Another data point: I have had a FastMail account before Gmail before Opera and Kaggle. Why pay for email? when everything was free ...Yahoo, hotmail, etc. Word

Another data point: I have had a FastMail account before Gmail before Opera and Kaggle. Why pay for email? when everything was free ...Yahoo, hotmail, etc. Word of mouth. Reputation. Though times were less sophisticated back then along with security; Fastmail kept up. I used my YubiKey with them way before gmail u2f fido support and they fostered my trust over the years keeping it clean and simple. Nothing is foolproof but at least I know their track record and commitments to their users despite dropping the ball in some cases. That said, I'm glad to read about the horror stories, provider alternatives and fastmail responses; hopefully we are all the better for it.