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I'm going to repost an earlier question I had about FastMail ... It seems like everyone I read loves using FastMail for personal email/calendar/contacts. What

I'm going to repost an earlier question I had about FastMail ... It seems like everyone I read loves using FastMail for personal email/calendar/contacts. What I haven't found is many Businesses using FastMail for corporate email/calendar/contacts. Can someone compare FastMail (for business usage) to Office 365 and/or Google Apps? Original question, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10511000 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10511000

mrmondo 11y ago
Fastmail is email and calendaring not for cloud based based document editing / file storage.
- danieldk 11y ago
  It's clear from tiffanyh's comment that the question is about the mail/calendar/address book part. Though, I cannot give an answer to that question. From my experience with a personal account, I can say that Fastmail permits much more customization.
  - eggnet 11y ago
    They aren't independent questions. Why would you get cloud based document editing and storage from microsoft or google, and then not use the freely included and well integrated calendaring and email that either provide.
    - mrmondo 11y ago
      Trust me - Microsoft's email and calendaring is anything but well integrated, it's a flaky, unreliable mess.
      - worldadventurer 11y ago
        Can you please expound on how it's flaky and unreliable? I'm a user and am wondering what I'm missing. :)
- brongondwana 11y ago
  We do have file storage via WebDAV or ftp, though it's not as full featured as companies that specialise in it. I wrote that up last year as well. It works OK, though it will be nicer one we spec out jmap file storage api.
zachlatta 11y ago
We tried using FastMail for our (small) company, but switched after ~8 months because we started running into deliverability issues and countless issues with shared calendars being unshared (or sometimes losing events). We also couldn't use any of the nice sales tools that integrate with Google Apps (or any of the tools that make managing calendars easier, like https://claralabs.com/ https://claralabs.com/ or http://boomerangcalendar.com/ http://boomerangcalendar.com/). We're now on Google Apps and very happy.
- bad_user 11y ago
  I've seen a couple of nice tools integrated with Gmail and its web UI. The ones you mention are like that. However my problem with such tools are that they are not operating on standards. For one I wouldn't want to be locked into Gmail. But more importantly, tools depending on proprietary platforms usually have a short life. For example people loved Mailbox from Dropbox, while I was the one complaining that it only works with Gmail and iCloud. And I was right, Mailbox is dying. And also these tools get access to all of your email, which is a privacy concern. And in the context of a company, that can mean industrial espionage. Personally I cannot understand how people can trust things like IFTTT, but whatever.
  - zachlatta 11y ago
    100% agree with you, especially on the privacy concerns. But you have to pick your battles and, when we were looking into these tools, our battle was not the privacy of our company email or calendar.
    - JupiterMoon 11y ago
      I guess it depends how much of your companies IP is sent around in internal emails...
      - zachlatta 11y ago
        Yeah, that's a good point. Nearly all of our work is open source, so we weren't too concerned about losing IP.
jorangreef 11y ago
Office 365 at least has several well known bugs: 1. Silently dropping email (no smtp transaction bounce, not in junk, no rules in place) for a specific single sender at a domain, where email from other senders at the same domain is accepted. Hundreds of people have posted about this online with no fix or acknowledgement from Microsoft. 2. Overly strict hardfail SPF policy by default for new customers who have no idea of SPF and should be using softfail. These customers often use third party systems to send out hundreds of account statements. These get blocked by other email hosts. The customers themselves have no idea and never correct their SPF, saying something like "it must be an issue on your side". 3. Blocking entire /24 IP ranges including good senders with good reputation, on the basis of only a single spammer in the range. This particularly affects those in datacenters, even if you are on a dedicated machine and your IP is good. 4. It may be that Office 365 does not track or measure domain reputation at all, which makes things like SPF or DKIM of little positive use, and introduces loads of spam false positive bounces.
- atmosx 11y ago
  Sounds pretty awful choice to me.
- larrik 11y ago
  It also kicks me out of my account multiple times per day. Then, if I get kicked out overnight and try to login the next morning, the form key expires (CSRF I assume?) and the page just stops working. The only way to login at that point is to re-type the address in the browser. This is for Outlook365 using a custom domain for my work.

mrmondo 11y ago

Fastmail is email and calendaring not for cloud based based document editing / file storage.

danieldk 11y ago
It's clear from tiffanyh's comment that the question is about the mail/calendar/address book part. Though, I cannot give an answer to that question. From my experience with a personal account, I can say that Fastmail permits much more customization.
- eggnet 11y ago
  They aren't independent questions. Why would you get cloud based document editing and storage from microsoft or google, and then not use the freely included and well integrated calendaring and email that either provide.
  - mrmondo 11y ago
    Trust me - Microsoft's email and calendaring is anything but well integrated, it's a flaky, unreliable mess.
    - worldadventurer 11y ago
      Can you please expound on how it's flaky and unreliable? I'm a user and am wondering what I'm missing. :)
brongondwana 11y ago
We do have file storage via WebDAV or ftp, though it's not as full featured as companies that specialise in it. I wrote that up last year as well. It works OK, though it will be nicer one we spec out jmap file storage api.

zachlatta 11y ago

We tried using FastMail for our (small) company, but switched after ~8 months because we started running into deliverability issues and countless issues with shared calendars being unshared (or sometimes losing events). We also couldn't use any of the nice sales tools that integrate with Google Apps (or any of the tools that make managing calendars easier, like https://claralabs.com/ https://claralabs.com/ or http://boomerangcalendar.com/ http://boomerangcalendar.com/). We're now on Google Apps and very happy.

bad_user 11y ago
I've seen a couple of nice tools integrated with Gmail and its web UI. The ones you mention are like that. However my problem with such tools are that they are not operating on standards. For one I wouldn't want to be locked into Gmail. But more importantly, tools depending on proprietary platforms usually have a short life. For example people loved Mailbox from Dropbox, while I was the one complaining that it only works with Gmail and iCloud. And I was right, Mailbox is dying. And also these tools get access to all of your email, which is a privacy concern. And in the context of a company, that can mean industrial espionage. Personally I cannot understand how people can trust things like IFTTT, but whatever.
- zachlatta 11y ago
  100% agree with you, especially on the privacy concerns. But you have to pick your battles and, when we were looking into these tools, our battle was not the privacy of our company email or calendar.
  - JupiterMoon 11y ago
    I guess it depends how much of your companies IP is sent around in internal emails...
    - zachlatta 11y ago
      Yeah, that's a good point. Nearly all of our work is open source, so we weren't too concerned about losing IP.

jorangreef 11y ago

Office 365 at least has several well known bugs: 1. Silently dropping email (no smtp transaction bounce, not in junk, no rules in place) for a specific single sender at a domain, where email from other senders at the same domain is accepted. Hundreds of people have posted about this online with no fix or acknowledgement from Microsoft. 2. Overly strict hardfail SPF policy by default for new customers who have no idea of SPF and should be using softfail. These customers often use third party systems to send out hundreds of account statements. These get blocked by other email hosts. The customers themselves have no idea and never correct their SPF, saying something like "it must be an issue on your side". 3. Blocking entire /24 IP ranges including good senders with good reputation, on the basis of only a single spammer in the range. This particularly affects those in datacenters, even if you are on a dedicated machine and your IP is good. 4. It may be that Office 365 does not track or measure domain reputation at all, which makes things like SPF or DKIM of little positive use, and introduces loads of spam false positive bounces.

atmosx 11y ago
Sounds pretty awful choice to me.
larrik 11y ago
It also kicks me out of my account multiple times per day. Then, if I get kicked out overnight and try to login the next morning, the form key expires (CSRF I assume?) and the page just stops working. The only way to login at that point is to re-type the address in the browser. This is for Outlook365 using a custom domain for my work.