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So I'm in the market for this, but what if you shut down while I'm on vacation and not checking my email? I know that fastmail will be in business in two years

So I'm in the market for this, but what if you shut down while I'm on vacation and not checking my email? I know that fastmail will be in business in two years, but I'm not so sure about you. If you offered some sort of auto-backup option, so that even if you went down I could take my mail elsewhere, that would be more compelling.

gaadd33 8y ago
Does Fastmail offer an auto-backup option? Or any other email provider?
- brongondwana 8y ago
  You can auto-download from just about anywhere that provides standard IMAP access!
  - ascar 8y ago
    Even POP3 should suffice for backups. It downloads the complete emails by default anyway :)
    - brongondwana 8y ago
      POP3 is tricky when you use server-side rules to file emails into multiple folders. You can use + login to fetch each folder individually, but IMAP is definitely nicer to work with. And of course JMAP is coming!
  - ocdtrekkie 8y ago
    Bron, I do (kinda) take backups of my FastMail account via an Outlook sync occasionally, but I'd really much rather you also had a Takeout-esque "one and done" download that included calendar and contact data and all. For my major online accounts, I like keeping an archive of these, compressed and dated. Is there any chance FastMail will implement this anytime soon?
- dannysu 8y ago
  I use offlineimap (https://www.offlineimap.org/ https://www.offlineimap.org/) weekly to backup my email from FastMail.
Felz 8y ago
I really can't imagine shutting down with anything less than 6 months notice. Do people really do that? The infrastructure I'm running on really is pretty cheap. The biggest expense by far are the databases, which run about $250/month for two. If I had to pay out of pocket to support even just a few users for a year, I'd do it. Anyway I think the best paranoid option (no matter what mailhost you're using) is to set up automatic forwarding to a backup address. Or you can use imapsync [0] from time to time, which is a bit finnicky but gets the job done pretty well. (I actually might try putting up a quick web interface for imapsync sooner or later to cover import/export use cases.) [0] https://imapsync.lamiral.info/ https://imapsync.lamiral.info/
- mehrdadn 8y ago
  > automatic forwarding Misses sent mail though... > imapsync If the emails are deleted on the server doesn't the client just delete them too?
  - cyphar 8y ago
    If you use mbsync, you can disable deletion synchronisation from the server (or disable it entirely).

gaadd33 8y ago

Does Fastmail offer an auto-backup option? Or any other email provider?

brongondwana 8y ago
You can auto-download from just about anywhere that provides standard IMAP access!
- ascar 8y ago
  Even POP3 should suffice for backups. It downloads the complete emails by default anyway :)
  - brongondwana 8y ago
    POP3 is tricky when you use server-side rules to file emails into multiple folders. You can use + login to fetch each folder individually, but IMAP is definitely nicer to work with. And of course JMAP is coming!
- ocdtrekkie 8y ago
  Bron, I do (kinda) take backups of my FastMail account via an Outlook sync occasionally, but I'd really much rather you also had a Takeout-esque "one and done" download that included calendar and contact data and all. For my major online accounts, I like keeping an archive of these, compressed and dated. Is there any chance FastMail will implement this anytime soon?
dannysu 8y ago
I use offlineimap (https://www.offlineimap.org/ https://www.offlineimap.org/) weekly to backup my email from FastMail.

Felz 8y ago

I really can't imagine shutting down with anything less than 6 months notice. Do people really do that? The infrastructure I'm running on really is pretty cheap. The biggest expense by far are the databases, which run about $250/month for two. If I had to pay out of pocket to support even just a few users for a year, I'd do it. Anyway I think the best paranoid option (no matter what mailhost you're using) is to set up automatic forwarding to a backup address. Or you can use imapsync [0] from time to time, which is a bit finnicky but gets the job done pretty well. (I actually might try putting up a quick web interface for imapsync sooner or later to cover import/export use cases.) [0] https://imapsync.lamiral.info/ https://imapsync.lamiral.info/

mehrdadn 8y ago
> automatic forwarding Misses sent mail though... > imapsync If the emails are deleted on the server doesn't the client just delete them too?
- cyphar 8y ago
  If you use mbsync, you can disable deletion synchronisation from the server (or disable it entirely).