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> I'd be willing to pay a subscription for email if it's worth it. I'd love to hear others' experience with them. It's a very good no-nonsense service based on

> I'd be willing to pay a subscription for email if it's worth it. I'd love to hear others' experience with them. It's a very good no-nonsense service based on standard protocols, although a bit pricey (compared to a grandfathered, free Google Apps account). They've lately been expanding to offer a more complete offering (CalDAV, CardDAV, etc). This means it plays nicely with any platform where these standards can be applied (Googley or not) and it also means it's easy to take data ownership seriously, if that's your thing. I only have positive experiences with fastmail, and I like that they don't have messed up and bloated their WebUI like Google have. Currently I'm only using it for my personal email because of price. It's not that expensive, but because it's 100% free for me, I still have the rest of my family on the Google apps account. The reassuring thing about paying for a service like this is that you know who the customer is. Fastmail will not change their UI to sneak in a "social network" in your inbox just to mine more data and milk more ad-dollars out of you. Edit: Clarifications about "pricey"

vvpan 11y ago
I have not shopped around for mail, so I have nothing to compare it with. But their tiers are $10/$20/$40 for .25/1/15GB per year. To me that's a _tiny_ price. I don't know what you mean by "pricey" then.
- hhandoko 11y ago
  It's pricey relative to the other options. As mentioned, OP had a grandfathered Google Apps for Business (so, free forever?). Another alternative is to sign up to a $5-$10/month web hosting package which normally comes with free email hosting. Disclaimer: I'm a FastMail customer, been really happy with their service :) I also have a grandfathered Google Apps for Business account.
  - AlisdairO 11y ago
    FWIW I'm just switching over from using a web hosting package for my email towards FastMail. I was generally happy enough with the web hosting package, but didn't actually need it for anything much other than the email in the end. The biggest benefits I've noticed are reduced spam and a web interface that works well - I can actually search all of my email from my phone now, which was previously a practical impossibility :-). I hadn't noticed any slowdown, so kudos to the Fastmail guys!
- iagooar 11y ago
  It's not pricey, people are just not used to pay for email. I don't remember the exact numbers, but it's more or less the same as Google with a custom domain. BTW, Fastmail is amazing, been using it for a while now and super happy. It's solid and has some really good features.
- josteink 11y ago
  > But their tiers are $10/$20/$40 for .25/1/15GB per year. Which means if I were to migrate all my (perma-free) Google Apps account (for the whole family) and were to retain my current quotas, I would have to shell out $40*10 or so. Fastmail is nice and all, but I know lots of ways I'd rather spend $400 which doesn't involve being tech support for 10x family members needing help having their accounts migrated on all their devices.
  - jorangreef 11y ago
    Are you sure that all 10 of your family members need 15GB of email storage? Even if they did, it's $3.33 per family member per month. And if they don't need that much, it's only $0.83 per family member per month.
    - mjevans 11y ago
      Need? Nope. However it's a total non-starter if they can't archive email forever. Bonus, like faxing still is for some in business, today's worker (and end user) is going to force everything through that hole, because it's the magic service that just makes it work... and when it doesn't they can blame it.
  - gkop 11y ago
    It's not fair to call Fastmail "a bit pricey" when your point of comparison is a special circumstance you are in that is not available for new users. In general, Google Apps is $50/year, which is 25% more than the comparable Fastmail plan.
    - josteink 11y ago
      Fair enough. Original comment edited to clarify the "pricey" bit.
    - danieldk 11y ago
      But it's not really comparable since Google Apps has a much better storage story (Google Drive vs. WebDAV-based storage) and an office suite with collaborative editing, etc. Also, additional storage is much cheaper. You get 100GB extra storage for $1.99 per month or 1TB for $4 per month (or 'unlimited' if the domain has more than five users). But I agree that $40 per year is not pricy for a fast e-mail service with a lot of redundancy. Plus, Fastmail contributes a lot to open source projects such as Cyrus. (Note: I have both a Google Apps and a Fastmail account.)
brongondwana 11y ago
Yeah, you've got something for free that Google now charge $5/month/user for. I would probably stick with them too if I was in your situation! Thanks for being one of our customers :)
- ripdog 11y ago
  I have a free GApps account, but I ditched it in favour of FastMail - primarily to extract at least some of my life from the Google juggernaut, and also to support the little Aussie battlers. Thanks for offering an awesome, rock solid service, and supporting Open Source so well. I'm seriously looking forward to JMAP, I hope some other big services adopt it when it stabilizes. Give your JMAP dev(s) a hug from me, please! Oh, and I hope the DDOS doesn't cost too much - any chance we could have a blog post about the costs of the DDOS attack after it's all over? I know most companies don't like talking about operational costs, and I'll understand if you guys are the same. Cheers!
  - brongondwana 11y ago
    We're definitely planning another post at some point about the systems that we've developed over the past couple of days and the additional services we've purchased to help us ride out the storm. I'm looking forward to JMAP as well - there are a few of us working on it (I wrote the proxy, which is in serious need of some love)

vvpan 11y ago

I have not shopped around for mail, so I have nothing to compare it with. But their tiers are $10/$20/$40 for .25/1/15GB per year. To me that's a _tiny_ price. I don't know what you mean by "pricey" then.

hhandoko 11y ago
It's pricey relative to the other options. As mentioned, OP had a grandfathered Google Apps for Business (so, free forever?). Another alternative is to sign up to a $5-$10/month web hosting package which normally comes with free email hosting. Disclaimer: I'm a FastMail customer, been really happy with their service :) I also have a grandfathered Google Apps for Business account.
- AlisdairO 11y ago
  FWIW I'm just switching over from using a web hosting package for my email towards FastMail. I was generally happy enough with the web hosting package, but didn't actually need it for anything much other than the email in the end. The biggest benefits I've noticed are reduced spam and a web interface that works well - I can actually search all of my email from my phone now, which was previously a practical impossibility :-). I hadn't noticed any slowdown, so kudos to the Fastmail guys!
iagooar 11y ago
It's not pricey, people are just not used to pay for email. I don't remember the exact numbers, but it's more or less the same as Google with a custom domain. BTW, Fastmail is amazing, been using it for a while now and super happy. It's solid and has some really good features.
josteink 11y ago
> But their tiers are $10/$20/$40 for .25/1/15GB per year. Which means if I were to migrate all my (perma-free) Google Apps account (for the whole family) and were to retain my current quotas, I would have to shell out $40*10 or so. Fastmail is nice and all, but I know lots of ways I'd rather spend $400 which doesn't involve being tech support for 10x family members needing help having their accounts migrated on all their devices.
- jorangreef 11y ago
  Are you sure that all 10 of your family members need 15GB of email storage? Even if they did, it's $3.33 per family member per month. And if they don't need that much, it's only $0.83 per family member per month.
  - mjevans 11y ago
    Need? Nope. However it's a total non-starter if they can't archive email forever. Bonus, like faxing still is for some in business, today's worker (and end user) is going to force everything through that hole, because it's the magic service that just makes it work... and when it doesn't they can blame it.
- gkop 11y ago
  It's not fair to call Fastmail "a bit pricey" when your point of comparison is a special circumstance you are in that is not available for new users. In general, Google Apps is $50/year, which is 25% more than the comparable Fastmail plan.
  - josteink 11y ago
    Fair enough. Original comment edited to clarify the "pricey" bit.
  - danieldk 11y ago
    But it's not really comparable since Google Apps has a much better storage story (Google Drive vs. WebDAV-based storage) and an office suite with collaborative editing, etc. Also, additional storage is much cheaper. You get 100GB extra storage for $1.99 per month or 1TB for $4 per month (or 'unlimited' if the domain has more than five users). But I agree that $40 per year is not pricy for a fast e-mail service with a lot of redundancy. Plus, Fastmail contributes a lot to open source projects such as Cyrus. (Note: I have both a Google Apps and a Fastmail account.)

brongondwana 11y ago

Yeah, you've got something for free that Google now charge $5/month/user for. I would probably stick with them too if I was in your situation! Thanks for being one of our customers :)

ripdog 11y ago
I have a free GApps account, but I ditched it in favour of FastMail - primarily to extract at least some of my life from the Google juggernaut, and also to support the little Aussie battlers. Thanks for offering an awesome, rock solid service, and supporting Open Source so well. I'm seriously looking forward to JMAP, I hope some other big services adopt it when it stabilizes. Give your JMAP dev(s) a hug from me, please! Oh, and I hope the DDOS doesn't cost too much - any chance we could have a blog post about the costs of the DDOS attack after it's all over? I know most companies don't like talking about operational costs, and I'll understand if you guys are the same. Cheers!
- brongondwana 11y ago
  We're definitely planning another post at some point about the systems that we've developed over the past couple of days and the additional services we've purchased to help us ride out the storm. I'm looking forward to JMAP as well - there are a few of us working on it (I wrote the proxy, which is in serious need of some love)