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FastMail is behind this protocol and from what I've read JMAP has evolved out of their web interface. I've been a happy customer, even though lately I flirted

FastMail is behind this protocol and from what I've read JMAP has evolved out of their web interface. I've been a happy customer, even though lately I flirted with going back to GSuite for my personal email, but after a trial realized that Gmail does many things well, except for being a good email service. So I went back to FastMail and renewed for another 2 years. Seeing this new protocol is exciting, because JMAP is being standardized at IETF. A breath of fresh air to see a new standard being developed. Also from what I understand JMAP should be friendly for mobile usage. They kept notifications out of it, you're supposed to implement notifications using whatever the mobile platform provides. Interacting via JMAP is via plain HTTP requests, which is super cool. I can totally see myself implementing a simple email client for automating online services. For example if you implement a commenting system for a website, you might want to do replies by email. That would be a cool project for me to try out. I wonder if FastMail exposes JMAP publicly yet. Haven't seen any mentions in their admin or docs thus far.

Semaphor 8y ago
> Also from what I understand JMAP should be friendly for mobile usage. I read the FM blogs and I remember them mentioning that low battery consumption was one of the design goals. The JMAP site [0] has: > JMAP is designed to make efficient use of limited network resources. Multiple API calls may be batched in a single request to the server, reducing round trips and improving battery life on mobile devices. [0]: https://jmap.io/spec-core.html https://jmap.io/spec-core.html
eggsampler 8y ago
I've been a happy Fastmail customer too, until I was made aware that you can impersonate other Fastmail customers by just spoofing the email address. Their servers just happily accept it. SPF and DKIM all pass with flying colours, and the only way you'd know it's happened is if you have DMARC on and happen to notice a pass in the report you don't remember sending. Well, that is if the recipient doesn't reply to the spoofed message - hope the damage wasn't already done though. It's effectively impossible for the recipient to know it's been spoofed. The worst part is I think Fastmail is aware of it and just don't care (believe that's why they mark their emails with a green tick and text). I understand that email has never been really authenticated, but this just throws any trust I had in Fastmail out the window. I will be evaluating other mail hosts at the end of my subscription.
- navlelo 8y ago
  What is the reason for allowing this? Laziness?
  - eggsampler 8y ago
    I'm not certain, maybe there's a technical reason they can validate account credentials but not map credentials to addresses/aliases. Doesn't instill confidence either way.
  - tyingq 8y ago
    They would need to make some tie between sasl authentication and what FROM: headers you're allowed to use. I don't know what MTA they use, but there are MTAs that have that feature. It's controlled_envelope_senders in postfix. I assume other MTAs have similar features. It sounds kind of lazy to me. Though I'm sure they would get lots of complaints if they turned it on...some mailing list software depends on spoofing, for example. Or web based "contact us" forms. So perhaps it's just to avoid lots of support tickets.
  - bad_user 8y ago
    The reason is probably that nothing can stop the successful spoofing of the From header. DKIM is a signature for authenticating a domain, however that domain does not have to match the domain in the From header. Take a look in Gmail at a signed email and you’ll see a “Signed by” field in its header info, with a domain name as a value. Also the SPF setting has nothing to do with the From header either. In other words the “From” value cannot be protected, unless you sign your email with PGP or S/MIME.
    - richardwhiuk 8y ago
      That's tripe. They know who authenticated to the SMTP server, so they could enforce that the From address is who it was authenticated by. Otherwise, they basically act as an open relay.
      - sitharus 8y ago
abtinf 8y ago
> ...Gmail does many things well, except for being a good email service. Gmail/Gsuite seem to be good email services from my perspective as lay user and occasional admin. Can you expand on why you think they are not good email services?
- jxdxbx 8y ago
  I’m not a fan of Gmail either, mostly because it lacks push vis iOS Mail (which Fastmail supports, so it is possible), and its non-standard tagging system doesn’t not play well with any third-party client that does not take extraordinary steps to accommodate it. Folders are better. Its proprietary apps are terrible and its web interface is weird, unintuitive, ugly, and slow.
  - rjmunro 8y ago
    I find it's "non standard" tagging system is a massively superior model for managing email. I really wish there were alternatives that did similar, and a protocol like IMAP or JMAP that assumed the tagging based model underneath.
- josteink 8y ago
  Here's a few things: - constantly changing things around. UI gets less intuitive for every release. - slower for every release - violates IMAP standard by re-using IDs across tags/IMAP folders, risking actual data loss. Example: if you in a real email-client try to delete a email from a single folder, you will also delete this email from all other folders it has been "tagged" in. - similar IMAP issues with sent emails. Hard to track sent emails from email-client, unless you allow the email-client to explicitly save a copy to sent-emails folder. But then you suddenly have duplicate emails in the web-UI. - Makes an open standard (internet email) proprietary. - Hell to integrate with: See above. I'm sure I could go on, but really. If you still consider GMail best in class, the only possible explanation is that you haven't seen anything else.
  - chrisfinazzo 8y ago
    The messed up deletion behavior baffles me to this day. The stock mail app on iOS will behave correctly if you muck with the Gmail POP/IMAP settings and turn off 'Archive' in MobileMail, but I have zero confidence that this will work on macOS because Apple pays less attention to the desktop and Gmail don't give a crap if actual client applications work correctly. They just assume everyone uses the web interface.
josteink 8y ago
> after a trial realized that Gmail does many things well, except for being a good email service. This. I remember back when Gmail was new and hot. It was unlike any other email service out there, and ridiculing people for using inferior email-solutions could to a certain extent be justified. While other webmails were slow, had constantly reloading pages and what not, Gmail was fast. It was amazingly fast. Gone where the 5 minutes making the webmail work for you. You just sent the email and you were done. Just like that. Back then, this was unheard of. These days though? Everyone is still pretending like GMail is the only game in town, when I think they have one of the worst webmail-interfaces out there. And it's slow. Oh god it is slow. And god forbid you try to load it in a browser not Chrome, because then it just grinds to a complete halt. So yeah. Happy Firefox-using FastMail-customer here. You couldn't get me back to GMail even if you paid me.
- mehrdadn 8y ago
  Does FastMail let you have complex conditions in filters though? One huge value of Gmail for me is that I can have arbitrarily complex nested conditions to filter mail using a formula. I've been looking for even more flexible filtering (e.g. custom scripts) and yet I have not even come across anything on par with it.
  - jph00 8y ago
    fastmail lets you write complete scripts for filtering using the Sieve programming language. https://www.fastmail.com/help/technical/sieve.html https://www.fastmail.com/help/technical/sieve.html
    - mehrdadn 8y ago
      Holy cow, I will have to look into this. Thanks a ton!!
      - y4mi 8y ago
        filters cannot be applied retroactively, however. be sure to write your filters before receiving anything. Especially important if you're importing your email for the first time... and insanely annoying if you want to debug such an advanced filter. as always with fastmail: It has great features... but always with a massive caveat.
inanutshellus 8y ago
I considered FM a while back but... you pay per account! $50/account no less! I separate my email into three accounts across two domains and my wife does the same and I have kids who'll have their own email addresses at some point. I can't even begin to consider using it at the price point I presume I'd be in.
- distances 8y ago
  $30 for a smaller inbox though. I have all my email since 90s in there and it all still fits just fine.
  - loeg 8y ago
    For people reading along: $50/yr gets you 25 GB; $30/yr gets you 2 GB. I'd guess 2 GB would work just fine for most people. OTOH, my relatively new gmail account has >4 GB in it. Other accounts have 0.8 and >3 GB; none of these were used for file storage (FUSE) or anything like that. https://www.fastmail.com/pricing/ https://www.fastmail.com/pricing/
    - distances 8y ago
      I wonder, maybe I then just don't receive that much email? I did a quick count in the folders view, there's currently about 35k emails which take up about 1.7G of space.
  - inanutshellus 8y ago
    If I read their pricing page correctly, you have to be on the $50 plan to use your own domain name.
- aroch 8y ago
  You can have all the domains under one fastmail account per user (I have ~8 domains, and ~20 users). But yes, you still have to pay for each person
- bad_user 8y ago
  I use a single account for 5 domains, with multiple aliases per domain. For IMAP folders you can set a default identity and email in a folder stays in that folder without cluttering Archive, like in Gmail. So in effect you can do much with a single account.
catdog 8y ago
> Also from what I understand JMAP should be friendly for mobile usage. They kept notifications out of it, you're supposed to implement notifications using whatever the mobile platform provides. Interacting via JMAP is via plain HTTP requests, which is super cool. Sounds actually not cool. Is there really no standardized way to do notifications? The world consists not only of shitty mobile walled gardens which insist on or strongly favor their proprietary implementations.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- toomuchtodo 8y ago
  Using what is provided by mobile operating systems is the standard. FastMail is decoupling JMAP from notifications because it's a sound architectural decision for that reason.
- RussianCow 8y ago
  If you want good battery life, there is no alternative to the mobile notifications provided by the platform, because otherwise you have to always keep your own connection open to your server.
  - catdog 8y ago
    That's simply not true if implemented correctly. Maintaining an open connection yourself has at most minimal impact on battery life. See for example Conversations (XMPP client) which is able to do this just fine on Android.
  - ktosobcy 8y ago
    please don't spread misinformation - abusing long live socket connections is what drain the battery - having one open and managing it in sane manner is quite battery efficient. Google brainwashed everyone to force them to use their push service, which is just plain awful... (and requires open connection... sic!)

Semaphor 8y ago

> Also from what I understand JMAP should be friendly for mobile usage. I read the FM blogs and I remember them mentioning that low battery consumption was one of the design goals. The JMAP site [0] has: > JMAP is designed to make efficient use of limited network resources. Multiple API calls may be batched in a single request to the server, reducing round trips and improving battery life on mobile devices. [0]: https://jmap.io/spec-core.html https://jmap.io/spec-core.html

eggsampler 8y ago

I've been a happy Fastmail customer too, until I was made aware that you can impersonate other Fastmail customers by just spoofing the email address. Their servers just happily accept it. SPF and DKIM all pass with flying colours, and the only way you'd know it's happened is if you have DMARC on and happen to notice a pass in the report you don't remember sending. Well, that is if the recipient doesn't reply to the spoofed message - hope the damage wasn't already done though. It's effectively impossible for the recipient to know it's been spoofed. The worst part is I think Fastmail is aware of it and just don't care (believe that's why they mark their emails with a green tick and text). I understand that email has never been really authenticated, but this just throws any trust I had in Fastmail out the window. I will be evaluating other mail hosts at the end of my subscription.

navlelo 8y ago
What is the reason for allowing this? Laziness?
- eggsampler 8y ago
  I'm not certain, maybe there's a technical reason they can validate account credentials but not map credentials to addresses/aliases. Doesn't instill confidence either way.
- tyingq 8y ago
  They would need to make some tie between sasl authentication and what FROM: headers you're allowed to use. I don't know what MTA they use, but there are MTAs that have that feature. It's controlled_envelope_senders in postfix. I assume other MTAs have similar features. It sounds kind of lazy to me. Though I'm sure they would get lots of complaints if they turned it on...some mailing list software depends on spoofing, for example. Or web based "contact us" forms. So perhaps it's just to avoid lots of support tickets.
- bad_user 8y ago
  The reason is probably that nothing can stop the successful spoofing of the From header. DKIM is a signature for authenticating a domain, however that domain does not have to match the domain in the From header. Take a look in Gmail at a signed email and you’ll see a “Signed by” field in its header info, with a domain name as a value. Also the SPF setting has nothing to do with the From header either. In other words the “From” value cannot be protected, unless you sign your email with PGP or S/MIME.
  - richardwhiuk 8y ago
    That's tripe. They know who authenticated to the SMTP server, so they could enforce that the From address is who it was authenticated by. Otherwise, they basically act as an open relay.
    - sitharus 8y ago

abtinf 8y ago

> ...Gmail does many things well, except for being a good email service. Gmail/Gsuite seem to be good email services from my perspective as lay user and occasional admin. Can you expand on why you think they are not good email services?

jxdxbx 8y ago
I’m not a fan of Gmail either, mostly because it lacks push vis iOS Mail (which Fastmail supports, so it is possible), and its non-standard tagging system doesn’t not play well with any third-party client that does not take extraordinary steps to accommodate it. Folders are better. Its proprietary apps are terrible and its web interface is weird, unintuitive, ugly, and slow.
- rjmunro 8y ago
  I find it's "non standard" tagging system is a massively superior model for managing email. I really wish there were alternatives that did similar, and a protocol like IMAP or JMAP that assumed the tagging based model underneath.
josteink 8y ago
Here's a few things: - constantly changing things around. UI gets less intuitive for every release. - slower for every release - violates IMAP standard by re-using IDs across tags/IMAP folders, risking actual data loss. Example: if you in a real email-client try to delete a email from a single folder, you will also delete this email from all other folders it has been "tagged" in. - similar IMAP issues with sent emails. Hard to track sent emails from email-client, unless you allow the email-client to explicitly save a copy to sent-emails folder. But then you suddenly have duplicate emails in the web-UI. - Makes an open standard (internet email) proprietary. - Hell to integrate with: See above. I'm sure I could go on, but really. If you still consider GMail best in class, the only possible explanation is that you haven't seen anything else.
- chrisfinazzo 8y ago
  The messed up deletion behavior baffles me to this day. The stock mail app on iOS will behave correctly if you muck with the Gmail POP/IMAP settings and turn off 'Archive' in MobileMail, but I have zero confidence that this will work on macOS because Apple pays less attention to the desktop and Gmail don't give a crap if actual client applications work correctly. They just assume everyone uses the web interface.

josteink 8y ago

> after a trial realized that Gmail does many things well, except for being a good email service. This. I remember back when Gmail was new and hot. It was unlike any other email service out there, and ridiculing people for using inferior email-solutions could to a certain extent be justified. While other webmails were slow, had constantly reloading pages and what not, Gmail was fast. It was amazingly fast. Gone where the 5 minutes making the webmail work for you. You just sent the email and you were done. Just like that. Back then, this was unheard of. These days though? Everyone is still pretending like GMail is the only game in town, when I think they have one of the worst webmail-interfaces out there. And it's slow. Oh god it is slow. And god forbid you try to load it in a browser not Chrome, because then it just grinds to a complete halt. So yeah. Happy Firefox-using FastMail-customer here. You couldn't get me back to GMail even if you paid me.

mehrdadn 8y ago
Does FastMail let you have complex conditions in filters though? One huge value of Gmail for me is that I can have arbitrarily complex nested conditions to filter mail using a formula. I've been looking for even more flexible filtering (e.g. custom scripts) and yet I have not even come across anything on par with it.
- jph00 8y ago
  fastmail lets you write complete scripts for filtering using the Sieve programming language. https://www.fastmail.com/help/technical/sieve.html https://www.fastmail.com/help/technical/sieve.html
  - mehrdadn 8y ago
    Holy cow, I will have to look into this. Thanks a ton!!
    - y4mi 8y ago
      filters cannot be applied retroactively, however. be sure to write your filters before receiving anything. Especially important if you're importing your email for the first time... and insanely annoying if you want to debug such an advanced filter. as always with fastmail: It has great features... but always with a massive caveat.

inanutshellus 8y ago

I considered FM a while back but... you pay per account! $50/account no less! I separate my email into three accounts across two domains and my wife does the same and I have kids who'll have their own email addresses at some point. I can't even begin to consider using it at the price point I presume I'd be in.

distances 8y ago
$30 for a smaller inbox though. I have all my email since 90s in there and it all still fits just fine.
- loeg 8y ago
  For people reading along: $50/yr gets you 25 GB; $30/yr gets you 2 GB. I'd guess 2 GB would work just fine for most people. OTOH, my relatively new gmail account has >4 GB in it. Other accounts have 0.8 and >3 GB; none of these were used for file storage (FUSE) or anything like that. https://www.fastmail.com/pricing/ https://www.fastmail.com/pricing/
  - distances 8y ago
    I wonder, maybe I then just don't receive that much email? I did a quick count in the folders view, there's currently about 35k emails which take up about 1.7G of space.
- inanutshellus 8y ago
  If I read their pricing page correctly, you have to be on the $50 plan to use your own domain name.
aroch 8y ago
You can have all the domains under one fastmail account per user (I have ~8 domains, and ~20 users). But yes, you still have to pay for each person
bad_user 8y ago
I use a single account for 5 domains, with multiple aliases per domain. For IMAP folders you can set a default identity and email in a folder stays in that folder without cluttering Archive, like in Gmail. So in effect you can do much with a single account.

catdog 8y ago

> Also from what I understand JMAP should be friendly for mobile usage. They kept notifications out of it, you're supposed to implement notifications using whatever the mobile platform provides. Interacting via JMAP is via plain HTTP requests, which is super cool. Sounds actually not cool. Is there really no standardized way to do notifications? The world consists not only of shitty mobile walled gardens which insist on or strongly favor their proprietary implementations.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
toomuchtodo 8y ago
Using what is provided by mobile operating systems is the standard. FastMail is decoupling JMAP from notifications because it's a sound architectural decision for that reason.
RussianCow 8y ago
If you want good battery life, there is no alternative to the mobile notifications provided by the platform, because otherwise you have to always keep your own connection open to your server.
- catdog 8y ago
  That's simply not true if implemented correctly. Maintaining an open connection yourself has at most minimal impact on battery life. See for example Conversations (XMPP client) which is able to do this just fine on Android.
- ktosobcy 8y ago
  please don't spread misinformation - abusing long live socket connections is what drain the battery - having one open and managing it in sane manner is quite battery efficient. Google brainwashed everyone to force them to use their push service, which is just plain awful... (and requires open connection... sic!)