10 ms·

Fastmail Labels Beta

210 points by chrnad 6y ago

tyingq 6y ago
Interesting. Is there an IMAP attribute similar to Gmail's X-GM-LABELS?
- mkl 6y ago
  I don't know, but Fastmail is using JMAP: https://www.fastmail.com/help/guides/interfaceupdate-2018.html https://www.fastmail.com/help/guides/interfaceupdate-2018.ht... This supports labels: https://jmap.io/spec-mail.html https://jmap.io/spec-mail.html
- 2ion 6y ago
  Label support comes via JMAP. As for how this is exposed in imap.fastmail.com I'm not aware somebody checked yet. Here https://www.emaildiscussions.com/showthread.php?t=76159 https://www.emaildiscussions.com/showthread.php?t=76159 is a feature discussion around this feature. It's bound to appear there at some point.
  - mmcclimon 6y ago
    (I work for Fastmail, but am not really involved with the teams that have done most of the work on labels.) In the backend, there is no difference between labels mode and folders mode; all of the changes are in the UI. There are no IMAP attributes or keywords (they're poorly supported by third-party clients); any email message can appear in more than one mailbox, where "mailbox" means "folder" or "label". On disk, mailboxes are stored as UNIX directories: all copies of the message (i.e., in all folders/labels) are hard links to the same inode. Over IMAP, each can have its own metadata (\Seen and \Flagged, for example), and they'll probably appear as separate copies (depending on how your client decides to do things). As you say, JMAP has this built in: each Email object has a MailboxIds property. When the web client (or your own bespoke JMAP client!) fetches emails for one folder/label, and then you click to a different folder/label, the client doesn't have to download that message again, because it already has it in its local cache.
    - bad_user 6y ago
      Would be good to do what Gmail does over IMAP because many email clients already know how to handle it. A feature that only works in the web UI isn't useful for me and while I'm excited about JMAP, it doesn't have support in any of the email clients I can use.
keesj 6y ago
Curious to hear how people use these!
- nunodonato 6y ago
  As a fastmail user I was waiting for them, but now knowing its either labels OR folders, I will stick with folders. Labels tend to be much more disorganized for me. I consider them an extra on top, not essential
  - bleuarff 6y ago
    I have been looking for alternatives to gmail for quite some time but without luck so far aslabels are absolutely essential to me.
- katsura 6y ago
  I kind of use them like folders, but one main difference is that I can keep important emails in my "Inbox", while they can still show the label. With folders, they basically become archived right away, so there were emails that I was hesitant to assign a folder to, because it'd mean that they'd disappear from my view. Basically the "Inbox" is my TODO list in a sense. And with labels I can keep better track of what is necessary for the emails/todos to become archived.
  - keesj 6y ago
    That makes sense. Thanks for sharing!
tilolebo 6y ago
Does it work with Spark?
- floatingatoll 6y ago
  Does Spark implement the JMAP protocol (successor to IMAP)?
  - tilolebo 6y ago
    Doesn't look like it. But searching for "spark + jmap" return interesting results, haha
HelenePhisher 6y ago
So Mailmate should be compatible with those, can anyone confirm?
- kome 6y ago
  I was wondering the same. And other mail clients as well.
  - HelenePhisher 6y ago
    Just tried it, it seems to only work one-way and tags behave like regular folders. So Mailmate shows your web-created tags as folders, but if you apply an existing tag in Mailmate nothing happens in the web version. Edit: found that discussion on JMAP support in Mailmate: https://lists.freron.com/mailmate/2019-January/010799.html https://lists.freron.com/mailmate/2019-January/010799.html
wodenokoto 6y ago
So it looks like labels are like “multi-folders”, and unlike gmail, there is no mix of labels and folders. It’s either or.
- tyingq 6y ago
  All labels might actually be better.
- huhtenberg 6y ago
  Folders can be implemented by having a set of labels of which only one can be assigned to any given message. Then use folder names/paths as these labels and, voila, you got folders. So perhaps it's something that is coming...
  - bad_user 6y ago
    Except everything will get duplicated in Archive ;-)
- bad_user 6y ago
  Gmail does not have a mix of labels and folders. It's all labels in Gmail.
  - slightwinder 6y ago
    GMail has a feature to emulate hierachies from labels, basically folders. Maybe that's what he meant.
  - wodenokoto 6y ago
    You're right. The "move message" icon is, however, of a folder[1], so I guess over time I came to the misunderstanding that I was working with folders! [1] https://it.stonybrook.edu/sites/default/files/kb/8618/images/new-gmail-move-out-of-trash.png https://it.stonybrook.edu/sites/default/files/kb/8618/images...
laiaondono2 6y ago
hola1
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ccmcarey 6y ago
It wasn't super obvious to me, but you have to use beta.fastmail.com for this to work. Confused me for a moment as you can complete the first step of enabling this (changing to New Rules) using the stable client. --- Oh, no, it's even more confusing than that. You enable the labels beta function on the beta website, but then it applies even on the main website.
- pointillistic 6y ago
  you are right, does this mean that labels will work on the main site?
  - ccmcarey 6y ago
    Yep, seems to have the same functionality. I've submitted beta feedback indicating my concerns.
ocdtrekkie 6y ago
When I transitioned from Gmail to FastMail, I had to get used to using folders again instead of labels. While it was painful, I am glad I am no longer using labels, and I have no intention to start using them again. I vastly prefer being able to rely on the basic email client functionality in any given mail app, and using goofy nonstandard parts like snooze and labels makes that difficult. I appreciate that with JMAP, FastMail has essentially become the first entity to do labels correctly, with a freaking standard behind it, but client support isn't going to be there for many years so I will avoid it. The big upside for me is it'll take away one reason people say they can't leave Gmail.
- jeltz 6y ago
  Is there any reason for why IMAP keywords cannot be used for labels by e.g. having some prefix for the keyword which indicates that it should be interpreted as a label? Client support is of course needed but to me it seems like the IMAP protocol already supports labels. Maybe IMAP lacks the ability to enumerate all labels?
  - ocdtrekkie 6y ago
    Gmail already has a bad hack for this: It reports labels as folders and that duplicate copies of emails are in them. So the issue is that any other solution would work improperly for Gmail. Client support is a huge part of the problem: If it's outside the standard, clients aren't going to handle it the same way. JMAP, of course, fixes this.
    - jeltz 6y ago
      IMAP keywords are in the standard.
      - ocdtrekkie 6y ago
        Yes, but how to use them to emulate labels support is not.
getlawgdon 6y ago
As a longtime Fastmail user, it's taken a long time to get to this point -- a labels beta. At this point, I'd like to see some truly unique native analytics on my storage rather than somewhat late attempts at market feature parity. I'd like to see a unique suite of management tools, like, say, an intelligent bulk unsubscriber. But sure, I'll test labels out.
- x0x0 6y ago
  I also would have loved this earlier but serious question: who else, besides Google/gmail and Microsoft/Outlook, is even trying this stuff? I've periodically looked pretty hard and been unable to find anyone. Fastmail is the clear market leader for people who don't want to use gmail or outlook, and I'm pretty excited to try their labels. I would love to see them implement answers to some of the questions the basecamp (hey) folks raised here [1], but I'm pretty confident they'll implement some of them. I also suspect that many of the things basecamp/hey want to do break interop with other email clients for editing. That is, you can read them, but not use the hey features from other clients; Fastmail may not be willing to make that trade. Super excited to see what hey do though! Either way, building a super-reliable email service that can handle 10s of gigs of emails and hundreds of thousands of messages is not easy and Fastmail does a good job. [1] https://hey.com/problems-with-email/ https://hey.com/problems-with-email/
erdaniels 6y ago
Might as well put it here since Fastmail doesn’t come up often. Does anyone find Fastmail’s spam detection to be pretty mediocre? I usually get a few obviously spam emails a week in my inbox. The volume is low so I don’t mind it but that’s really the one thing I miss from Gmail.
- snazz 6y ago
  I would imagine that they have far less email volume to train any kind of spam-classifying AI on, as well as a smaller amount of (human) resources to spend on advanced spam classification. Google has a huge leg up in this particular aspect.
  - ocdtrekkie 6y ago
    Another big aspect is FastMail can't use non-spam emails for training data. And users can opt out of having even their spam emails used for classification. FastMail doesn't co-opt people's data for their own use so they rely entirely on voluntary sharing.
- meitham 6y ago
  Indeed. I went through the efforts of creating their recommended “learn safe” and “learn spam” folders, but this didn’t help. There doesn’t seem to be a way to reset their spam dataset.
- karlshea 6y ago
  I trained the “personal” filter myself using their instructions years ago when I first started using them and it’s been pretty solid since.
- ocdtrekkie 6y ago
  Been on FastMail since 2016 and I barely receive any spam to begin with. It took me years to hit the 200 spam emails to activate the personalized filter, which brought my false positive rate to zero.
- rckclmbr 6y ago
  ive been using fastmail for several years and this hasnt been an issue for me.
paulmendoza 6y ago
How many users does fastmail have?
nnutter 6y ago
If you have a spouse and/or kids, and you want them to use FastMail for the same reason you do, consider putting pressure on FastMail to offer a (reasonable) family plan. I’ve been a happy customer for a decade but they’ve raised their prices (which would affect new accounts) and do not offer a family plan so this year be my last year with them. Edit: typo
- tW4r 6y ago
  If anyone from fast mail reads this, I would like to agree to this too. I would love a family plan that would let me put my parents on my domain, however I cannot justify current fast mail pricing for the several emails each week
- appleflaxen 6y ago
  ditto. this is a winning strategy for FM, and with three kids it would be a no-brainer to me. As it is, though, you have only one customer.
- stanmancan 6y ago
  I’m in the same boat. I would happily migrate my wife, kid, parents, and possibly even my siblings over if it was more affordable to do so. They don’t see the value in not being in the Google ecosystem, so they aren’t willing to pay themselves, which is understandable. I would be happy to pay for them, but at $50/year per user that adds up too fast unfortunately.
  - jorangreef 6y ago
    What pricing plan would work for your family?
    - stanmancan 6y ago
      I’m not sure to be honest. At least, I’m it sure what would work for me, but that wouldn’t sabotage their business sales. It might be nice to have a family plan that’s “up to 10” users. It could be used by small companies but anything over 10 would have to migrate to a business plan. I wouldn’t mind it starting at $10/m for 3 accounts and then maybe $2/m for each additional up to 10? That would cap at $24/m for 10 personal email accounts, about 50% off their current pricing.
everybodyknows 6y ago
>Add colors to your Labels ... >Switching back to Folders mode: ... Your labels will be converted into Folders. Upon converting back to Folder mode, what happens to our painstakingly entered per-label color assignments? As a Fastmail user, this worries me, as on its face suggesting a destructive bulk state change to all metadata of the account.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- chrismorgan 6y ago
  In the backend, there’s no difference between labels and mailboxes. This switch is purely a boolean that instructs the the webmail client which set of behaviours to use. Your colours will remain intact if you switch between the two. Mailboxes can have colours too.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
DarwinMailApp 6y ago
This is quite a leap forward in organising emails. I believe emails need to be organised into concise groups in order for you to become your most productive. One thing I would suggest is to allow the organisation of labels according to when the last email was received. Today, Yesterday, This week, Last week, This month, Last month etc. I actually run a similar product called DarwinMail [1], which was built shortly after GoogleInbox announced it would shut down in 2018. We have supported bundles (labels in Fastmail) for about 12 months now. Through consistent iterative updates (thanks to feedback from our users) we have made huge progress. Apart from the core (built-in) bundles: travel, finance, purchases, forums, promotions, social, updates you can also create a bundle from any label you wish. [1] https://www.darwinmail.app https://www.darwinmail.app
sudhirkhanger 6y ago
Is there a standards for labels in IMAP protocol? Or this another Gmail like proprietary protocol? Does this sync all emails multiple times if they have multiple labels in a regular email client?
- acabal 6y ago
  IMAP keywords are basically labels. IIRC they even have Thunderbird integration. You can "tag" messages in TB with a variety of hard-coded tags (like "Work" or "Todo") and they will be saved as IMAP keywords on the server. The problem is that it's hard to create custom ones in Thunderbird. It involves editing about:config, and when custom ones are saved to the server, other instances of TB won't recognize them unless you edit the about:config of those instances too. Basically, it's possible but too much pain in the TB UI to be useful.
3fe9a03ccd14ca5 6y ago
While I sympathize with a company providing a good service and being paid accordingly, $5 a month still seems too high for email.
- mb_72 6y ago
  $5 / month is still pretty close to $0 / month for many people. I transitioned from Gmail -> Fastmail a year ago, and I'm very happy with all aspects (reliability, features etc). Would be fine with paying > $5 month if that's what it took.
  - macintux 6y ago
    It's quite disappointing how skewed our perspective on software pricing is. I grew up in an era when compilers cost $1000; now people complain about $3 for an iPhone game. Given that a burger cost $5, I'm more than fine with sacrificing a burger each month for private email.
    - beart 6y ago
      where are you getting a $5 burger??
      - macintux 6y ago
        For the last several weeks, nowhere.
      - gilrain 6y ago
        Culver's in the east, In-n-Out in the west.
- ocdtrekkie 6y ago
  Email is way more important than Netflix, so you should probably be willing to pay more for email than Netflix. FastMail can get pretty pricy in a multi-user scenario, but as a single account it's a pretty reasonable price.
lars_francke 6y ago
It's not quite clear to me: Can these rules be applied to already existing mails at creation time? This is convenient in Gmail and when I last looked at fastmail in 2014 this wasn't possible. This was the support answer: "I am sorry, but our filters only work at email delivery time. You can't really use them on emails already delivered to your account. However, to work on already delivered emails, I would suggest you use our 'Search' feature. You can search for emails matching specific criteria, and then select them and move them en masse to a different folder, or even delete them." This works but makes migration/reorganizing a bit annoying
- chrismorgan 6y ago
  Since about a month ago, yes: https://fastmail.blog/2020/03/23/email-organization-filters/ https://fastmail.blog/2020/03/23/email-organization-filters/
  - lars_francke 6y ago
    Excellent, thank you for the link.
- darinpantley 6y ago
  I enabled the new rules that support labels and opted into the beta. If you create a new rule that automatically applies a label, you can choose to apply it to "All matching conversations now" or "New matching messages on arrival."
- tzs 6y ago
  > It's not quite clear to me: Can these rules be applied to already existing mails at creation time? A subset of the new rules system can be applied to existing mails when the rule is created, at least when the rules are used with folders. I've not tried the new label system, but I think the folder/label processing comes after the rule matching so I'd expect it to be the same. Once a rule is created, there does not appear to be any way to change whether it is in that subset or not. Consider a rule that filters on who the mail is from. On the old rule creation screen, you could select whether to use the from email address or the from name in your condition. For email address you could check for containing, beginning with, or ending with a string, matching or not matching a glob pattern, or matching or not matching a regular expression. For a from name, you could check for exact match, contains, or glob pattern. On the new rule creation screen, there are no longer separate from email address and from name options, and there is no choice in how it matches. You just enter a string--I'm not sure how exactly it uses it. If you want the older, more flexible conditions you can get them by clicking "switch to no-preview rules". That gives, as far as I've seen, the same condition options that the old rules did. The cost, as the name "no-preview rules" suggests, is that you do not get a preview of what messages the rule matches. When you hit "continue" on the rule creation screen for a "standard rule" (that's their name for non-no-preview rules), it brings you to a screen that shows all your existing mail that matches the rule, with a label showing what folder it is currently in. From there you can ask to further edit the selection criteria. Once you are happy with the messages it is selection, you can tell it to go ahead and create the rule. That brings up the screen to specify the rule actions. On that screen there are check boxes to apply it to existing messages (the ones you saw in the preview) and to apply it to new messages. When you create a no-preview rule, there is as you would expect no preview. There are also no check boxes for existing/incoming. It applie to incoming, and only incoming. If you create a no-preview rule, and later edit that rule, there is no way that I've found to change it to a standard rule. If you create a standard rule, and later edit that rule, there is no way that I've found to change it to a no-preview rule. Fastmail also lets you create rules by editing the sieve code text. The sieve code contains various rules generated by Fastmail internally and all the rules created from the rules you make in the Fastmail GUI. Between each section of such rules they have a text area where you can enter your own rules. I don't know if there is any way to get it to do the preview and apply to existing thing with rules entered via those text areas. If there were I'd be tempted to stop using the rule making GUI and just do all my rules myself in sieve.
neodigm24 6y ago
Too expensive.
- gilrain 6y ago
  That they don't chase free users is an advantage to those of us who pay. For about $50 per year, I get rock solid, feature-rich email as well as fast support from real people who are informed and empowered. It's not for everyone, but it's worth it if you value your mail and time.
  - selykg 6y ago
    Ya, been a user since 2009. I’ve been really happy in those nearly 11 years. The price has gone up, I originally paid $35/yr, it is now $45 (less if you pay several years in advance) but still generally worth it. My only complaint is that the more they extend JMAP the more I want a dedicated email client that supports it, and none do as far as I am aware.
kamfc 6y ago
what about zoho? i use it for business but is it viable and friendly for non-tech literate families? I simply connect zoho to thunderbird.
ancarda 6y ago
One reason I switched to Fastmail is it's just folders, not labels. I HATED labels in Gmail. It never works right with external clients, even if you use plugins in Thunderbird or try to use labels like they are folders. I gave up and basically used the web interface until I switched to FastMail. Will folders ever become mandatory? If so, maybe I should finally give in and host emails myself. It can't be more painful than being forced to use labels.
- bad_user 6y ago
  Labels will probably remain optional, since folders are better supported by IMAP clients and they've been in the standard forever. The only service that does not support folders properly is Gmail and the actual problem with Gmail is that they're abusing IMAP folders for emulating their labels. Fastmail has always been very standards compliant and I don't see them abusing the standard without a way to turn the behavior off. So I don't really understand the drama. Also note that a lot of users, including myself, are craving for labels ;-)
- sv9 6y ago
  I can't find the blog post, but I read one once that said, basically: you don't need labels or folders. You need your inbox, the archive, and trash. Once you've tended to an email, either archive it (and just use your search function later), or delete it. I've tried unsuccessfully to maintain folder/label systems over the years, and I always end up having to search my emails anyway. So why bother with trying to make a consistent folder/label structure? I'm much more likely to remember some key words from an invoice than remember which labels I would've applied.
  - stonogo 6y ago
    Folders aren't for filing emails after you've read them. Used well, they're for filing incoming messages automatically. I have a heavily email-driven workflow, and I am active on dozens of mailing lists. My email servers filter incoming messages and deliver them directly into folders based on which list they're coming into. Another filter has a list of commerce-associated domains that get filed into folders based on which accounts they're associated with. As a result, the only mail that hits my inbox proper is mail from friends and family (plus the occasional not-filtered-yet work/list mail). Everything else lands in folders, and I prioritize opening those folders and dealing with those messages. As you mentioned, once a message is 'consumed,' it just gets archived. But the folder system (combined with sieve filters) is what makes dealing with a ton of incoming email extremely pleasant.
bad_user 6y ago
I've been a Fastmail user for my personal email for several years now, however I still miss labels. Therefore I love seeing this. It is unclear to me how this works with IMAP clients. Are these labels still exposed as folders over IMAP? If so, I assume messages get duplicated, just as with Gmail, therefore the client will need special hacks to deal with it, just as with Gmail.

210 points by chrnad 6y ago

tyingq 6y ago

Interesting. Is there an IMAP attribute similar to Gmail's X-GM-LABELS?

mkl 6y ago
I don't know, but Fastmail is using JMAP: https://www.fastmail.com/help/guides/interfaceupdate-2018.html https://www.fastmail.com/help/guides/interfaceupdate-2018.ht... This supports labels: https://jmap.io/spec-mail.html https://jmap.io/spec-mail.html
2ion 6y ago
Label support comes via JMAP. As for how this is exposed in imap.fastmail.com I'm not aware somebody checked yet. Here https://www.emaildiscussions.com/showthread.php?t=76159 https://www.emaildiscussions.com/showthread.php?t=76159 is a feature discussion around this feature. It's bound to appear there at some point.
- mmcclimon 6y ago
  (I work for Fastmail, but am not really involved with the teams that have done most of the work on labels.) In the backend, there is no difference between labels mode and folders mode; all of the changes are in the UI. There are no IMAP attributes or keywords (they're poorly supported by third-party clients); any email message can appear in more than one mailbox, where "mailbox" means "folder" or "label". On disk, mailboxes are stored as UNIX directories: all copies of the message (i.e., in all folders/labels) are hard links to the same inode. Over IMAP, each can have its own metadata (\Seen and \Flagged, for example), and they'll probably appear as separate copies (depending on how your client decides to do things). As you say, JMAP has this built in: each Email object has a MailboxIds property. When the web client (or your own bespoke JMAP client!) fetches emails for one folder/label, and then you click to a different folder/label, the client doesn't have to download that message again, because it already has it in its local cache.
  - bad_user 6y ago
    Would be good to do what Gmail does over IMAP because many email clients already know how to handle it. A feature that only works in the web UI isn't useful for me and while I'm excited about JMAP, it doesn't have support in any of the email clients I can use.

keesj 6y ago

Curious to hear how people use these!

nunodonato 6y ago
As a fastmail user I was waiting for them, but now knowing its either labels OR folders, I will stick with folders. Labels tend to be much more disorganized for me. I consider them an extra on top, not essential
- bleuarff 6y ago
  I have been looking for alternatives to gmail for quite some time but without luck so far aslabels are absolutely essential to me.
katsura 6y ago
I kind of use them like folders, but one main difference is that I can keep important emails in my "Inbox", while they can still show the label. With folders, they basically become archived right away, so there were emails that I was hesitant to assign a folder to, because it'd mean that they'd disappear from my view. Basically the "Inbox" is my TODO list in a sense. And with labels I can keep better track of what is necessary for the emails/todos to become archived.
- keesj 6y ago
  That makes sense. Thanks for sharing!

tilolebo 6y ago

Does it work with Spark?

floatingatoll 6y ago
Does Spark implement the JMAP protocol (successor to IMAP)?
- tilolebo 6y ago
  Doesn't look like it. But searching for "spark + jmap" return interesting results, haha

HelenePhisher 6y ago

So Mailmate should be compatible with those, can anyone confirm?

kome 6y ago
I was wondering the same. And other mail clients as well.
- HelenePhisher 6y ago
  Just tried it, it seems to only work one-way and tags behave like regular folders. So Mailmate shows your web-created tags as folders, but if you apply an existing tag in Mailmate nothing happens in the web version. Edit: found that discussion on JMAP support in Mailmate: https://lists.freron.com/mailmate/2019-January/010799.html https://lists.freron.com/mailmate/2019-January/010799.html

wodenokoto 6y ago

So it looks like labels are like “multi-folders”, and unlike gmail, there is no mix of labels and folders. It’s either or.

tyingq 6y ago
All labels might actually be better.
huhtenberg 6y ago
Folders can be implemented by having a set of labels of which only one can be assigned to any given message. Then use folder names/paths as these labels and, voila, you got folders. So perhaps it's something that is coming...
- bad_user 6y ago
  Except everything will get duplicated in Archive ;-)
bad_user 6y ago
Gmail does not have a mix of labels and folders. It's all labels in Gmail.
- slightwinder 6y ago
  GMail has a feature to emulate hierachies from labels, basically folders. Maybe that's what he meant.
- wodenokoto 6y ago
  You're right. The "move message" icon is, however, of a folder[1], so I guess over time I came to the misunderstanding that I was working with folders! [1] https://it.stonybrook.edu/sites/default/files/kb/8618/images/new-gmail-move-out-of-trash.png https://it.stonybrook.edu/sites/default/files/kb/8618/images...

laiaondono2 6y ago

hola1

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

ccmcarey 6y ago

It wasn't super obvious to me, but you have to use beta.fastmail.com for this to work. Confused me for a moment as you can complete the first step of enabling this (changing to New Rules) using the stable client. --- Oh, no, it's even more confusing than that. You enable the labels beta function on the beta website, but then it applies even on the main website.

pointillistic 6y ago
you are right, does this mean that labels will work on the main site?
- ccmcarey 6y ago
  Yep, seems to have the same functionality. I've submitted beta feedback indicating my concerns.

ocdtrekkie 6y ago

When I transitioned from Gmail to FastMail, I had to get used to using folders again instead of labels. While it was painful, I am glad I am no longer using labels, and I have no intention to start using them again. I vastly prefer being able to rely on the basic email client functionality in any given mail app, and using goofy nonstandard parts like snooze and labels makes that difficult. I appreciate that with JMAP, FastMail has essentially become the first entity to do labels correctly, with a freaking standard behind it, but client support isn't going to be there for many years so I will avoid it. The big upside for me is it'll take away one reason people say they can't leave Gmail.

jeltz 6y ago
Is there any reason for why IMAP keywords cannot be used for labels by e.g. having some prefix for the keyword which indicates that it should be interpreted as a label? Client support is of course needed but to me it seems like the IMAP protocol already supports labels. Maybe IMAP lacks the ability to enumerate all labels?
- ocdtrekkie 6y ago
  Gmail already has a bad hack for this: It reports labels as folders and that duplicate copies of emails are in them. So the issue is that any other solution would work improperly for Gmail. Client support is a huge part of the problem: If it's outside the standard, clients aren't going to handle it the same way. JMAP, of course, fixes this.
  - jeltz 6y ago
    IMAP keywords are in the standard.
    - ocdtrekkie 6y ago
      Yes, but how to use them to emulate labels support is not.

getlawgdon 6y ago

As a longtime Fastmail user, it's taken a long time to get to this point -- a labels beta. At this point, I'd like to see some truly unique native analytics on my storage rather than somewhat late attempts at market feature parity. I'd like to see a unique suite of management tools, like, say, an intelligent bulk unsubscriber. But sure, I'll test labels out.

x0x0 6y ago
I also would have loved this earlier but serious question: who else, besides Google/gmail and Microsoft/Outlook, is even trying this stuff? I've periodically looked pretty hard and been unable to find anyone. Fastmail is the clear market leader for people who don't want to use gmail or outlook, and I'm pretty excited to try their labels. I would love to see them implement answers to some of the questions the basecamp (hey) folks raised here [1], but I'm pretty confident they'll implement some of them. I also suspect that many of the things basecamp/hey want to do break interop with other email clients for editing. That is, you can read them, but not use the hey features from other clients; Fastmail may not be willing to make that trade. Super excited to see what hey do though! Either way, building a super-reliable email service that can handle 10s of gigs of emails and hundreds of thousands of messages is not easy and Fastmail does a good job. [1] https://hey.com/problems-with-email/ https://hey.com/problems-with-email/

erdaniels 6y ago

Might as well put it here since Fastmail doesn’t come up often. Does anyone find Fastmail’s spam detection to be pretty mediocre? I usually get a few obviously spam emails a week in my inbox. The volume is low so I don’t mind it but that’s really the one thing I miss from Gmail.

snazz 6y ago
I would imagine that they have far less email volume to train any kind of spam-classifying AI on, as well as a smaller amount of (human) resources to spend on advanced spam classification. Google has a huge leg up in this particular aspect.
- ocdtrekkie 6y ago
  Another big aspect is FastMail can't use non-spam emails for training data. And users can opt out of having even their spam emails used for classification. FastMail doesn't co-opt people's data for their own use so they rely entirely on voluntary sharing.
meitham 6y ago
Indeed. I went through the efforts of creating their recommended “learn safe” and “learn spam” folders, but this didn’t help. There doesn’t seem to be a way to reset their spam dataset.
karlshea 6y ago
I trained the “personal” filter myself using their instructions years ago when I first started using them and it’s been pretty solid since.
ocdtrekkie 6y ago
Been on FastMail since 2016 and I barely receive any spam to begin with. It took me years to hit the 200 spam emails to activate the personalized filter, which brought my false positive rate to zero.
rckclmbr 6y ago
ive been using fastmail for several years and this hasnt been an issue for me.

paulmendoza 6y ago

How many users does fastmail have?

nnutter 6y ago

If you have a spouse and/or kids, and you want them to use FastMail for the same reason you do, consider putting pressure on FastMail to offer a (reasonable) family plan. I’ve been a happy customer for a decade but they’ve raised their prices (which would affect new accounts) and do not offer a family plan so this year be my last year with them. Edit: typo

tW4r 6y ago
If anyone from fast mail reads this, I would like to agree to this too. I would love a family plan that would let me put my parents on my domain, however I cannot justify current fast mail pricing for the several emails each week
appleflaxen 6y ago
ditto. this is a winning strategy for FM, and with three kids it would be a no-brainer to me. As it is, though, you have only one customer.
stanmancan 6y ago
I’m in the same boat. I would happily migrate my wife, kid, parents, and possibly even my siblings over if it was more affordable to do so. They don’t see the value in not being in the Google ecosystem, so they aren’t willing to pay themselves, which is understandable. I would be happy to pay for them, but at $50/year per user that adds up too fast unfortunately.
- jorangreef 6y ago
  What pricing plan would work for your family?
  - stanmancan 6y ago
    I’m not sure to be honest. At least, I’m it sure what would work for me, but that wouldn’t sabotage their business sales. It might be nice to have a family plan that’s “up to 10” users. It could be used by small companies but anything over 10 would have to migrate to a business plan. I wouldn’t mind it starting at $10/m for 3 accounts and then maybe $2/m for each additional up to 10? That would cap at $24/m for 10 personal email accounts, about 50% off their current pricing.

everybodyknows 6y ago

>Add colors to your Labels ... >Switching back to Folders mode: ... Your labels will be converted into Folders. Upon converting back to Folder mode, what happens to our painstakingly entered per-label color assignments? As a Fastmail user, this worries me, as on its face suggesting a destructive bulk state change to all metadata of the account.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
chrismorgan 6y ago
In the backend, there’s no difference between labels and mailboxes. This switch is purely a boolean that instructs the the webmail client which set of behaviours to use. Your colours will remain intact if you switch between the two. Mailboxes can have colours too.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

DarwinMailApp 6y ago

This is quite a leap forward in organising emails. I believe emails need to be organised into concise groups in order for you to become your most productive. One thing I would suggest is to allow the organisation of labels according to when the last email was received. Today, Yesterday, This week, Last week, This month, Last month etc. I actually run a similar product called DarwinMail [1], which was built shortly after GoogleInbox announced it would shut down in 2018. We have supported bundles (labels in Fastmail) for about 12 months now. Through consistent iterative updates (thanks to feedback from our users) we have made huge progress. Apart from the core (built-in) bundles: travel, finance, purchases, forums, promotions, social, updates you can also create a bundle from any label you wish. [1] https://www.darwinmail.app https://www.darwinmail.app

sudhirkhanger 6y ago

Is there a standards for labels in IMAP protocol? Or this another Gmail like proprietary protocol? Does this sync all emails multiple times if they have multiple labels in a regular email client?

acabal 6y ago
IMAP keywords are basically labels. IIRC they even have Thunderbird integration. You can "tag" messages in TB with a variety of hard-coded tags (like "Work" or "Todo") and they will be saved as IMAP keywords on the server. The problem is that it's hard to create custom ones in Thunderbird. It involves editing about:config, and when custom ones are saved to the server, other instances of TB won't recognize them unless you edit the about:config of those instances too. Basically, it's possible but too much pain in the TB UI to be useful.

3fe9a03ccd14ca5 6y ago

While I sympathize with a company providing a good service and being paid accordingly, $5 a month still seems too high for email.

mb_72 6y ago
$5 / month is still pretty close to $0 / month for many people. I transitioned from Gmail -> Fastmail a year ago, and I'm very happy with all aspects (reliability, features etc). Would be fine with paying > $5 month if that's what it took.
- macintux 6y ago
  It's quite disappointing how skewed our perspective on software pricing is. I grew up in an era when compilers cost $1000; now people complain about $3 for an iPhone game. Given that a burger cost $5, I'm more than fine with sacrificing a burger each month for private email.
  - beart 6y ago
    where are you getting a $5 burger??
    - macintux 6y ago
      For the last several weeks, nowhere.
    - gilrain 6y ago
      Culver's in the east, In-n-Out in the west.
ocdtrekkie 6y ago
Email is way more important than Netflix, so you should probably be willing to pay more for email than Netflix. FastMail can get pretty pricy in a multi-user scenario, but as a single account it's a pretty reasonable price.

lars_francke 6y ago

It's not quite clear to me: Can these rules be applied to already existing mails at creation time? This is convenient in Gmail and when I last looked at fastmail in 2014 this wasn't possible. This was the support answer: "I am sorry, but our filters only work at email delivery time. You can't really use them on emails already delivered to your account. However, to work on already delivered emails, I would suggest you use our 'Search' feature. You can search for emails matching specific criteria, and then select them and move them en masse to a different folder, or even delete them." This works but makes migration/reorganizing a bit annoying

chrismorgan 6y ago
Since about a month ago, yes: https://fastmail.blog/2020/03/23/email-organization-filters/ https://fastmail.blog/2020/03/23/email-organization-filters/
- lars_francke 6y ago
  Excellent, thank you for the link.
darinpantley 6y ago
I enabled the new rules that support labels and opted into the beta. If you create a new rule that automatically applies a label, you can choose to apply it to "All matching conversations now" or "New matching messages on arrival."
tzs 6y ago
> It's not quite clear to me: Can these rules be applied to already existing mails at creation time? A subset of the new rules system can be applied to existing mails when the rule is created, at least when the rules are used with folders. I've not tried the new label system, but I think the folder/label processing comes after the rule matching so I'd expect it to be the same. Once a rule is created, there does not appear to be any way to change whether it is in that subset or not. Consider a rule that filters on who the mail is from. On the old rule creation screen, you could select whether to use the from email address or the from name in your condition. For email address you could check for containing, beginning with, or ending with a string, matching or not matching a glob pattern, or matching or not matching a regular expression. For a from name, you could check for exact match, contains, or glob pattern. On the new rule creation screen, there are no longer separate from email address and from name options, and there is no choice in how it matches. You just enter a string--I'm not sure how exactly it uses it. If you want the older, more flexible conditions you can get them by clicking "switch to no-preview rules". That gives, as far as I've seen, the same condition options that the old rules did. The cost, as the name "no-preview rules" suggests, is that you do not get a preview of what messages the rule matches. When you hit "continue" on the rule creation screen for a "standard rule" (that's their name for non-no-preview rules), it brings you to a screen that shows all your existing mail that matches the rule, with a label showing what folder it is currently in. From there you can ask to further edit the selection criteria. Once you are happy with the messages it is selection, you can tell it to go ahead and create the rule. That brings up the screen to specify the rule actions. On that screen there are check boxes to apply it to existing messages (the ones you saw in the preview) and to apply it to new messages. When you create a no-preview rule, there is as you would expect no preview. There are also no check boxes for existing/incoming. It applie to incoming, and only incoming. If you create a no-preview rule, and later edit that rule, there is no way that I've found to change it to a standard rule. If you create a standard rule, and later edit that rule, there is no way that I've found to change it to a no-preview rule. Fastmail also lets you create rules by editing the sieve code text. The sieve code contains various rules generated by Fastmail internally and all the rules created from the rules you make in the Fastmail GUI. Between each section of such rules they have a text area where you can enter your own rules. I don't know if there is any way to get it to do the preview and apply to existing thing with rules entered via those text areas. If there were I'd be tempted to stop using the rule making GUI and just do all my rules myself in sieve.

neodigm24 6y ago

Too expensive.

gilrain 6y ago
That they don't chase free users is an advantage to those of us who pay. For about $50 per year, I get rock solid, feature-rich email as well as fast support from real people who are informed and empowered. It's not for everyone, but it's worth it if you value your mail and time.
- selykg 6y ago
  Ya, been a user since 2009. I’ve been really happy in those nearly 11 years. The price has gone up, I originally paid $35/yr, it is now $45 (less if you pay several years in advance) but still generally worth it. My only complaint is that the more they extend JMAP the more I want a dedicated email client that supports it, and none do as far as I am aware.

kamfc 6y ago

what about zoho? i use it for business but is it viable and friendly for non-tech literate families? I simply connect zoho to thunderbird.

ancarda 6y ago

One reason I switched to Fastmail is it's just folders, not labels. I HATED labels in Gmail. It never works right with external clients, even if you use plugins in Thunderbird or try to use labels like they are folders. I gave up and basically used the web interface until I switched to FastMail. Will folders ever become mandatory? If so, maybe I should finally give in and host emails myself. It can't be more painful than being forced to use labels.

bad_user 6y ago
Labels will probably remain optional, since folders are better supported by IMAP clients and they've been in the standard forever. The only service that does not support folders properly is Gmail and the actual problem with Gmail is that they're abusing IMAP folders for emulating their labels. Fastmail has always been very standards compliant and I don't see them abusing the standard without a way to turn the behavior off. So I don't really understand the drama. Also note that a lot of users, including myself, are craving for labels ;-)
sv9 6y ago
I can't find the blog post, but I read one once that said, basically: you don't need labels or folders. You need your inbox, the archive, and trash. Once you've tended to an email, either archive it (and just use your search function later), or delete it. I've tried unsuccessfully to maintain folder/label systems over the years, and I always end up having to search my emails anyway. So why bother with trying to make a consistent folder/label structure? I'm much more likely to remember some key words from an invoice than remember which labels I would've applied.
- stonogo 6y ago
  Folders aren't for filing emails after you've read them. Used well, they're for filing incoming messages automatically. I have a heavily email-driven workflow, and I am active on dozens of mailing lists. My email servers filter incoming messages and deliver them directly into folders based on which list they're coming into. Another filter has a list of commerce-associated domains that get filed into folders based on which accounts they're associated with. As a result, the only mail that hits my inbox proper is mail from friends and family (plus the occasional not-filtered-yet work/list mail). Everything else lands in folders, and I prioritize opening those folders and dealing with those messages. As you mentioned, once a message is 'consumed,' it just gets archived. But the folder system (combined with sieve filters) is what makes dealing with a ton of incoming email extremely pleasant.

bad_user 6y ago

I've been a Fastmail user for my personal email for several years now, however I still miss labels. Therefore I love seeing this. It is unclear to me how this works with IMAP clients. Are these labels still exposed as folders over IMAP? If so, I assume messages get duplicated, just as with Gmail, therefore the client will need special hacks to deal with it, just as with Gmail.