
My experience with FastMail as a Gmail replacement - workhere-io
http://blog.workhere.io/my-experience-with-fastmail-as-a-gmail-replacement/
======
cpursley
I'd pay twice the fastmail pricing package if they cut all ties with the the
USA, including moving their servers.

I already switched from dropbox to Jottacloud - a Norwegian company with their
servers in Norway.

Edit: looks like there are several good alternatives at this site:

[http://www.internationalman.com/78-global-
perspectives/945-n...](http://www.internationalman.com/78-global-
perspectives/945-nsa-scandal-shows-importance-of-offshoring-your-digital-
presence)

[http://www.SwissMail.org/](http://www.SwissMail.org/) Based in Switzerland.

[http://www.neomailbox.net/](http://www.neomailbox.net/) Based in Switzerland.

[https://secure.runbox.com/](https://secure.runbox.com/) Based in Norway,
which has strong privacy laws. Runbox is generally considered a cheap and
quality option.

[https://www.jumpshipservices.co/](https://www.jumpshipservices.co/) Parent
company is incorporated in Hong Kong with servers located in Switzerland.

~~~
oellegaard
Yeah, I don't get all the hype about Fastmail. To me, every US hosted solution
is like uploading your content to the US. As mentioned by countless blog
posts, I don't have anything to hide, but I should have the right to privacy.

Until I find a proper email solution within Europe, I don't see any reason to
switch from Gmail.

~~~
stock_toaster
For me my primary motivation to move away from Gmail was to leave Google's
umbrella (ads/being-a-product-not-a-customer/worse usability as time went on),
not to escape the USA/NSA (I moved before the NSA stuff came to light).

~~~
RexRollman
I'm the same way, although I went with Hushmail. I still use Google for search
but I no longer have a Google account.

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diroussel
My experience is that I've been using fastmail for 15 years, and have no need
to switch away.

It's interesting that the comments in the article made me login to the web
interface for the first time in a long time. As I tend to just use IMAP
between 3 computers and a few iOS devices. It works very well.

Back when I chose fastmail, the ability to set rules server side was a big
deal, and I still use this, but haven't needed to change them in some time. I
have all my notification emails (amazon, linkedin etc) go into a notifications
folder so they don't clog up my inbox.

Also I can make mailing list subscriptions go into subfolders too. All very
handy.

Another nice feature: If I have an email to 20 people, and one of the email
addresses is wrong, when I hit Send in Mail.app, I get an error saying which
email is wrong, and the email doesn't get sent. So I can correct it an retry.
This is much better, where the first mail works, but bounces on some people,
and then others in the group reply to the bad email.

------
mtgx
I heard on Security Now (twit.tv) that they (among other companies) were asked
if they ever provided master keys to US law enforcement, and they refused to
reply.

~~~
alfiejohn_
We did not refuse to reply. We have contacted the author to find out who he
contacted within the company, because it was the first time we have heard
about it!

Edit: I work for Opera Software/FastMail.FM

~~~
zimbatm
More importantly, can you answer the question ?

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bcl
I've been a happy customer for several years now. I've had zero problems with
them, but I also don't use the web interface for anything other than managing
my accounts (one feature is you can easily setup and manage family members
accounts).

I don't think that moving outside the US would make any practical difference.
Any mail sent to their servers from my regular correspondents would pass
through NSA monitored sites as they left the US and I pull everything off
using IMAP over SSL anyway so there isn't anything stored there for them to
seize.

Your email correspondence, unless encrypted with pgp, really should be
considered no different than sending a postcard in the mail. It can be
intercepted and copied at any number of points along the way.

~~~
workhere-io
_Any mail sent to their servers from my regular correspondents would pass
through NSA monitored sites as they left the US_

Sure, but a lot of HN readers and potential FastMail customers live in places
where traffic to/from FastMail's servers wouldn't be intercepted by the NSA
(if the servers were in Norway). So while moving servers to Norway wouldn't
make a difference to you, it would for a lot of other people.

~~~
bcl
Maybe. But I wouldn't count on it, and you're better off assuming that you are
monitored instead of depending on a server location.

To me the most compelling argument would be seizure laws. If you are one of
those people who use the mail server as a data store then it would be
worthwhile to have it in a place that would resist attempts to grab the
hardware.

------
jfb
I've been a Fastmail user for ages now. As I abhor and abjure web
applications, my personal calculus is different than that of someone seeking
to flee the UI changes that Google is implementing. Their IMAP service is rock
solid and very, very few spam emails get through their filters. That's all I
want, and Fastmail's ability to provide is why I'll continue to send them my
money.

I'm out on the edge of the email usage distribution, however, so I try not to
generalize my experiences and biases too much.

------
alpyne
Con: No labels. Saved searches go some of the way, but not as convenient.
Folder-based storage feels old. Whatever the UI terminology (labels,
playlists, tags), its clear that the trend is to embrace the non-physicality
of information and allow it to "live" in many "places" simultaneously.

------
Osmium
"Most of FastMail.fm's pages have an outdated look to them - only the Minimal
theme looks modern. Apple's success should be enough to convince everyone that
design matters."

Ironically, Apple could take this advice too; it's not like their webmail
design is anything special (in my opinion). Looks too much like a desktop app
when it should look more like a web app and feels slow to boot.

Re. Fastmail: I'm trying them for 6 months. I'm happy enough so far and think
I'll stick with them. Still holding out for push support for iPhone and more
secure on-server email storage though... Both of which are offered by
Rackspace, which seems to have a good reputation as well, so I'm tempted to
switch.

------
elo
I asked FastMail support about their US data center a few weeks ago,
suggesting they offer an alternative. This was their reply:

"We DO plan to set up a non-US data centre, and are making progress towards
this. However it is expensive and time-consuming, and we're not ready to offer
this as an extra yet. We will definitely make it known when such an option
becomes available."

~~~
jfb
Cool. I hope they do make it an extra-cost option, because +1 for price
discrimination.

------
bjourne
I'm in the process of moving my gmail account to fastmail. Trying to move 250k
mail (7 gb) from one provider to another is painful. I'm using the imapcopy.pl
script which works by reading one mail from the source account and then
uploading it to the target. Apparently it's a pretty expensive process as I'm
getting my access throttled both by gmail and fastmail. Gmail even shuts of
imap access entirely if you hammer their servers hard enough. Well if they
didn't want me to flood them, they should have made it possible to download
your mail archive in a single tarball...

So far, after running imapcopy.pl for almost a whole week, only 100k mails
have been successfully copied.

~~~
ndwns
Did you try their "Migrate IMAP Mailbox" which grabs directly from your GMail?
It pulled across 3GB in about 30 minutes and worked well.

~~~
bjourne
Thanks for the tip. I've tried that option but it doesn't seem to work at all
for large mailboxes. Also gmail doesn't expose any api for exporting
mailboxes, so fastmail still has to copy each message individually which is
very time consuming.

------
hkarthik
No calendar is a pretty big downside. I would venture to say this is even more
important to me than staying on Gmail now. Especially with shared calendars
between myself and my spouse.

~~~
osxical
But if you have iCal, just store your .ics file in the FastMail file store and
give the http url to whoever you like and viola - instant group/family
calendar. iCal will do all the work for you once you set it up.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICal)

------
zw
I'm toying with running my own mail, calendar, and contacts on a VPS. Tired of
being a second class citizen in Google's eyes for not using their apps.

~~~
ancarda
If you do, please write a comprehensive guide on how to do this. I eventually
gave up trying to figure out how to setup a mail server.

~~~
zw
It might be a while (personally busy at the moment), but it's a project at the
tippy-top of my to-do list.

------
mbesto
You missed a very big con

\- Does not support push on mobile.

~~~
workhere-io
Well, I'd prefer the mobile web version anyway. Which works, but isn't as
slick as the desktop version.

------
fingerprinter
This is going to sound trite, but I won't pay for something sight unseen.
There is no preview option and there are no screenshots on their website. I
literally have no idea what their webmail interface looks like. How could I
possibly sign up for this service?

~~~
workhere-io
There's a free 60-day trial, no credit card required.
[https://www.fastmail.fm/signup/personal.html](https://www.fastmail.fm/signup/personal.html).
What more could you ask for? :)

~~~
fingerprinter
Thanks, not sure how I missed that!

Signed up, checked it out.

------
maaaats
I'd like if the fastmail website provided some screenshots and other info
about the product. Right now the only thing I'm told is the size of my inbox
and some other numbers.

~~~
workhere-io
Here's what the Minimal Theme looks like:
[http://i.imgur.com/N8pqIG6.png](http://i.imgur.com/N8pqIG6.png). Also,
there's a free 60-day trial:
[https://www.fastmail.fm/signup/personal.html](https://www.fastmail.fm/signup/personal.html)

------
WordSkill
I paid for FastMail for about 5 years until they lost a lot of customers'
data, including mine, and refused to come clean about it.

~~~
stock_toaster
Can you provide some more information about this? As a current FastMail
customer I am quite interested!

------
spiantino
I just made the switch, and I have to add some things missing here

Cons: \- No priority inbox \- FastMail service is pretty poor

~~~
e_proxus
Another con that I didn't really expect:

Their address book is okay via the web (pretty much like Gmail's), but can
only be accessed read-only via LDAP (and can't sync with iOS, you can search
it but you can't populate the iOS address book with it). So, the only way to
edit contacts is via web, and you can't keep your mobile address book up to
date with it.

For now, I'm stuck with Google Contacts until I find a better provider.

~~~
levosmetalo
Tried Zoho lately? I played with it two years ago, but decided going with
Google Apps free tier at that time. It might be interesting to people sick of
Google, though won't help much with the NSA issues.

~~~
e_proxus
Couldn't find anything that looking like contact hosting. Also, Zoho feels a
bit overkill for that scenario.

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FridayWithJohn
rather costly if you ask me.

~~~
workhere-io
You can pay up to five years in advance and save money.

