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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.

by 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.)
    - bad_user 11y ago

by vvpan 11y ago

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.)
  - bad_user 11y ago