Amazing to reflect on how much goodwill Fastmail has cultivated with me just by being a reasonably priced, full-featured, competent-support-having service. I'm unlikely to ever do anything with the Fastmail API, but I still upvoted mainly because I'm enthusiastic about the company.
Started the transition from Gmail to FastMail at custom domain yesterday. Presence of an API was definitely important (though I probably should have tested it out during the free trial).<p>Had some initial buyer's regret for no reason in particular (did the 3-year plan for the best price and assuming prices will go up over time), but already feeling really solid. The web client is very snappy, documentation is good, able to import my Gmail messages, contacts, calendars, and even filters in a snap (though imperfectly). Looking forward to seeing how the API compares with my Google API scripts. Definitely seems to be more knobs and buttons for power users (more powerful filters, regex, etc.).<p>While not relevant to FastMail per se, also really glad to finally start the painful process of migrating decades of accounts to my custom domain email, where I hope it will stay forever. Growing concern about the (admittedly slim) possibility of losing access to my Gmail account was a big motivator, as was the recent move to force the Google Apps stuff to a paid plan.<p>So far so good.
Apart from Fastmail being amazing for email, they’ve been a great source of customer service to me in several ways. I like to point it out in case people are on the fence and considering a switch. My most appreciated instance was this:<p>Many years ago I was broke and going through rough financial strains. My yearly contract with Fastmail was up and I asked for a grace period. They did it, no questions asked, for 2 months.<p>It wasn’t a thing. When I renewed my contract we settled up and it was all good. It’s been quite a while now and I’m still glad to support them.
The best thing Fastmail could do (IMO obviously) for JMAP adoption is to open up their own clients to other servers.<p>(i.e. if I'm developing a JMAP server, let me use the Fastmail app to test. If Protonmail wants to focus on server & security, let them recommend 'a JMAP client such as Fastmail' to their customers.)<p>Unfortunately though I tweeted (something snappier to that effect towards) the CTO a while ago; it's 'not on the cards' was the phrasing as I recall.<p>(I'm a former happy customer - I was doing something a bit weird receiving via SES, but no reason to think it wouldn't work, and indeed it did work for years as a paying customer until it broke overnight. Response was no sorry deliberate configuration change. I raced (no access to email!) to get something workable without Fastmail before my renewal that weekend; suddenly it started working again, no further contact from support, but by then I'd got my own solution almost working which I'd always intended on anyway. The JMAP part's still early WIP though, so I really would like to be able to use their client app as a solid reference.)
The real integration services like Fastmail need is for DNS. It's crazy that I need to understand DNS records and copy/paste them in order to have <i>someone else</i> host email on my behalf. When I sign up for Fastmail, there should be a quick OAuth flow out to my domain registrar for me to delegate a [sub]domain for Fastmail to control, which returns a token they can use to set all the A, AAAA, CNAME, SPF, DKIM, etc up for me. There is a protocol[0] for such a thing, but adoption has been slow, and I found it a bad fit for open source projects.<p>[0]: <a href="https://www.domainconnect.org/" rel="nofollow">https://www.domainconnect.org/</a>
Shameless plug for my CLI for creating MaskedEmails that is using these APIs (since beta actually) - <a href="https://github.com/dvcrn/maskedemail-cli" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/dvcrn/maskedemail-cli</a><p>If you're into domain/service-specific email addresses, give it a go!
I cannot recommend fastmail to anyone for the simple reason that if your account expires and gets deleted, anyone can create an account with the <i>same</i> email address and take over your identity. This seems like a massive security flaw.
I've been on Fastmail for many years. I didn't manage to _quite_ get rid of my gmail address, but it's close. I don't have to open gmail at all - and any mail that still makes it that way is forwarded to Fastmail.<p>I can use my own domain too. It's pretty great. The web interface is simple but it has improved immensely since I've started to use it.<p>I guess this is the missing piece. One thing I miss from gmail is its ability to automatically sort incoming email into categories, even if you don't have filters. Fastmail has all the classic filters, but they do not apply to existing emails, which is a major hassle. I've been using Sanebox to keep it less insane, but I don't like giving access to third parties.<p>I guess I'll play with this thing and write something to organize my inbox.
Love the Fastmail UI. If you are not using any email client software, please use Fastmail on the browser to enjoy all the latest update in the UI.<p>The most recent feature is Fastmail calendar allows user to change the color of events. You will love the web interface more.
I checked my billing history with Fastmail, and it looks like I've been a customer since 2014. I've never regretted it. I have two emails with GB of space each. I love the web interface, I love the 2fa options, I love android app. All of its clients have easy account switching. Family set up is easy. Custom domain set up is easy. I couldn't see myself using any other service.<p>I have to use gmail for work and it is not great. Confusing tabs, sidebar re-arranged, some kind of interest based twitter feed order for my email. And it's always bugging me to use Chrome, which I don't.
I'd love to switch over to Fastmail from Gmail with my custom domain email, but I face two hurdles before being able to move over:<p>1) Going from $0 to $50/year is such a tough pill to swallow ..<p>2) I have a ton of documents in Google docs. Will those continue to work, and if not, what's the alternative? Google is terrible for privacy, but at least my sensitive documents aren't going to get stolen. I'm not sure I'll trust a startup to my personal docs. Self-hosting is such a massive pain, so not something I want to do.<p>Would love advice on transitioning away from the big G.
I too am a happy user of Fastmail, but I am plenty dissapointed with the file storage, which was one of the main reasons I switched to them 2 years ago (and not to a competitor). Their support in both cases was just awful and more or less ended in a "sucks to be you message":<p>1. I wanted to sync a folder from my Windows laptop to the storage through Webdav, using the Windows Explorer (which they list as a supported client). I would get speeds of maximum 5kb. Opened a ticket, went back and forth and the customer support person suggested that I try with another (paid) client to see if the speeds are better. I downloaded a trial, tried it out and it was indeed better. Reported back and the person says something summarized as: see? here you go, just use that client (that cost another 50 euros)<p>2. I find this one much worse: they disabled support for FTP access to the storage. I get an email 1 (ONE) day before saying something like: hey, there's no FTP starting tomorrow, we did send an e-mail but didn't include _you_, here's 15 dollars for your trouble. I was using FTP actively to back-up the website of my small business nightly. Of course I email support and tell them hey, c'mon, this is unnaceptable, you can't just tell me one day before, give me a solution, something. The reply came almost immediately and said: we sent an e-mail informing everybody 3 months ago, deal with it (???).
An advance gentle warning to people moving to Fastmail: never use the email address on their domain “fastmail.<tld>. Just don’t.<p>Pretend it doesn’t exist. It’ll be difficult to move away from Fastmail if you have to. Because they don’t have any free tier for that which is fine.<p>I regret using it on mailbox.org and I have used it at so many places in last many years that moving away seems tedious and I give up on it even before I start.
I'd love to get out of the 10-year GMail account I own. It's so tightly integrated with other services that it feels like it would take a monumental effort to make happen. Someone send help.
From time to time I'm thinking about switching to Fastmail. I just had a look at Fastmail vs Gmail page (<a href="https://www.fastmail.com/gmail-alternative/" rel="nofollow">https://www.fastmail.com/gmail-alternative/</a>), and I find some of the comparisons inaccurate, and others just plain funny:<p>"No creepy typing predictions" - Fastmail just advertises a missing feature as an advantage<p>"Use your own domain (you@yourname)" - marked as missing on Gmail. On Fastmail you're paying $5/month to have your own account, while in Gmail it's $6 or free if you're grandfathered in with GSuite Legacy.<p>"No ads" - ads are also missing in paid Gmails accounts<p>"Notification settings that respect your attention" - Google makes a big deal of detecting the importance of a particular email threads. I doubt Fastmail is better at this than Gmail.<p>Also Fastmail claims better privacy, but I'm not sure what it is based on.
I made the switch to Fastmail from Gmail (which I used since it launched) about three years ago and haven't looked back. What a fantastic service at a reasonable price. Their mobile app is also great.<p>About this API in particular, who is it targeting or what type of apps are expected to come out of this? Email clients that leverage Fastmail-specific features?
I am generally a happy user of Fastmail, but there are a few improvements I'd like:<p>1. The "report spam" button doesn't also delete the message on the web version. You have to select "report phishing" instead to do both at once.<p>2. The UI for updating mail filter rules was buried under several layers of options last time I tried using it, and I don't think there was an easy way to update a filter and re-apply it to existing messages without going through several menus.<p>3. The UI on Android is sluggish when opening messages at times.<p>I still prefer Fastmail over Gmail, however. A minimal version of the UI like old Gmail's HTML-only view would be nice.
I’ve been with Proton Mail for the past two years, but I recently switched to fastmail after switching from Android to iOS due to how locked down Proton Mail is.<p>I know being locked down is part of Proton’s schtick, and I could kind of put up with only using their app for email. However, being unable to use any app for my calendar and contacts was annoying. It would have made the switch to iOS much easier. Further, the proton mail app on android developed a bug related to alternative routing that I was unable to figure out that led to the app not working for me for over a month.<p>I began realizing that I value being able to freely use my email, contacts, and calendars with whatever app I choose. The fact that I can also sync notes and reminders to my custom domain on fastmail from my iPhone is just a plus.<p>For operating a custom domain and being able to freely move between front ends for those services, I’m really satisfied with fastmail so far, and I’m actually using their web UI for email and calendar because it works well enough for me.<p>My only small gripe is the fastmail app on iOS doesn’t support offline emails. The native Mail app does, but the reason I prefer the fastmail app is native integration with calendar invites. Perhaps if Mail ever supported the JMAP protocol being explained in the post, I could happily use the app, which has become much better with iOS 16.
Fastmail [updated: allowed] customers to spoof email as From: other customers, unless you manage your custom domain's DNS DMARC p=reject. This is a social engineer's dream come true!<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18996200#18997054" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18996200#18997054</a> (2019)<p><a href="https://fastmail.blog/advanced/spf-dkim-dmarc" rel="nofollow">https://fastmail.blog/advanced/spf-dkim-dmarc</a> (2016)
Is there a good tool to fuzzily merge and de-dup multiple inboxes? Because otherwise I'm going to have to write it myself.<p>I currently have a gmail inbox and hey inbox with partial duplicates in each. I'd like to merge and de-dup my history as a one-time event and migrate to fastmail.<p>The gmail inbox has longer history. The gmail forwards to hey so hey has responses that don't exist in gmail.<p>I've already started with mbox exports and SQLite import, but I'd rather use something pre-existing. Any pointers?
I have been seriously interested in migrating away from gmail for a long time, but it creates a lot of anxiety.<p>1. How to effectively migrate. Run dual email for a while?<p>2. How to effectively back up email all of my content so it is searchable. I've kind of used Google/GMAIL as a dumb filestore in that, I know random messages are there from 15 years ago that I can just use the google search for to bring up.<p>These are things I need to spend time on in order to take it seriously. I'd like to take it seriously.
If you’re using apple and just want a custom domain you can do so with an iCloud+ subscription. I switched away to it from Fastmail and have been happy since.
Nice that they have a specific support email for jmap bugs.<p>I recently found a calendar UI bug and it took about 6 back and fourths with the customer support first line over a week before they (said they) passed it to the devs.<p>Not the best bug reporting experience. But then again I can't even fathom how I would have reported it to the Google or Microsoft/o365 equivalent.
Is there a service like fastmail with pw-encrypted inbox like posteo.de (not pgp based like mailbox.org), bulk mail import/export, custom domain and imap support (as in: no special app required unlike protonmail/tutanota)?<p>Thx.
This is pretty cool — it basically means we can use Fastmail for transactional emails like "Thanks for signing up" kind of emails along with our regular old emails right?<p>I've been using Mailgun for that as a separate thing; Mailgun is great but the weird lack of API key management freaks me out. Exposing one key exposes EVERYTHING and you have to cycle through all the projects that use your account. So annoying.<p>I wonder if this is going to cause spam headaches for Fastmail and lower their sendability though
I always hear good things about Fastmail but I've not had a chance to use it yet. I set up a Proton / Protonmail accounts years ago and have been happy as a clam with them ever since.<p>Work uses Gmail, though hopefully we can convince them to drop that in the future. May be a time to try fastmail then. It's a hard sell though; businesses get a lot out of the box with GSuite.
Fun fact: Fastmail supports Russia.<p>When Russia was sanctioned for all the atrocities and Visa/MC became unavailable for them, Fastmail decided to keep providing them services for free.<p>So now if you out of Russia you must pay, but it’s free if if you in a country where 80% of population cheer war crimes.
Does Fastmail support muting threads, both in the UI and their API? I've been waiting for Google to add muting to their API for years:<p><a href="https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/36759067?pli=1" rel="nofollow">https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/36759067?pli=1</a>
Question for people with fastmail and a .net custom domain: Do you usually get blocked sometimes? I wanted to send an email to my therapist and one email to my insurance but both had blocked me. A mailbox.org address worked just fine.
Is it because of the domain or because of the .net ending?
I love fastmail and its REST api but also at the same time I love to use google stuff like google docs, calendar etc, google voice. Technically I can use all gmail service without using a gmail account but it's always less intuitive somehow and always something break here and there when people invite or tag you in drive or google docs.<p>So I ended up build an email forwarding service, it runs on my own domain, forward email[1] back to my personal gmail. So I still have full control at my own domain level, have the flexibility that gmail give me, and have a REST api to access email.<p>Having this access REST API[2] in hand, I have been thinking I maybe able to scrape bank alert email to build out a a read-only API for my own banking transaction.<p>---<p>[1]: <a href="https://mailwip.com" rel="nofollow">https://mailwip.com</a><p>[2]: <a href="https://mailwip.com/api/#introduction" rel="nofollow">https://mailwip.com/api/#introduction</a>
Long time customer of fastmail. Great support. I once forgot to cancel sub, contacted them, and they refunded with no question. Really built the trust.<p>Now I have my personal and side business on fastmail.<p>UX is simple, service is reliable. Keep up the good work.
It's a good first step! I hope to someday see the ability to use an API to edit Fastmail DNS entries, add/remove/modify user accounts, access the calendar and notes, etc.
I'll probably have to play with this soon. I'm using my shared hosting's email for an automated utility and I'm trying to move off of needing that shared hosting.
All I want is a free email, with 500mb of storage, and the ability to sort mails by domains.<p>I don't need storage space to store attachments files.<p>The only thing that matters to me in email is spam detection and the ability to sort and delete as much mail as possible.
What scares me about Google is:<p>- the deep integration with accounts you accumulate over time, one click sign-on is easy but with its tradeoffs<p>- the known and blatant indexing it does of your email content to power their profiles of users for ads<p>- the fact it records nearly every transaction and vendor I've used, is scary<p>- I recently sent a friend a one word subject with a link to a tweet and it was red flagged as dangerous sender and content in my friends Gmail, he sent me screenshot<p>- the fact Google is so deeply integrated to state now, in other verticals like YouTube and this disinformation hunt against free speech against anyone who doesn't agree with what you should see or read<p>Time to switch folks, $50 a year to me is worth it.
Until they offer an office suite, cloud drive and directory that supports SSO/SAML they’ll stay a fringe email provider.<p>Why pay $5 to fastmail when Microsoft offers heaps more.
Deliverability is the bigger concern in such cases. Especially for business emails. Gmail seems to have the best deliverability among all that is available.
Fastmail is great. I have used them for years. My only issue with them is their policy on recycling usernames <a href="https://www.fastmail.help/hc/en-us/articles/1500000277342-Canceling-accounts-and-deleting-users" rel="nofollow">https://www.fastmail.help/hc/en-us/articles/1500000277342-Ca...</a>. Gmail and Proton do not allow for username recycling, for example. I hope Fastmail changes their policy for folks who use an @fastmail.com username.