
From Gmail to Fastmail - etix
http://blog.l0cal.com/2014/05/23/from-gmail-to-fastmail/
======
ender7
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.

~~~
tjr
Even running your own mail system might not gain you as much as you'd hope:
[http://mako.cc/copyrighteous/google-has-most-of-my-email-
bec...](http://mako.cc/copyrighteous/google-has-most-of-my-email-because-it-
has-all-of-yours)

~~~
RexRollman
I've wondered about this from time to time. Its one thing to scan emails to
serve ads to the person who is using Gmail, but is Google also using those
emails to also create profiles of non-Gmail users? I would like to think it's
not.

~~~
mercer
It's likely that they do. It seems to me like it's hugely valuable and I see
no reason why Google would refrain from doing so. Plus, Facebook does it too.

[http://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/what-exactly-
is-a-...](http://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/what-exactly-is-a-
facebook-shadow-profile/)

------
sivers
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](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.

~~~
eknkc
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](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.

I'd never go back to Google at this point.

~~~
chmars
Fastmail seems to support IMAP Idle only. And IMAP Idle is not an option for
mobile devices since the mail client has to keep the connection open all the
time, so there goes your battery …

~~~
eknkc
Therefore you keep in in periodic fetch mode.

3rd party apps with push support do not drain battery. They keep a connection
open on their servers, and use regular push notifications when something
arrives.

Has huge privacy concerns though.

------
YooLi
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.

~~~
danieldk
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._

Source:
[https://www.fastmail.fm/help/receive/stopspam.html](https://www.fastmail.fm/help/receive/stopspam.html)

~~~
etix
Even though some spam reaches my inbox (around 10 per day) but I can live with
that since it stops an other hundred of them.

------
stevenleeg
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.

~~~
daxelrod
The iOS push notifications are what has been causing me to move my email over
to GMail. Otherwise I'd much prefer something like Fastmail.

I'm sure solutions exist for push notifications. Has anyone had success with
any of them?

~~~
Osmium
> The iOS push notifications are what has been causing me to move my email
> over to GMail.

Don't rely on Gmail for push: they discontinued Exchange-support recently,
though they grandfathered in old users. What's irritating to me is that when I
set up my new phone I lost it, and am now back to using fetch-only Gmail
unless I want to use one of Google's proprietary apps (unless they've changed
this recently).

Agreed that I'd like Fastmail to have push. Every time they come up on HN, I
mention it, because I'm a paying Fastmail customer and would like to stay one
because they're really perfect in every other way, but the lack of push email
is just very disappointing.

> I'm sure solutions exist for push notifications. Has anyone had success with
> any of them?

On iOS there are options like Boxcar and the like, but they're usually sub-
optimal and rely on passing your login credentials to a third party.

~~~
danieldk
_Don 't rely on Gmail for push: they discontinued Exchange-support recently,
though they grandfathered in old users. What's irritating to me is that when I
set up my new phone I lost it, and am now back to using fetch-only Gmail
unless I want to use one of Google's proprietary apps (unless they've changed
this recently)._

Google Apps for Business does have Exchange ActiveSync:

[https://support.google.com/a/answer/135937?hl=en](https://support.google.com/a/answer/135937?hl=en)

------
songgao
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](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).

~~~
etix
Glad you like it as much as I do.

1\. I did not mention the XMPP server primarily because I already use another
server but it's always a welcome addition indeed.

2\. I've read somewhere (can't remember where though) that when you're logged
in the frequency is automatically increased and you can force a retrieval
manually by using the refresh button. Maybe @brongondwana can comment on this
matter.

------
plg
"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.

~~~
bigtones
Google Apps no longer serves ad's in email to anyone. So their business model
is not to sell ads - it's to charge for email, calendar and storage - a very
similar model to FastMail. Except Gmail has perfect forward secrecy, the best
security of any email provider, and great web and mobile apps.

~~~
dan1234
FastMail also claims PFS support

[http://blog.fastmail.fm/2013/08/09/fastmail-uses-perfect-
for...](http://blog.fastmail.fm/2013/08/09/fastmail-uses-perfect-forward-
secrecy-with-httpstls-connections/)

------
bratsche
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
me@gmail.com on behalf of me@jhu.edu" (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
_when I send mail from Gmail it would say "from me@gmail.com on behalf of
me@jhu.edu" (or whatever)_

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.

~~~
_pius
If that's true, would love to see some documentation for it.

~~~
spindritf
[http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/send-mail-from-
another...](http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/send-mail-from-another-
address-without.html)

~~~
_pius
Nice, thanks.

------
mariodiana
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.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes)

~~~
mariodiana
s/should/shouldn't/

(Sorry for the typo.)

~~~
teach
Can't you edit your comment? You ought to be able to go that within the first
hour or so.

------
Aoyagi
Something I think is another huge plus people don't mention: you get an
actual, living person for technical and other support.

~~~
dueprocess
Responsive customer support is such a huge thing, and yet so few companies do
it right.

~~~
mercer
Especially for something as crucial as email. I am probably still sticking
with gmail for a while, but I can't imagine the horror of suddenly being
locked out and not being able to get on the phone with anyone.

------
sandstrom
I've been eying Fastmail for a while.

It's really sad that they won't offer Icelandic-only hosting, it would give
some additional comfort. But perhaps that will change?

~~~
mercer
Is there any good reason why they haven't done this already? It seems to me
privacy is a major selling point, especially after the Snowden revelations.

~~~
brongondwana
Basically, we just don't have the hardware in Iceland to support both running
a full replica of everything from New York and also running production traffic
in Iceland.

A fair bit of that is my personal fault for not pushing the extraction from
Opera's racks into our own separate racks. We've been paying for capacity in
Iceland for 3 months that we're not using yet.

~~~
etix
Can we expect Fastmail to run a complete production traffic replica in Iceland
in the future? I would gladly pay up to 1.5x the price for having my primary
storage there instead of the US.

------
tpeng
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.

~~~
joedavison
They have one really great domain: sent.com

I have never had a problem communicating it.

------
United857
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.

------
tagrun
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](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.

~~~
etix
Sorry but I wouldn't spend my time writing good reviews for a service I don't
like just to get few dollars off my next subscription (which is going to be in
2 years anyway).

And yes I've used my referral ID to link to their website. I don't see what's
wrong with that since I mentioned it in the article and everyone is free to
remove it and I'm pretty sure a lot of the readers did anyway.

------
ausjke
I was going to signup with Fastmail.

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
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:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes](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.

~~~
vsl
I moved from FastMail to Gmail a few years back because of poor spam
filtering.

Recently, Gmail was getting worse and worse at filtering spam for me. Plus
IMAP was never reliable, so I switched back to FastMail last year and its spam
filtering is now considerably better than Gmail's _for me_.

FastMail's 2FA is indeed horrible, horrible thing, I wish they fixed that.
Unfortunately, most of the development attention seems to be on Fastmail's
webmail UI these days, something I use only very rarely.

Still, I'm satisfied overall and like the setup much better than Gmail. I
learned my lesson about using my own domain for email, though, to make any
future migrations painless.

------
phaed
ZohoMail does everything Gmail does, including using you own domain.
[http://www.zoho.com/mail/features.html](http://www.zoho.com/mail/features.html)

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.

~~~
erikb
Just FYI, they don't have the main feature I am using GMail for: priority
inbox. Or at least I didn't find it in their feature lists.

------
philwelch
The only downside I've seen switching from Gmail to Fastmail is that
Fastmail's spam filtering isn't as good. But I can live with it.

------
Derbasti
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.

~~~
etix
That's neat. Is it a German only website or do they have an English version
available?

~~~
Derbasti
As far as I know, the website is in German only. The webmail interface can be
switched to any language you want though. I guess you could sign up for it
with the help of a German friend or maybe even Google Translate. Since payment
is completely anonymous (or paypal), that won't be a problem.

To quote from the FAQ:

    
    
      The webmail interface can be switched to other languages. 
      However, the rest of the service is in German, i.e. 
      sign-up, EULA, mail settings (forwarding, POP download, …),
      payment information etc. If you don't know any 
      German, you might miss some things.
    
      Der Webmailer lässt sich auf andere Sprachen umstellen. 
      Allerdings ist unser Angebot ansonsten komplett 
      deutschsprachig, also Anmeldung, AGBs, Einstellungen rund 
      um die Mailadresse (Weiterleitungen, POP-Sammeldienst,…), 
      Zahlungshinweise usw. Wer gar kein Deutsch kann, geht da 
      vielleicht etwas verloren.

~~~
etix
Thanks for the explanation.

------
napoleond
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.

------
_mikz
What is so wrong about Gmail's IMAP? I use it everywhere and don't see any
issues.

If I use just IMAP, why use fastmail instead of gmail?

~~~
brongondwana
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.

~~~
emiunet
I am curious what sort of storage solution Google is using to compare to this
one..

~~~
brongondwana
I believe it's based on BigTable.

There doesn't seem to be a published article that I can find on the exact
internals, so I'm basing it off discussions on the protocol mailing lists.

------
mercer
I've been looking into doing this, so this post came at a good time.
Especially the UI/keyboard shortcuts appeal to me, as that was the main reason
I stuck with google over other solutions.

------
nilkn
I just use the classic Gmail interface. I have for months now and will never
go back. It's fast and cuts out all the cruft that I never use in Gmail, like
the tabs and the G+ connectivity.

~~~
vosper
I think the tabs are great. With little or no training they're right 99% of
the time and are a very effective way of separating "real email" \- friends,
colleagues, family - from the automated stuff that's not spam but which I also
don't care about as much.

~~~
nilkn
The tabs are great for mobile, where I can use them to control which emails
generate push notifications. On the web, though, the entire new Gmail
interface in general is so much less efficient at conveying information that I
find that any categorization provided by the tabs is just not a big enough of
a positive to justify using that interface.

------
motters
The lesson of Levison is that privacy assurances by email service providers
are not necessarily trustworthy. Levison balked, but most wouldn't want to
shut down their businesses.

For now the best bet is either to self host (it's not that hard, especially
for most folks reading this) or to use something like ProtonMail where the
content can't be routinely exfiltrated and the provider can't give the inbox
keys to any third party.

------
Morgawr
The idea of privacy with email is, unfortunately, very ephemeral. As seen in
other articles also submitted to hn in the past, even if you stop using Gmail,
Google will still have a very huge chunk of your data to track simply because
the vast majority of the people you communicate with have a Gmail account.
There is no easy/apparent way out.

~~~
ronaldx
This is not a good argument for using or staying with Gmail.

In fact, writing this another way potentially identifies a more compelling
reason to leave:

By using Gmail, you are incrementally harming the privacy of everyone you
communicate with.

------
Semaphor
Just in case people are missing things like the priority inbox I'd like to
mention Sanebox [0]. In my opinion they are better than what google does plus
they offer more features (for a price).

[0] [https://www.sanebox.com/](https://www.sanebox.com/)

------
iancarroll
Just moved my domain over to Fastmail. I can live with $10 per three months.

------
ausjke
After reading this I plan to switch to fastmail as well.

Thanks for sharing the good stuff!

------
djokkataja
I switched from Gmail to Fastmail about a year ago after using exclusively
Gmail for email since 2007. I've been very happy with Fastmail since then.
Primarily I was bothered by getting the service for "free" from Google--it's
not free for them to provide it (no such thing as a free lunch), which means
they have to find ways to monetize my personal communications with others
without me directly paying them. Obviously there are the ads, but then there's
the matter of having to stay up to date on their privacy policies... long
story short, Google creeps me out a little, and I'd rather pay a bit of money
to feel like I'm not a host for some kind of sprawling global parasite.

Anyway, pros:

\- The Fastmail web interface is _fast_. I've never seen it take longer to
load than 1 second on any computer or internet connection; it's noticeably
faster to load up the entire interface than Gmail.

\- Fastmail also uses basically the same keyboard shortcuts as Gmail (j/k to
go up and down, x to select, # to delete, y to archive, z to undo, r to reply,
f to forward, a to reply-all, ctrl-enter to send--works from any field in
fastmail rather than just the body or title as in gmail, which is handy for
forwarding things).

\- Sometimes sending/opening messages in Gmail was kind of slow; sending
messages from Fastmail has always been virtually instantaneous, and opening
them is definitely instantaneous. I think Fastmail preloads email content into
the client so that it only has to request images from the server, because it
definitely opens email too quickly to have done a round trip to the server to
get the email contents. If you press 'o' to open an email, it will be open by
the time your 'o' key comes back up.

\- Fastmail can help with setting up DNS for emails for custom domains.

\- Fastmail has this "Pin" feature that lets you pin emails so that they stick
to the top of whatever folder they're in. I always wanted something like this
in Gmail (like if starred messages stuck to the top or something). I think
there's an option to toggle whether or not they float to the top if you're not
a fan. Anyway, I'm not sure that having this feature has actually been
beneficial to me in any way, but I like it a lot.

Cons:

\- The Fastmail interface is not as pretty as the Gmail interface. There is no
option to get a big, beautiful background picture, and the interface doesn't
really have space for it anyway. This bothered me a little at first, but these
days I don't care... if I'm gazing longingly at the mountains in the
background picture of my email, I'm being extraordinarily unproductive.

\- Fastmail's auto-complete when you're typing in the recipient list does not
keep track of who you send to most frequently and push them automatically to
the top of the list. This still bothers me sometimes.

\- Fastmail's settings pages are a little confusing. There are a couple
different ways to get to them, and it can be a little tricky to figure out
where you're supposed to find something. I've never been a fan of the way
settings are organized in any email client, though... Gmail and Outlook have
settings pages that aren't as terrible these days; Fastmail's settings are a
little less refined. On the other hand, it seems like you can do a lot more
with the settings in Fastmail (so this is a bit of a pro, not strictly a con).

\- Fastmail has a folder system with nesting like Outlook. I don't think this
is really a bad thing; I like the concept of Gmail's labels a lot, but I never
found it to be significantly more useful than folders. What sucks about
Fastmail's implementation is that to create folders or rearrange them, you
have to enter this special folder management menu. Then to create a folder,
you have to scroll all the way to the bottom and type the new name, and if you
want it to be at the top, then you have to drag it up past all of the other
folders, and there seems to be a max speed on how quickly you can drag it up,
and it starts arbitrarily selecting the text as you're dragging and sometimes
gets a little janky as you get to the top. Definitely my least favorite part
of the interface.

Ambiguous:

\- Not strictly a pro or a con in my opinion: there is no chat interface
built-in (actually I'm not certain about that, there might be some option to
enable chat and put in chat credentials, etc. but I haven't looked for it).
Overall I think this has been very good for getting me in and out of my inbox
very quickly and productively without any risk of distraction. I actually
stopped using any form of chat until more recently when I needed it for work,
and I think my quality of life was improved for it, but I know that for many
people chat is an important part of communicating. But I haven't missed it in
my webmail one bit.

Wow, that was a lot more than I expected to write! Anyway, to sum up, from my
perspective as a web developer:

\- Fastmail is faster and contributes better to getting things done, in my
experience (worth the $60/yr for that reason alone)

\- Fastmail has some nice options if you're setting up email inboxes for
yourself for custom domains. I don't know if I would recommend it _yet_ as a
mail option for clients since it's a little less polished than Gmail and some
of the settings options are a good deal more technical.

\- Fastmail is a nice gateway drug to freeing yourself from the idea that
Gmail is the be-all-end-all of email. Still waiting for someone more
productive than myself to combine webmail, Trello, and Google Calendar into a
glorious productivity app that ushers in a new era for humanity.

~~~
Semaphor
> The Fastmail interface is not as pretty as the Gmail interface.

I disagree, I find it prettier than gmail.

Pretty much agree with everything else you said.

One con I'd like to add: GMail has send and archive and you can set it as
default. I really miss that in fastmail.

------
braveheart1723
any offers / coupons / deals for hackernews readers ?

------
kretor
The spacing around "i"s is too much.

------
_mikz
80k emails per ... a day? month?

edit: or it might be accounts?

~~~
etix
Total. Article updated.

------
xkarga00
I have been looking for a free e-mail provider that takes privacy seriously.
Isn't there anyone out there?

~~~
DanBC
What's your privacy risk assessment?

~~~
xkarga00
I just don't want advertising companies or the NSA sniffing around my personal
communications. It has to be private as private should be.

~~~
ForHackernews
> It has to be private as private should be.

But you also don't want to pay any money for it?

~~~
xkarga00
No. Do you believe that by paying money your privacy is guaranteed? Even
Fastmail's privacy is doubtful regarding its non-US clients -which would be my
case if i used it.

~~~
ForHackernews
Ok, but why would anyone set up and run an extremely privacy-hardened service
for you, for free?

~~~
xkarga00
Probably because i am not the only one who would use it.

~~~
teach
What would a company possibly have to gain by creating a service that a lot of
people will use and not pay for?

Despite what you may have "learned" from the examples of Facebook and Twitter,
companies giving away things for free isn't a very good business model.

------
personZ
I find it suspicious that these Gmail -> Fastmail submissions appear
relatively regularly, and then see an abnormally high number of supportive
commentary, out of proportion with other posts at the same time of day.

~~~
etix
I'm not related to Fastmail in any way, you can verify that easily. I'm just a
simple but happy customer who likes to share when he think that it might be of
interest to others.

~~~
brongondwana
I am related with FastMail (also pretty easily verifyable) - and we love how
popular we are on HN. We do get kind of surprised at how often people post
about loving us as well, but we're not complaining

(I'm sitting on my laptop during the break at my choir rehearsal today and
reading through this thread to see if there are any questions I can answer.
I'm doing this instead of going to get a coffee... which now that I think
about it must mean I'm insane, because I'm going to need coffee to survive the
next set of rehearsals. Madness. If anyone at Melbourne wants to come to an
awesome concert next weekend, email me or something)

