I’ve used Fastmail for about 20 years. The worst thing that happened was that because of an outage in 2006, I couldn’t log in to download my homework in time for my teacher to believe I wasn’t faking. The best thing was that I deleted all of my emails in the 2020s due to an IMAP mistake and a human got in contact with me and fixed it. I think that speaks for itself. Definitely not canceling that subscription anytime soon

Considering moving to Fastmail myself. I usually use mailbox.org but they've been having far too many outages recently (some declared on their status page, some not). Problem is I use numerous E-Mail aliases for different services and it seems intimidating to transfer them all.

Can anyone speak to whether Fastmail is more or less likely to be accepted on "strict" sites that require larger providers?

Changing email providers sounds daunting, but it was relatively painless when I actually committed to it. I did a search over my password manager for my old email and just went through the list logging in and switching to the new email. Probably took a few hours at most.

For anything I missed, I set gmail to forward everything to my new host. Cleaned up the few things I missed, and am only left with spam. I still leave the forwarding rule there in case a personal contact or service I forgot pops up, but it has been years without any issue, and I never feel the need to log into gmail. Certain emails are not forwarded I think, despite the "forward all" rule... but nothing I've ever found to matter.

Fastmail is the service I've paid for longer than any other, without any pauses, and with the most satisfaction of any subscription. Like the author says, email isn't exciting, it isn't a fun or interesting subscription, but it works perfectly for me and offers excellent value for what I pay. It's so gratifyingly functional and boring.

Good move! I was there before, and the worst part was... I was using a @gmail.com address. Bad mistake on my part. So actually tracking what I used the address with, that was my real pain. Now everything is on my custom domain, so if I need to move on from my current provider, it will be painless. In the process I did manage to delete a whole bunch of accounts I didn't use anymore.

Incidentally, I also moved to fastmail, and it is just boringly fantastic. It works. It has features I actually need and enjoy (masked emails!) and I recommend it to anyone who asks.

I recently switched over 6 gmail accounts (both personal and business) from gmail to fastmail. I have been suddenly bombarded with a mountain of spam that the goog must have been catching. It doesn't seem like my constant flagging is doing anything. I ended up building a convoluted mess of filters that will probably cause me to misflag something important one day. :-/

Also, I really miss the auto categorization into primary, promotions, social and updates. This is a killer feature!

I'm happy to be rid of the goog's convoluted management console, but wondering why fastmail's spam filters aren't up to snuff...

A shout out to the fastmail management who acquired pobox.com and kept the domain going, leveraging the fastmail infra.

I was really pleased my decades long investment in @short.name paid off, and I have been able to keep a short @pobox.com instance, which I undoubtedly would lose in the migration into @fastmail.com

Aside from the vanity aspect, the distinction between a real mail provider and a stable forwarding service is a useful one. Thank you Bron (and others) for keeping things going.

My big problem with leaving Google is I’ve clicked on far too many ‘login with google’ boxes. In retrospect this was a mistake as it now ties my own domain to google basically forever, but lots of sites don’t even have the option to undo it.

I have a blog post that I've been meaning to write about why I moved from Fastmail to Gmail. I love Fastmail as a product, but I realised it wasn't what I wanted anymore from my email.

I think there's a tension between explicit and implicit organisation. If you want a really good email client, Fastmail is great, but while I did care about that at one point in my life, what I want now is really just the big box at the top of the email telling me about my package arriving today or showing my boarding pass. Fastmail is excellent for explicit organisation, but its implicit organisation isn't great. Gmail is the other way around. I don't like the Gmail UI or any of the organisation features, but I also don't really need to use them.

I have been fairly happy with ProtonMail, except for a while back their Android app became unusable, often not sending mail! I started using web mail in a mobile browser, and whilst i have struggled with it for probably 3 years now it is annoying.

Tbf using it with outlook on my desktop is annoying too. The bridge often logs out on restart. I was thinking about Fastmail as an alternative

The real downside to subdomain addressing is that very few other providers support it. I think Migadu is the only one I could find. If you do end up needing to leave Fastmail, you might have to configure each and every subdomain as a unique email domain somewhere else. I would avoid it if you're starting fresh.

> Going and updating my accounts with a new address was easier than I was expecting

Is this really true? Out of the probably many hundreds of online accounts I use I can think of very few that actually let you change the underlying email (which in almost ever case is the username) without having to create a brand new account.

Shameless plug - I’ve made an app for Apple platforma, that gives easier access to masked mail (from menu bar on macOS)

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/secret-inbox/id6462335670

Related:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48375016 Gmail thinks I'm stupid, so I left (moddedbear.com) 75 days ago, 828 comments

I generally am very satisfied with fastmail but I do have a hard time getting it to learn what is spam, maybe I'm missing something.

Fastmail is great because every time I get a new startup idea I can set up emails for each domain name I buy and it all goes to the same inbox.

I'm a happy user of Fastmail, but I would prefer a properly EU-hosted service. (Fastmail now have data storage in the EU, but much of their infrastructure is in the US and data still passes through there - something that they're open about, but I'd prefer not to happen). The last time I looked at mailbox.org the offer wasn't nearly as good as Fastmail in terms of storage, catch-all email addresses etc, but I took another look recently and it seems to be better. Does anyone here have first-hand experience of mailbox.org?

I moved to using Fastmail as my primary over 7 years ago and I still use it as my main email address but I had hoped I could get rid of my gmail but instead it became a catch-all junk inbox similar to OP's gmail. The main issue is that so many websites use Login in with Google as a way to sign-in that I just had to keep my gmail logged in most of the time.

So instead of "moving away from Gmail to Fastmail" it's more like "using Gmail and Fastmail" for me.

I'm using Fastmail for about 15 years and this is one of the services I'm extremely happy with. Definitely recommend!

Switched to FastMail two years ago. Mostly, it's a pretty boring service, which is exactly why I'm willing to pay for it!

I'm in the process of migrating away from my custom domain on Google (I'm grandfathered in from back when they offered it for free). So far getting all my old email, contacts, and calendar info FastMail has been seamless. All that's left is to repoint the DNS.

Like another comment, I too have a couple of services connected to "Sign in w/ Google". Until I actually delete my Google org, those will still remain active. Since I'm not paying, I feel OK about this.

Subdomain addressing for auto-sorting is clever. Beats writing filter rules one by one.

I like Fastmail but I'm starting to feel that the subscription cost is a bit overpriced for the way I use it (just IMAP email - not using the app, calendars, contacts, file hosting, ...). I've researched and found some other independent paid email providers that are significantly cheaper, although I suspect most of having a low bus factor with just 1 or 2 people operating them.

Did this a half decade ago and hacent looked back.

I got the same capabilities from mxroute.com, another worthwhile alternative - hosted in the USA. Plus they offer a no subscription, 10GB one time fee (I think $150 at the time I got it) account...unlimited domains/subdomains, etc -everything managed thru directadmin. Replaced my Google Workspace email w/this and never looked back. I still use Google for authentication and Google Drive.

I have been very happy with mailbox.org. I recently signed up for early access to Thundermail, which is the new email service being rolled out by the Thunderbird team. I have no particular need to change except that I like the idea of supporting Thunderbird. So I will be keeping an eye on it.

If you use a custom domain and email clients rather than webmail, moving around becomes a lot easier. Another tip is to use a service like addy.io where you can create a new alias for every service, to help protect against spam.

Only thing missing is a Screener, which once you have it, you cant live without. No need for burner adresses, as nobod lands in your inbox unapproves. I added it to my TUI, nvim and markdown first email client, neomd.

FastMail has an admirable bug bounty.

Have its privacy claims ever been independently audited?

https://www.fastmail.com/bug-bounty/

Anyone have thoughts on proton vs fastmail?

I made the move some time ago. There are some unpolished parts here and there, but I'm glad I made the move.

Somewhat unrelated criticism of Gmail - during the migration, I found out that there is no way to search for starred archived emails in Gmail. They don't show up in Starred, nor in any search with is:starred. Their star status also doesn't carry over when migrating.

One underrated thing is how easy it is to get credentials for sending emails. If you self host a lot of stuff it's quick to get going.

I did this for my business' email about a year ago. A few weeks ago, I moved everything. Fastmail is awesome, but perhaps more important is how bad Gmail's web interface is. Fastmail is way more responsive and fluid and feels almost native.

The pricing page is dishonest. It says prominently £4.50/month but that's for an annual subscription (£54 for 12 months is in smaller text below).

If you want a monthly price you have to tab across to get the true figure of £5.40.

The higher price wouldn't put me off - it's still very low - but the deception erodes trust from the very start.

Fastmail is fantastic, I've been a very happy customer for at least a couple years now.

Masked emails have been so nice for throwaway/sketchy sites. It's done everything I could ask, would highly recommend for anyone looking to make the switch from elsewhere.

a bit overpriced, overall

I have used Fastmail for 5+ years, no real complaints other then some real emails get caught up in spam folder.

But can I still give all my emails to OpenAI??

(semi-serious question because I’m currently very opposed, but I’m afraid of my future decisions)

The last tine I tried to switch from Gmail it was a complete failure and the main reason was spam. I get --a lot of it-- and I've even had trolls sign me up for spam lists before. I think conceivably the biggest reason to use Gmail is now gone because LLMs could classify spam almost perfectly.

If I were to try switch again I'd look for a mail service that specifically mentioned using LLMs for spam. If they say they're using one of the "open source" spam prevention solutions I can almost guarantee you its not going to do shit. They aren't good enough to catch all the permutations of serious spammers (who probably test on those tools before sending anyway.)

Edit: it also occurs to me that you could simply download all your mail locally and pipe it through a local model. That could actually work really well, tbh. If you hosted that on a server you would have the advantages of online access with gmail-grade spam filtering at any standard host.

Anyone here know why the animations in the Fastmail iOS app don't run in 60FPS?

Long time Fastmail customer here. They need to stop their recent trend of breaking their UI, especially in backwards-incompatible ways.

They recently recently removed app-based font size from the backend (but just for mobile), and released an updated Android app which only uses the system-level font scaling, which broke it for people who hadn't upgraded yet. Plus the app-based functionality was useful. Not sure why couldn't just add a new "Use system font-scaling"

Then there was the debacle of removing horizontal separators in the list view. After backlash, they added an option.

I moved to Fastmail from gmail a few years ago. I'm thrilled to not have Google searching my primary email address any longer. I still use gmail for SSO for a lot of things from my 'gmail.com' account.

I've used fastmail since 2014. No complaints!

I made this exact move a month or so ago when google threw some money Musk’s way - and I gotta say, the transition was almost imperceptible. An hour, maybe, of configuring and testing, spaced out over a couple days, and boom, it’s like I was never on gmail.

fastmail really needs inbox categorization on the level of gmail

Having started down this path of non-big-corp hosted email and my own personal domain (which is definitely not self-hosting, though I'd never want that inflicted upon me) almost a decade ago, I won't say it's been a rabbit hole. But there have been some learnings over the years — realisations, rather. The biggest: I went overboard with everything around moving my email away from Gmail. Almost like what I did with seedboxes over the years, until I realised I didn't need most of what a seedbox offers, and that I didn't need a seedbox in the first place.

Whenever this discussion comes up here, or say on Reddit, the focus immediately moves to privacy, anonymity, tracking. Those are valid points, no doubt. What takes a back seat, I suspect, are aspects like reliability and some sort of accountable customer support — and no, a smaller company doesn't need an army of support agents, just a few people and an intention to help and solve problems, delays being okay. Many utterly irresponsible hosted email providers get a pass just because they posture with an activist flag. The whole virtue signalling in this sub-industry muddles things.

Some are worse. Some deny you basic email access in the name of things like e2ee. Now e2ee is a fine idea, but enforcing it unilaterally — and yet not really enforcing it, because let's face it, you can't until you "move" your ecosystem, the way Signal has been "moving" it. Locked to the app, locked to the web app, yet your emails flow to other systems and addresses that aren't e2ee (as they should!). You just can't use IMAP, among other things. This has become such a toxic topic on certain forums that I start wondering if maybe I'm the one holding it wrong.

Another observation: bundling things that aren't email. This is another contentious topic. I wish there were more mainstream, custom-domain-hosted email providers that just did email, nothing else. I first started using disposable email designed to route to my domain via my mail host (a German one). It was as convoluted as it gets, and still is. Then came Apple's HME, with limitations I wouldn't wish on an enemy. Finally settled on SimpleLogin. Not the best, but what I like is that it gets out of the way — I can receive emails on those addresses and send from them easily. It's also a separate service, not hooked to my mail host, and I wouldn't want that now.

What would I do if I had to go back to when I was starting?

1. I wouldn't look for a "private" email provider — just get my own domain (which I did) and sign up with a better-priced, responsible, email-only provider (preferably something larger).

2. Never use the free email that comes with the mail host account.

3. Let go of privacy and tracking on email. It's almost painful to say, but I'm tired of that part.

And if Gmail hadn't done idiotic things like forcing "folders" on my account with no way to change or delete them (Important, and whatnot), I might have just stayed with them. At least my emails would have been delivered — unlike with my current host, which doesn't do "emailing" up to standard. For heaven's sake, just let my email through, and let senders get through to me as long as their ID is verified and they're not on any spam list.

Hell, I am thinking of moving a domain of mine to Zoho. A company I'd have never imagined thinking of in the same breath and it has not become "better" somehow. But here we go, a decade later. This is just a rant I guess. But I am really exhausted and yes switch mail providers even with your own domain is daunting! The apprehension of downtime, fear of losing emails, something breaking etc are just too much. But at least there's a possibility.

tl;dr: If I do it over and Gmail stayed what it was back then, I'd just go back to them, just with "my own domain." Not that Google got better; just shows how disillusioned I am with the personal-domain-hosting hype.

My own domain, nothing else. Not the rest of what I've done chasing for "this kind of" mail hosting.

Subdomain addressing really is a killer feature. Since developers are braindead and can't implement a valid email address parser to save their lives, 'foo+bar@mydomain.com', 'foo-bar@mydomain.com', and 'foo.bar@mydomain.com' often get rejected as "invalid email addresses". But 'foo@bar.mydomain.com' always works fine.

Fastmail's Gmail integration to injest mails and calendars works fantastically. I've only had the calendar integration fail once, and was easily able to reconnect it. And iirc, you can even send mail through Gmail from Fastmail, so you can use Fastmail as an interface for both systems.

Up until recently my biggest gripe was the lack of offline mail, but finally both the web app and mobile app have offline now. The UI is still a teeny bit clunky (the whole email view reloads itself, even in the mobile app, for no reason), but I barely notice it. It's very stable, fast, reliable, and simple. I even use the 'file storage' feature as a replacement for GDrive sharing the occasional file.

One thing you don't realize when you leave Gmail is just how much crap you've signed up to over the years. I haven't used my Gmail for several years now but it still gets mail. (I'm keeping the account active so nobody else takes it and uses it for a weird attack)

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