

Opera acquires e-mail service Fastmail.fm - paulsilver
http://blog.fastmail.fm/2010/04/30/fastmail-fm-has-been-acquired-by-opera-software/

======
robmueller
I'm one of the main developers and was one of the (now previous) owners of
Fastmail.

Fastmail has always been a small company, there are just 3-4 main developers
(myself, Bron, Richard and recently in the last year, Kurian), and a couple of
support staff scattered around world. For that small size, I think we've
managed to build a pretty great product with lots of niche and power features,
loyal users, and apart from a small disaster in 2006 (2-3 day outage for a big
chunk of users), we've also been incredibly reliable, especially in recent
years.

<http://www.pingdom.com/reports/lzdx4pr0pdhk/>
<http://www.fastmail.fm/help/overview_reliability.html>

Fastmail was nicely profitable, but not spectacularly so. We're basically all
geeks, and we don't have a marketing or sales department that can grow our
customer base significantly (we tried, but it didn't work out, and we probably
should have put more effort in, but didn't... because we probably preferred to
spend time just building neat stuff, or fixing that edge case bug, or doing
that fun thing... like I said, geeks).

I think we had to face facts a bit, we were a small fish with limited
resources in a market that has become severely more competitive in recent
years. We needed to invest a bunch of time and money in updating our
interface, and adding new features (especially better mobile syncing).

And coincidentally, it's around that time that Opera came along and started
talking to us. Despite being half a world apart, there's a lot of fit between
the companies. They use a lot of perl, we do to. They're a company run by
technology people, creating a product that's loved by geeks, is highly
customisable, has a loyal fan base, and despite it's small size, punches above
it's weight. I think that describes us pretty much as well.

So the timing was right, and Opera have an interest in picking up email as a
core competency, and a bunch of ideas on what they want to improve, what they
want to build. The other Fastmail guys were also interested in new
opportunities, and we're all becoming Opera staff and are committed to working
there for a few years at least. There's already plans for some staff to move
to Norway to work, a change of life after 5 years of just 3 of us in a single
office (apparently the Norwegian lessons are paying off... Jeg vil gjerne et
øl til)

So it'll be an interesting change, and something new I'm looking forward to.
I've been working for Fastmail for 10 years now. It's been a great time. I've
loved building the product and the company. Like anything, there's been ups
(it's fun developing a site that customers really love and tell you about) and
downs (some people are addicted to being able to access their email, and
running a 24/7 email service means that if people can't get to their email for
even just 1 minute, you'll start hearing about it). After 10 years, it'll be
strange having a boss again. I've met a bunch of the Opera people, and it'll
be really great working with them. I know the other staff are looking forward
to it as well.

It'll also be great to have Neil on board as well. He worked for us over a
couple of summers, and basically designed the entire "new" web interface, all
the HTML, CSS and JS. We've already got 80% of a whole new AJAX interface done
(remember in programming though, the first 80% takes 80% of the time, the
remaining 20% takes the other 80% of the time), and I'm looking forward to
completely finishing that off, and working on a bunch of new stuff.

Hmmm, this story went on longer than I expected. Hope it's interesting to
someone...

~~~
paulsilver
I too hope you've done well out of the deal. I've been a paying Fastmail
customer for ~7 years and am very happy with it. The 2006 downtime and a few
other hiccups around the same time were annoying, but since then things have
felt rock solid.

I find the spam filter better than the one in Gmail, so thanks to whoever's
done the hard work with that.

And thank you for keeping the old web interface around, I prefer it over the
newer one. There's nothing particularly wrong with the newer one, I'm just
very used to the way the old one works and find it fast enough without AJAX
enhancements. That you kept the old interface going is one of the reasons I
stayed with Fastmail, if you'd forced a switch to the new one I'd have
probably gone to Gmail.

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gokhan
They have a pretty good plan for a startup if you want to go without a mail
server for some time.

For mails generated by user interaction, eg. "You have a new answer to your
question.", they have the limit of 2000 per hour. Can cover you for the first
2.000 - 3.000 users. And mail from their servers don't trigger spam filters at
Google, Hotmail etc.

I hope they keep the Business accounts running. Here's the features and
pricing table:

<http://www.fastmail.fm/pages/fastmail/docs/pricingtbl.html>

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dragonquest
I'm not sure whether this is a good thing or not. On the optimistic side, it
could mean a more resourceful entity with plenty of goodies coming in like
more File Hosting space.

On the other hand, I've been using the paid Fastmail service for over 4 years
now and one thing they did head and shoulders above the bigger players was
their service and support. Plus they were always pretty geeky, making sure the
expert user had lots of configuration options to tweak every possible thing.
Their sieve filtering was perhaps the best out there and the old web interface
rocks.

What I fear is Opera trying to make FM into a mass consumer product losing the
technical edge and going for the more flashy features like online chats rather
than putting in better sieve capabilities or something like better Pine/Alpine
support. How I wish this doesn't kill FM (I've prepaid for 2 years more). I
would hate to make a email service switch since that is my primary
communication medium online.

~~~
endtime
I don't know if you've used Opera, but it's by far the geekiest/most
customizable browser, IMO. Total remapping of all shortcuts, ability to
reconstruct the interface however you like from primitive controls, built in
support for content (ad) blocking and mouse gestures, user script
(Greasemonkey, sorta) support also built in, etc. I've never used Fastmail,
but as you describe it, they couldn't have picked a better browser to sell to.

~~~
dragonquest
I do use Opera as my primary browser since I've gotten used to it from the 5.x
timeframe. And I do agree that they could not have chosen a better browser to
sell to.

However, I'm wondering if it should have been sold at all, specifically to a
company that makes browsers. Why not to a hosting company like Rackspace's
acquisition of Mailtrust and perhaps more importantly, why sell at all if it
was a pretty profitable entity.

Now this may be the founder's big exit and I sincerely congratulate them for
it, however my concern lies about the consumer (me). I hope it all turns out
for the best of everyone involved, but I do have my reservations till I
actually see FM operating as well as, if not better, than the FM of old.

~~~
famrey
The founder hasn't been involved with the service for years. The people who
actually ran the service are still running it, and will keep doing that as
Opera employees.

Also: Opera doesn't just make browsers. Opera also makes all sorts of services
for both users and b2b customers. The browser just ties it all together.

------
greut
Is Operamail (<http://operamail.com/>) coming back? Those 3MB of storage were
just awesome.

------
uggedal
Fastmail.fm was in my opinion the best free web mail solution available before
Gmail came along.

~~~
Qz
I still use fastmail because I don't like Gmail...

~~~
greyboy
I absolutely agree - unfortunately, Gmail doesn't work great for everyone.

------
lena
There is a large thread about this on emaildiscussions.com:
[http://www.emaildiscussions.com/showthread.php?t=59311&p...](http://www.emaildiscussions.com/showthread.php?t=59311&page=9)

I am displeased that the FAQ doesn't mention any relevant privacy concerns,
even though for many people the fact that FM was a small company with a good
track record and privacy policy was an important reason to choose the service.

I also recognize the dismay of this comment:

 _\- 'FastMail's practical approach to user privacy has always been to be
extremely protective of customer privacy'. ...or we may just sell your all of
your data to a third party, giving you zero days notice or an option to cancel
without refund._

I really wished they would have at least given us some time to figure out what
we want to do.

~~~
famrey
There was no way to give people time to figure it out. The acquisition needed
to remain a secret until actually carried out, and once it was carried out,
this was the only way to inform people.

Also, Opera Software has an excellent privacy track record, and is located in
Norway, which has some of the world's strictest privacy laws.

------
sandis
Sometimes I, a long time Opera user, just don't understand them. From outside
it looks like they have hard time keeping focus.

~~~
famrey
No, Opera has a very clear focus. They are not only a browser company, but
also provides browser related services. They make money off of those things.
With this they can offer better email/messaging services to their business
customers.

------
RK
I've used Fastmail since 2001. Free or relatively cheap and IMAP was a winning
combination.

I admit that once Gmail started offering IMAP support I started migrating over
to Gmail, but I still use my fastmail accounts for other purposes.

