
Fastmail Labels Beta - chrnad
https://beta.fastmail.com/help/receive/labels-beta.html
======
ocdtrekkie
When I transitioned from Gmail to FastMail, I had to get used to using folders
again instead of labels. While it was painful, I am glad I am no longer using
labels, and I have no intention to start using them again. I vastly prefer
being able to rely on the basic email client functionality in any given mail
app, and using goofy nonstandard parts like snooze and labels makes that
difficult.

I appreciate that with JMAP, FastMail has essentially become the first entity
to do labels correctly, with a freaking standard behind it, but client support
isn't going to be there for many years so I will avoid it. The big upside for
me is it'll take away one reason people say they can't leave Gmail.

~~~
jeltz
Is there any reason for why IMAP keywords cannot be used for labels by e.g.
having some prefix for the keyword which indicates that it should be
interpreted as a label? Client support is of course needed but to me it seems
like the IMAP protocol already supports labels. Maybe IMAP lacks the ability
to enumerate all labels?

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Gmail already has a bad hack for this: It reports labels as folders and that
duplicate copies of emails are in them.

So the issue is that any other solution would work improperly for Gmail.
Client support is a huge part of the problem: If it's outside the standard,
clients aren't going to handle it the same way.

JMAP, of course, fixes this.

~~~
jeltz
IMAP keywords are in the standard.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Yes, but how to use them to emulate labels support is not.

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ccmcarey
It wasn't super obvious to me, but you have to use beta.fastmail.com for this
to work.

Confused me for a moment as you can complete the first step of enabling this
(changing to New Rules) using the stable client.

\---

Oh, no, it's even more confusing than that. You enable the labels beta
function on the beta website, but then it applies even on the main website.

~~~
pointillistic
you are right, does this mean that labels will work on the main site?

~~~
ccmcarey
Yep, seems to have the same functionality.

I've submitted beta feedback indicating my concerns.

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erdaniels
Might as well put it here since Fastmail doesn’t come up often. Does anyone
find Fastmail’s spam detection to be pretty mediocre? I usually get a few
obviously spam emails a week in my inbox. The volume is low so I don’t mind it
but that’s really the one thing I miss from Gmail.

~~~
dimastopel
The problem I frequently encounter is with emails incorrectly classified as
spam. Once a month I go to spam folder and find few emails that were not spam.
Even though I click "not spam" on each, I don't feel algorithm is getting any
better with time.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Once the personalized filter is activated (requires marking 200 as spam and
200 as not-spam), this problem should go away entirely. It did for me anyways.

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ancarda
One reason I switched to Fastmail is it's just folders, not labels. I _HATED_
labels in Gmail. It never works right with external clients, even if you use
plugins in Thunderbird or try to use labels like they are folders.

I gave up and basically used the web interface until I switched to FastMail.

Will folders ever become mandatory? If so, maybe I should finally give in and
host emails myself. It can't be more painful than being forced to use labels.

~~~
sv9
I can't find the blog post, but I read one once that said, basically: you
don't need labels or folders. You need your inbox, the archive, and trash.
Once you've tended to an email, either archive it (and just use your search
function later), or delete it.

I've tried unsuccessfully to maintain folder/label systems over the years, and
I always end up having to search my emails anyway. So why bother with trying
to make a consistent folder/label structure? I'm much more likely to remember
some key words from an invoice than remember which labels I would've applied.

~~~
stonogo
Folders aren't for filing emails after you've read them. Used well, they're
for filing incoming messages automatically. I have a _heavily_ email-driven
workflow, and I am active on dozens of mailing lists. My email servers filter
incoming messages and deliver them directly into folders based on which list
they're coming into. Another filter has a list of commerce-associated domains
that get filed into folders based on which accounts they're associated with.
As a result, the only mail that hits my inbox proper is mail from friends and
family (plus the occasional not-filtered-yet work/list mail). Everything else
lands in folders, and I prioritize opening those folders and dealing with
those messages.

As you mentioned, once a message is 'consumed,' it just gets archived. But the
folder system (combined with sieve filters) is what makes dealing with a ton
of incoming email extremely pleasant.

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lars_francke
It's not quite clear to me: Can these rules be applied to already existing
mails at creation time?

This is convenient in Gmail and when I last looked at fastmail in 2014 this
wasn't possible.

This was the support answer: "I am sorry, but our filters only work at email
delivery time. You can't really use them on emails already delivered to your
account.

However, to work on already delivered emails, I would suggest you use our
'Search' feature. You can search for emails matching specific criteria, and
then select them and move them en masse to a different folder, or even delete
them."

This works but makes migration/reorganizing a bit annoying

~~~
chrismorgan
Since about a month ago, yes: [https://fastmail.blog/2020/03/23/email-
organization-filters/](https://fastmail.blog/2020/03/23/email-organization-
filters/)

~~~
lars_francke
Excellent, thank you for the link.

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getlawgdon
As a longtime Fastmail user, it's taken a long time to get to this point -- a
labels beta. At this point, I'd like to see some truly unique native analytics
on my storage rather than somewhat late attempts at market feature parity. I'd
like to see a unique suite of management tools, like, say, an intelligent bulk
unsubscriber. But sure, I'll test labels out.

~~~
x0x0
I also would have loved this earlier but serious question: who else, besides
Google/gmail and Microsoft/Outlook, is even trying this stuff? I've
periodically looked pretty hard and been unable to find anyone.

Fastmail is the clear market leader for people who don't want to use gmail or
outlook, and I'm pretty excited to try their labels. I would love to see them
implement answers to some of the questions the basecamp (hey) folks raised
here [1], but I'm pretty confident they'll implement some of them. I also
suspect that many of the things basecamp/hey want to do break interop with
other email clients for editing. That is, you can read them, but not use the
hey features from other clients; Fastmail may not be willing to make that
trade. Super excited to see what hey do though!

Either way, building a super-reliable email service that can handle 10s of
gigs of emails and hundreds of thousands of messages is not easy and Fastmail
does a good job.

[1] [https://hey.com/problems-with-email/](https://hey.com/problems-with-
email/)

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DarwinMailApp
This is quite a leap forward in organising emails. I believe emails need to be
organised into concise groups in order for you to become your most productive.

One thing I would suggest is to allow the organisation of labels according to
when the last email was received. Today, Yesterday, This week, Last week, This
month, Last month etc.

I actually run a similar product called DarwinMail [1], which was built
shortly after GoogleInbox announced it would shut down in 2018.

We have supported bundles (labels in Fastmail) for about 12 months now.
Through consistent iterative updates (thanks to feedback from our users) we
have made huge progress.

Apart from the core (built-in) bundles: travel, finance, purchases, forums,
promotions, social, updates you can also create a bundle from any label you
wish.

[1] [https://www.darwinmail.app](https://www.darwinmail.app)

------
tyingq
Interesting. Is there an IMAP attribute similar to Gmail's X-GM-LABELS?

~~~
2ion
Label support comes via JMAP. As for how this is exposed in imap.fastmail.com
I'm not aware somebody checked yet. Here
[https://www.emaildiscussions.com/showthread.php?t=76159](https://www.emaildiscussions.com/showthread.php?t=76159)
is a feature discussion around this feature. It's bound to appear there at
some point.

~~~
mmcclimon
(I work for Fastmail, but am not _really_ involved with the teams that have
done most of the work on labels.)

In the backend, there is no difference between labels mode and folders mode;
all of the changes are in the UI. There are no IMAP attributes or keywords
(they're poorly supported by third-party clients); any email message can
appear in more than one mailbox, where "mailbox" means "folder" or "label".

On disk, mailboxes are stored as UNIX directories: all copies of the message
(i.e., in all folders/labels) are hard links to the same inode. Over IMAP,
each can have its own metadata (\Seen and \Flagged, for example), and they'll
probably appear as separate copies (depending on how your client decides to do
things).

As you say, JMAP has this built in: each Email object has a MailboxIds
property. When the web client (or your own bespoke JMAP client!) fetches
emails for one folder/label, and then you click to a different folder/label,
the client doesn't have to download that message again, because it already has
it in its local cache.

~~~
bad_user
Would be good to do what Gmail does over IMAP because many email clients
already know how to handle it.

A feature that only works in the web UI isn't useful for me and while I'm
excited about JMAP, it doesn't have support in any of the email clients I can
use.

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3fe9a03ccd14ca5
While I sympathize with a company providing a good service and being paid
accordingly, $5 a month still seems too high for email.

~~~
mb_72
$5 / month is still pretty close to $0 / month for many people. I transitioned
from Gmail -> Fastmail a year ago, and I'm very happy with all aspects
(reliability, features etc). Would be fine with paying > $5 month if that's
what it took.

~~~
macintux
It's quite disappointing how skewed our perspective on software pricing is. I
grew up in an era when compilers cost $1000; now people complain about $3 for
an iPhone game.

Given that a burger cost $5, I'm more than fine with sacrificing a burger each
month for private email.

~~~
beart
where are you getting a $5 burger??

~~~
gilrain
Culver's in the east, In-n-Out in the west.

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sudhirkhanger
Is there a standards for labels in IMAP protocol? Or this another Gmail like
proprietary protocol? Does this sync all emails multiple times if they have
multiple labels in a regular email client?

~~~
acabal
IMAP keywords are basically labels. IIRC they even have Thunderbird
integration. You can "tag" messages in TB with a variety of hard-coded tags
(like "Work" or "Todo") and they will be saved as IMAP keywords on the server.

The problem is that it's hard to create custom ones in Thunderbird. It
involves editing about:config, and when custom ones are saved to the server,
other instances of TB won't recognize them unless you edit the about:config of
those instances too. Basically, it's possible but too much pain in the TB UI
to be useful.

------
bad_user
I've been a Fastmail user for my personal email for several years now, however
I still miss labels. Therefore I love seeing this.

It is unclear to me how this works with IMAP clients. Are these labels still
exposed as folders over IMAP?

If so, I assume messages get duplicated, just as with Gmail, therefore the
client will need special hacks to deal with it, just as with Gmail.

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wodenokoto
So it looks like labels are like “multi-folders”, and unlike gmail, there is
no mix of labels and folders. It’s either or.

~~~
bad_user
Gmail does not have a mix of labels and folders. It's all labels in Gmail.

~~~
wodenokoto
You're right. The "move message" icon is, however, of a folder[1], so I guess
over time I came to the misunderstanding that I was working with folders!

[1]
[https://it.stonybrook.edu/sites/default/files/kb/8618/images...](https://it.stonybrook.edu/sites/default/files/kb/8618/images/new-
gmail-move-out-of-trash.png)

------
nnutter
If you have a spouse and/or kids, and you want them to use FastMail for the
same reason you do, consider putting pressure on FastMail to offer a
(reasonable) family plan. I’ve been a happy customer for a decade but they’ve
raised their prices (which would affect new accounts) and do not offer a
family plan so this year be my last year with them.

Edit: typo

~~~
newscracker
This is a big reason why I list cheaper alternatives to Fastmail whenever the
topic of emails comes here. If your needs are more than one mailbox (not
aliases), then Fastmail soon becomes prohibitively expensive. A few years ago,
when asked about cheaper pricing plans, Fastmail replied that it has no plans
(no pun intended) to go cheaper or offer cheaper plans.

There are other alternatives that are cheaper and focus on privacy,
reliability, etc. They may not be as famous as the Fastmail brand. Posteo (no
custom domain support), Mailbox.org, Runbox, Migadu, Mailfence and Mxroute are
just some of the providers out there that give Fastmail a run for the money.
Vote with your wallet.

~~~
joshmn
Basecamp is launching their email service soon — Hey.com — as well.

~~~
akudha
Just speculating here, but it is likely not going to be much cheaper than
Fastmail, knowing basecamp's pricing history. I hope they do launch a family
plan though

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tilolebo
Does it work with Spark?

~~~
floatingatoll
Does Spark implement the JMAP protocol (successor to IMAP)?

~~~
tilolebo
Doesn't look like it.

But searching for "spark + jmap" return interesting results, haha

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HelenePhisher
So Mailmate should be compatible with those, can anyone confirm?

~~~
kome
I was wondering the same. And other mail clients as well.

~~~
HelenePhisher
Just tried it, it seems to only work one-way and tags behave like regular
folders. So Mailmate shows your web-created tags as folders, but if you apply
an existing tag in Mailmate nothing happens in the web version.

Edit: found that discussion on JMAP support in Mailmate:
[https://lists.freron.com/mailmate/2019-January/010799.html](https://lists.freron.com/mailmate/2019-January/010799.html)

------
everybodyknows
>Add colors to your Labels ...

>Switching back to Folders mode: ... Your labels will be converted into
Folders.

Upon converting back to Folder mode, what happens to our painstakingly entered
per-label color assignments?

As a Fastmail user, this worries me, as on its face suggesting a destructive
bulk state change to all metadata of the account.

~~~
chrismorgan
In the backend, there’s no difference between labels and mailboxes. This
switch is purely a boolean that instructs the the webmail client which set of
behaviours to use.

Your colours will remain intact if you switch between the two. Mailboxes can
have colours too.

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kamfc
what about zoho? i use it for business but is it viable and friendly for non-
tech literate families? I simply connect zoho to thunderbird.

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keesj
Curious to hear how people use these!

~~~
nunodonato
As a fastmail user I was waiting for them, but now knowing its either labels
OR folders, I will stick with folders. Labels tend to be much more
disorganized for me. I consider them an extra on top, not essential

~~~
bleuarff
I have been looking for alternatives to gmail for quite some time but without
luck so far aslabels are absolutely essential to me.

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paulmendoza
How many users does fastmail have?

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neodigm24
Too expensive.

~~~
gilrain
That they don't chase free users is an advantage to those of us who pay. For
about $50 per year, I get rock solid, feature-rich email as well as fast
support from real people who are informed and empowered.

It's not for everyone, but it's worth it if you value your mail and time.

~~~
selykg
Ya, been a user since 2009. I’ve been really happy in those nearly 11 years.
The price has gone up, I originally paid $35/yr, it is now $45 (less if you
pay several years in advance) but still generally worth it.

My only complaint is that the more they extend JMAP the more I want a
dedicated email client that supports it, and none do as far as I am aware.

