apps, and reliable email service. Too much effort lately has been going into cloud hosted solutions, when I know many users would gladly pay $5+ per month for quality self-hosted email service.
by noisy_boy on 11/22/19, 2:59 PM
The best thing I like about Fastmail is the keyboard shortcuts. Super fast to go through a bunch of emails and move them into their folders. Gmail has them too but for some reason I feel more comfortable with Fastmail's shortcuts.
One feature I would like from their Android apps is to be able to "Mark as read" in addition to Reply/Archive/Delete from the notification drawer.
by chappi42 on 11/21/19, 7:20 PM
Congratulation! And thanks for a stellar service!
by gmb2k1 on 11/22/19, 4:45 PM
Their Android app has no option to logout automatically after a set amount of time. You're logged in indefinitely.
I consider that a security risk. Everyone who manages to unlock my phone can completely take over my digital identity.
I contacted their support and made a feature request for auto-logout. Their answer was basically: Just lock your phones screen.
Not good!
by oil25 on 11/21/19, 10:52 PM
Sincere question - why is JavaScript required to sign up for Fastmail? Is it for browser fingerprinting? If so, what data is collected, how is it used and how long is it retained? No specific mention of it in the privacy policy. If I sign up in a virtual machine, can I later use Fastmail without running scripts?
by xwowsersx on 11/21/19, 8:22 PM
I use Gmail. Don't love it, don't hate it. What's the pitch for switching to Fastmail?
by chewz on 11/21/19, 7:52 PM
Congratulations!!!
by qrbLPHiKpiux on 11/21/19, 9:45 PM
@brongondwana
Great service. I use all features to their potential And appreciate the work and thought you and your team give.