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We tried using FastMail for our (small) company, but switched after ~8 months because we started running into deliverability issues and countless issues with sh

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.
- brerlapn 11y ago
  There can be odd behaviors with third party apps, too, and if you get dependent on that service you're at their mercy if they don't fix the issue. I mentioned in a separate comment, Sunrise substituted a generic email address for mine in an invite response, but with my name ("Brer Lapn <invite@sunrise.am>"), which when someone replied to the group began to propagate across multiple co-workers' Outlook as the autofill address for my name. I missed email from some people for a week before one of my coders noticed it and let me know, at which point I had to get colleagues to forward me any message with that address, contact the sender and ask them to remove it from their Outlook autofill settings, and repeat ad nauseum until correspondence started coming to me again. I sent a bug report, they responded "we'll look into it" and never heard another word about it, so for all I know it is still happening. If we'd have integrated that into the company processes rather than just my using it to consolidate my calendars it would have been a serious problem.
brongondwana 11y ago
I'll have to concede the losing sharing. There are still some frustrating things there, the DAV ACL model doesn't map very well to the Cyrus model which is based on IMAP permissions and there were a couple of bad bugs in there until recently. We're still running patches that I'd like to remove, but at least we finally understand the cause of lost acls and fixed it. I'd love to know more about deliverability issues - that's something we monitor closely, and we want to know if there are any silent blocks/drop rules anywhere that we can't monitor for!
brerlapn 11y ago
Integration of third party tools with Google Apps is nice, but having been burned using Sunrise and having had more than enough troubles using Gmail outside of the web app (such as via Outlook or Thunderbird) or native Android client the shine on Google Apps is a bit dull for me at this point. I'd be much happier working with services that use well-defined open standards that work with my choice of client software. I know that Sunrise isn't a Google-apps specific software, but after: * a co-worker sent me a screenshot of a meeting invite I had accepted via their app (along with a facetious question "You get a new assistant? Who's 'Sunrise' and is she cute?") that makes Sunrise branding too prominent for it to be appropriate for a professional environment, and * finding out that instead of masking a response with my email address it had sent it from a generic "invites@sunrise.am"-style email but showing up as my name "Brer Lapn <invites@sunrise.am>", and having to then contact over a dozen colleagues who had been emailing the black hole address at Sunrise--- I'd say these services are less suitable for business purposes than the standards that Fastmail uses (and publicizes). Fastmail has never screwed around with my emails or calendar invites, and unlike Gmail I can use multiple different clients without it filling my drafts folder with autosaves. TL;DR, if I had a say I'd be running our company tools on Fastmail rather than Google Apps (although deliverability is definitely something I'd consider a showstopper, I've never had an issue with FM).

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.
brerlapn 11y ago
There can be odd behaviors with third party apps, too, and if you get dependent on that service you're at their mercy if they don't fix the issue. I mentioned in a separate comment, Sunrise substituted a generic email address for mine in an invite response, but with my name ("Brer Lapn <invite@sunrise.am>"), which when someone replied to the group began to propagate across multiple co-workers' Outlook as the autofill address for my name. I missed email from some people for a week before one of my coders noticed it and let me know, at which point I had to get colleagues to forward me any message with that address, contact the sender and ask them to remove it from their Outlook autofill settings, and repeat ad nauseum until correspondence started coming to me again. I sent a bug report, they responded "we'll look into it" and never heard another word about it, so for all I know it is still happening. If we'd have integrated that into the company processes rather than just my using it to consolidate my calendars it would have been a serious problem.

brongondwana 11y ago

I'll have to concede the losing sharing. There are still some frustrating things there, the DAV ACL model doesn't map very well to the Cyrus model which is based on IMAP permissions and there were a couple of bad bugs in there until recently. We're still running patches that I'd like to remove, but at least we finally understand the cause of lost acls and fixed it. I'd love to know more about deliverability issues - that's something we monitor closely, and we want to know if there are any silent blocks/drop rules anywhere that we can't monitor for!

brerlapn 11y ago

Integration of third party tools with Google Apps is nice, but having been burned using Sunrise and having had more than enough troubles using Gmail outside of the web app (such as via Outlook or Thunderbird) or native Android client the shine on Google Apps is a bit dull for me at this point. I'd be much happier working with services that use well-defined open standards that work with my choice of client software. I know that Sunrise isn't a Google-apps specific software, but after: * a co-worker sent me a screenshot of a meeting invite I had accepted via their app (along with a facetious question "You get a new assistant? Who's 'Sunrise' and is she cute?") that makes Sunrise branding too prominent for it to be appropriate for a professional environment, and * finding out that instead of masking a response with my email address it had sent it from a generic "invites@sunrise.am"-style email but showing up as my name "Brer Lapn <invites@sunrise.am>", and having to then contact over a dozen colleagues who had been emailing the black hole address at Sunrise--- I'd say these services are less suitable for business purposes than the standards that Fastmail uses (and publicizes). Fastmail has never screwed around with my emails or calendar invites, and unlike Gmail I can use multiple different clients without it filling my drafts folder with autosaves. TL;DR, if I had a say I'd be running our company tools on Fastmail rather than Google Apps (although deliverability is definitely something I'd consider a showstopper, I've never had an issue with FM).