4 ms·

> 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

> 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
    > Google Apps has a much better storage story (Google Drive vs. WebDAV-based storage) I've been a Dropbox user even before switching off Google Apps, because Dropbox has a much better client and compared to alternatives, storage for them is not just a complementary to something else, so for example they support Linux as well. Which is very important for a multi-platform guy such as myself. Dropbox is also integrated with Microsoft's Office Online, with Gmail (by means of a Chrome extension) and with Fastmail's web interface. So from Fastmail's web interface you can attach files straight from Dropbox. Plenty of apps have integration with Dropbox actually, like for example 1Password. Dropbox is also the suggested alternative to iCloud by Apple. And that's not the only option. If you're a power user interested in security, there's also SpiderOak. It's a bit more pricey, but that's because they are doing encryption and so cannot take advantage of duplicate files and other gimmicks like that. And it's worth it for people worrying about the privacy of their data. > 1TB for $4 per month The pricing you're talking about is about the Vault option and is $5 per user per month and not $4. And the big problem is that's misleading. That's $5 per month per user and is applied for all users in your Google Apps account, whether they need it or not. My wife for example certainly does not need 1 TB and for small businesses that can be very problematic, as you can easily pay an extra $100 per month. In other words, I see no reason to encourage a monoculture on the basis of tighter integration or complementary pricing that's misleading. We've been experiencing this strategy time and time again in the past from companies like Microsoft. You'd think we should have learned by now. In fact such marketing strategies are exemplified in books such as "Predictably Irrational" by Dan Ariely. That was an interesting read if you're interested. And it never ends up well, either for consumers or for the industry at large. And you've got good options available that I think are better than Google Drive. > an office suite with collaborative editing But nobody stops you from continuing to use Google's Docs, in combination with Fastmail and Dropbox or whatever. I've done that, it's not bad and should not be a reason to keep using Gmail. Big companies like Google, Microsoft or Apple want you to get from them everything but the kitchen sink, because that's how they achieve lock-in, that's how they can use their brand muscle to make you buy shit you don't need or stick to inferior options. You shouldn't forget that Gmail is about email and if Gmail no longer does email well for you, then complementaries like Google Drive or Google Docs won't make it magically work better at email. But btw, did you know that Microsoft's Office Online can edit and save files as ODF, the standard document format and Google Docs does not support ODF? In fact Google Docs doesn't support editing any of the common formats, as they require conversion in their own format in order to edit those documents, leading to a form of lock-in that Microsoft has only dreamt of.
tajen 11y ago
Are you talking about Google Apps for Business, or Gmail for personal use? I thought the latter was free?

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
  > Google Apps has a much better storage story (Google Drive vs. WebDAV-based storage) I've been a Dropbox user even before switching off Google Apps, because Dropbox has a much better client and compared to alternatives, storage for them is not just a complementary to something else, so for example they support Linux as well. Which is very important for a multi-platform guy such as myself. Dropbox is also integrated with Microsoft's Office Online, with Gmail (by means of a Chrome extension) and with Fastmail's web interface. So from Fastmail's web interface you can attach files straight from Dropbox. Plenty of apps have integration with Dropbox actually, like for example 1Password. Dropbox is also the suggested alternative to iCloud by Apple. And that's not the only option. If you're a power user interested in security, there's also SpiderOak. It's a bit more pricey, but that's because they are doing encryption and so cannot take advantage of duplicate files and other gimmicks like that. And it's worth it for people worrying about the privacy of their data. > 1TB for $4 per month The pricing you're talking about is about the Vault option and is $5 per user per month and not $4. And the big problem is that's misleading. That's $5 per month per user and is applied for all users in your Google Apps account, whether they need it or not. My wife for example certainly does not need 1 TB and for small businesses that can be very problematic, as you can easily pay an extra $100 per month. In other words, I see no reason to encourage a monoculture on the basis of tighter integration or complementary pricing that's misleading. We've been experiencing this strategy time and time again in the past from companies like Microsoft. You'd think we should have learned by now. In fact such marketing strategies are exemplified in books such as "Predictably Irrational" by Dan Ariely. That was an interesting read if you're interested. And it never ends up well, either for consumers or for the industry at large. And you've got good options available that I think are better than Google Drive. > an office suite with collaborative editing But nobody stops you from continuing to use Google's Docs, in combination with Fastmail and Dropbox or whatever. I've done that, it's not bad and should not be a reason to keep using Gmail. Big companies like Google, Microsoft or Apple want you to get from them everything but the kitchen sink, because that's how they achieve lock-in, that's how they can use their brand muscle to make you buy shit you don't need or stick to inferior options. You shouldn't forget that Gmail is about email and if Gmail no longer does email well for you, then complementaries like Google Drive or Google Docs won't make it magically work better at email. But btw, did you know that Microsoft's Office Online can edit and save files as ODF, the standard document format and Google Docs does not support ODF? In fact Google Docs doesn't support editing any of the common formats, as they require conversion in their own format in order to edit those documents, leading to a form of lock-in that Microsoft has only dreamt of.

tajen 11y ago

Are you talking about Google Apps for Business, or Gmail for personal use? I thought the latter was free?