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I'm considering switching (in fact I just registered for the FastMail trial). I'm especially interested in the ability to use catchall addresses with a custom d

• JosephRedfern 9y ago
  I'm not suggesting (at all) that you use them over FastMail, but GSuite also supports catch-all email addresses.
  • ehPReth 9y ago
    Indeed - but replying from an arbitrary address is one big downside of G Suite’s implementation. In FastMail you can add <star>[0]@example.com as an identity. Selecting this when composing an email allows you to edit the localpart entirely. Similarly, when replying to an email sent to your catch-all and you have an <star>@ identity for the hostname FastMail will automatically set your from address for you. In Gmail (with G Suite) one has to manually add every identity they may wish to reply from - there’s no <star>@ option. Additionally, it’s impossible to hide your real email address/Google Account address. It’ll always be disclosed in the email headers unlike FastMail. I’d love if G Suite would make such a workflow easier.. [0] escape characters don’t seem to work here, <star> refers to what’d you think it does
    • Chaebixi 9y ago
      Selecting this when composing an email allows you to edit the localpart entirely. Similarly, when replying to an email sent to your catch-all and you have an <star>@ identity for the hostname FastMail will automatically set your from address for you. I didn't know that, but it's fantastic news! I was doing things the awkward "gmail" way.
    • dvcrn 9y ago
      Speaking of which, do you know of any mail client (on iOS or Mac) that supports this? I am using the web interface for replying on most emails because of exactly this feature
      • ehPReth 9y ago
        Unsure, sorry. I use their iOS app (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/fastmail-email-calendar/id931370077?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/fastmail-email-calendar/id93...) for mobile and their web interface elsewhere
• rbritton 9y ago
  I use aliases (FastMail's term for custom addresses that go to the same inbox) for that reason. They work very well, and I've never had any problems setting up a new one on the fly.
  • bweis 9y ago
    I should have known they offer this sort of thing. I tried spinning up an alias in the past but was unable to find where to do so. Maybe the UI has improved since I tried ~year ago.
    • colanderman 9y ago
      They did shuffle things around about a year ago. Aliases are under Settings, in the Admin section.
• JustSomeNobody 9y ago
  I have my mail hosted at Zoho and they support this. Edit: Simply throwing this out there in case Fastmail doesn't and you're looking for alternatives. Not shilling for Zoho.
  • 333c 9y ago
    Looks interesting. It seems (from a quick look) like it tries to be a replacement for a lot of Google products, including Docs. It's nice to see that Google and Microsoft have smaller competitors in this area. Personally, I'm only interested in email. But thanks for letting me know about other options!
• vladus2000 9y ago
  I switched about 6 months ago. I love having the catchall address although I had that when google managed my custom email domain as well. The web interface is really fast as it does operations in the background so it is really responsive, even at times when your internet connection is spotty. The only real downside is that the phone app (at least the android one) wasn't that good, I currently just use IMAP and k9 mail instead which works well enough. I did use inbox before (and I still get some email to my gmail account) and it does have nice features like snooze that I miss. But on the whole I am happy with my choice to use fast mail. I should also add that I seem to get slightly more junk mail than I did before, but it is close and hard to tell, I have not had a real email marked as spam yet, which did happen from time to time with gmail, so this isn't a complaint, just an observation.
• cillian64 9y ago
  I do precisely this with Fastmail and it works a treat. Setting up Fastmail with a custom domain was a joy, I can easily filter based on the To address, and you can setup a wildcard identity so you can trivially send email from whatever name you like at your domain. To me the only downside is the mobile app isn't quite as polished as Gmail. It doesn't work offline, and I notice occasional bugs or awkwardnesses. But it's still very usable, and I much prefer the Fastmail web interface to Gmail. Edit: Also, the Fastmail importer didn't work very well on my large number of Gmail messages. It failed a few times and restarting it resulted in duplicate messags.
  • 333c 9y ago
    > To me the only downside is the mobile app isn't quite as polished as Gmail. It doesn't work offline, and I notice occasional bugs or awkwardnesses. But it's still very usable, and I much prefer the Fastmail web interface to Gmail. But FastMail supports other clients, right? I don't want to be forced to use their web interface or their app; I'm happy with the Apple-written Mail apps.
    • polpo 9y ago
      Yes, they support SMTP and IMAP just fine. In fact, they're one of the few providers that actually support IMAP push with iOS's Mail: https://blog.fastmail.com/2016/12/21/what-we-talk-about-when-we-talk-about-push/ https://blog.fastmail.com/2016/12/21/what-we-talk-about-when...
    • ocdtrekkie 9y ago
      This is the best part of a standards-compliant service like FastMail. Gmail is extremely challenging to use with third party clients because it's custom features aren't supported. I've long had Gmail randomly archive (in no folders) email I told it to delete via an IMAP client, or duplicate items in multiple folders (i.e. labels) or other weird behaviors.
    • distances 9y ago
      > But FastMail supports other clients, right? I don't want to be forced to use their web interface or their app; I'm happy with the Apple-written Mail apps. It does, but at least for me the problem is using my separate forwarding-only e-mail address instead of fastmail.com as the sender. As far as I see, I need the native app for this.
• ProAm 9y ago
  Im curious how FastMail and ProtonMail are comparison wise?
  • news_to_me 9y ago
    I tried out ProtonMail for just a little bit around the time I switched, and personally I found the focus on security and encryption to be at the expense of user experience.
    • distances 9y ago
      If I recall correctly, ProtonMail was using RoundCube as the webmail interface when I was looking for a service. RoundCube was the reason I left my previous e-mail provider, so I had to give it a pass. Though now their website is showing a rather nice web UI, perhaps they've switched to a new one since then?
      • bartbutler 9y ago
        We have never used RoundCube in the project's history. You must be thinking of someone else.
        • distances 9y ago
          Thanks for the clarification, must indeed be mixing you up with another service!
          • carussell 9y ago
            You might be thinking up riseup.net. They use Roundcube, they target a similar audience, and both have a cryptopunk-ish slant.
            • distances 9y ago
              I had a quick look -- I was thinking of Posteo. I think they aren't aiming for the exact same customer segment, but I think of both as a small Central European service that values privacy.
• blfr 9y ago
  G Suite (formerly Google Apps) supports wild cards so you can use Gmail with arbitraryaddresses@yourdomain.tld.
• news_to_me 9y ago
  I haven't had any downsides at all, for my use cases. I've heard from a few folks that lack of "labels" is a bummer (if you rely on them in Gmail), and their mobile clients aren't quite as good (though I've never used them).
• gregmac 9y ago
  > which would allow me to give out an address like <hackernews@mydomain.tld>, and thus determine who shared my email address if I start receiving spam at that address. I've been doing this for over 15 years, but with a much simpler setup: I just forward it to another account, which for the last 10-ish years has been an @gmail address. The mails show up in my Gmail inbox as From: the original sender and To: the custom domain. As a caution: don't forward a top-level domain. You'll get all kinds of dictionary-style spam attacks and it becomes flooded with noise. Instead, use a sub-domain, so you get for example <*@something.mydomain.tld>.
  • PuffinBlue 9y ago
    > As a caution: don't forward a top-level domain. Nice tip, I'll implement that for my setup. I had to stop a catchall on a TLD for the reason you mention and it'll be trivial to switch to a sub-domain. Thanks.
  • nvarsj 9y ago
    The problem with this is SPF reject domains. Which means your legitimately forwarded email will simply disappear into the void. Hosting your domain at something like fastmail will not have this problem.
    • gregmac 9y ago
      Hmm... I suppose, but I've never not received anything I was expecting. It's possible I've just not run into anything with SPF reject rules, or that Gmail is allowing them anyway. I don't disagree it's better if fastmail (or whatever) can receive directly as it saves another MX server in the middle, but it's still doable without the end provider explicitly supporting it.
      • distances 9y ago
        I have the same experience. I'm using a mail-forwarding service, so I can't host it with FastMail. FastMail is my third mail provider I'm forwarding to, and I'm not aware of any missed e-mail with any of them this far. Then again I guess I wouldn't be :)
• carussell 9y ago
  I used Fastmail for a few years. I switched last spring due to two interactions through support channels that left me really despising the apparent company culture, attitudes about intellectual honesty, and general jerkishness. You're probably considering switching based on your mail needs, so this might not apply to you, however: In addition to mail, Fastmail also advertises[1] their plans come with their FastMail Files feature. It can be used for one-off file sharing (akin to Google Drive) and even static site hosting (explained in their support docs[2]). However, I learned from the CEO's comments in my support ticket that they're apparently overprovisioned and don't expect everyone to actually use the storage included with their plans. I just took a cursory look at their landing and pricing pages and see they aren't touting Files loudly right now. (My initial thought is a hope that they took my remarks to heart from the thread that led to my decision to leave, when I said they should "go tone down the hosted storage aspect of your marketing". However, given that the promotional blog post from [1] occurred within the month that followed my comment, I suspect not.) The blog posts and Fastmail documentation[3] about the Files feature are still available, of course, whether or not it's still on the landing page. This itself would have been only slightly disappointing, but the bad taste came from the passive aggressive responses in the support thread, that this was the same sort of attitude adopted in a previous (unrelated) support thread from a couple years ago, and that in this most recent incident, they decided to go on the offensive and compare using the 25GB storage space for making backups to abuse. (Their choice example being someone trying to abuse an ISP's lax limits on DNS to tunnel IP over it.) I half expect someone to show up here to try and apply a layer of spin in exactly the same way. Bonus points if they ignore my actual use case, try to make it out as if I was trying to do something I wasn't, and then call me the "disingenuous" one again. 1. https://blog.fastmail.com/2017/03/29/faster-files/ https://blog.fastmail.com/2017/03/29/faster-files/ 2. https://www.fastmail.com/help/files/website.html https://www.fastmail.com/help/files/website.html 3. https://www.fastmail.com/help/files/usage.html https://www.fastmail.com/help/files/usage.html
  • eridius 9y ago
    > However, I learned from the CEO's comments in my support ticket that they're apparently overprovisioned and don't expect everyone to actually use the storage included with their plans. Isn't that true for every file hosting service everywhere? Most people only use a fraction of their available storage, so there's no need to actually provision enough space for everyone to use 100% of their quota. Doing so would be a waste of space.
• MrApathy 9y ago
  I've been a FastMail customer for about four years and overall I'm really pleased with their service. Like you I have my own domain, previously used Gmail, and provide custom email addresses to every site I register with. Interesting to see who has sold my email or may have been hacked when a rogue email ends up in my inbox (hi, Sunspel!). I have one issue with FastMail that I didn't have with Gmail. Every few days/weeks I'll get a wave of backspatter from someone spoofing my domain to spam. I've researched and it doesn't look like there's anything I can do about this. Most of the backspatter ends up in my spam folder, but not all of it does. I don't know if Gmail automatically removed backspatter -- not even sending it to my spam folder -- or if this only started after I transferred my domain.
  • 333c 9y ago
    By backspatter, do you mean things like message bounce alerts? Or replies from the people who received spam messages spoofed from your address?
    • MrApathy 9y ago
      Backscatter is (I think) when the target server of a spam mail bounces the email back to me, the rightful owner of the domain, typically because the address is not valid (though I sometimes also get out-of-office messages or mailbox full errors). It works like this: the spammer forges their headers to make it look like the from address is under my domain. My domain has DKIM/SPF set up, so a good recipient will compare the email to the authentication records, see they don't match, and then trash the email. But there are still a lot of mail servers out there that don't have that set up, so they accept the email as valid, process it, then return it to me when the account doesn't exist on their server. Like I said, annoying, but not a lot I can do other than set up rules to trash messages with a subject of "Undelivered Mail Returned to Sender."
      • toast0 9y ago
        Did you also setup DMARC? I've had good luck with that to reduce the amount of backscatter. Although some recipients don't check it, those that do will fast fail anything coming in that doesn't pass SPF or DKIM.