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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) fa

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.
    - jorangreef 6y ago
      Thanks! That sounds like what I was also thinking.
chrisked 6y ago
I have migrated 4 people from my family to Fastmail. It was a xmas present. We did the setup together on Christmas Eve and exchanges some mails. Emails sent after that day equal 0. I guess will be ending the contract too. No worth 200 USD / year for 0 mails sent. That said would support a family plan too. For me it’s important that they are not sitting on a free gmail account.
tilolebo 6y ago
Same for us. Family of four, I have a basic account. I'd happily switch to a standard plan if it enabled access to a family feature.
dimastopel 6y ago
Same here. Family of four + some members of the extended family. I am doing IT for all and would be happy to move everybody to fastmail under the same custom domain.
kugelblitz 6y ago
Same here. I have 2 Fastmail accounts (1 personal, 1 business, paid 2 years in advance for both because I'm certain I will stick around), and use Amazon Prime Family, Spotify Premium Family... would really like to use a Fastmail Family. I use the Professional Plan on my personal account, but my wife would use much much less GB, but I would need to add her with her own 100 GB Professional plan.
bradam 6y ago
From a business point of view I think that creating a family plan would likely decrease their revenue (in the short term), as lot of small businesses/professional users would abuse this
tjoff 6y ago
This is the only reason I'm not on fastmail. While I'll easily pay $5 for myself and a few more I'm basically forcing all emails on my domains to go through fastmail. And if I want to lend the domain name for relatives to use for email it seems like a rip-off to expect them to pay 5*$5 a month for a family with three kids. It really annoys me that you can not use the Basic account (which regardless is very restricted) with a domain. By all means, require that the account that manages the domain at the Standard level but as it is now there is no sensible way to allow add some low-volume mail accounts for relatives or family members that aren't tech-savvy.
aldanor 6y ago
Is anyone from FastMail reading this by any chance?.. Another +1 here, currently considering FM for myself, spouse and/or kids, and while for a single person it's bearable, for 4 it becomes overly expensive so we'd have to look for alternatives.
- josephg 6y ago
  Not yet - most of the fastmail team is here in Melbourne, and it’s 5am. I’m sure they’ll see all this in a few hours and respond then.
newscracker 6y ago
This is a big reason why I list cheaper alternatives to Fastmail whenever the topic of emails comes here. If your needs are more than one mailbox (not aliases), then Fastmail soon becomes prohibitively expensive. A few years ago, when asked about cheaper pricing plans, Fastmail replied that it has no plans (no pun intended) to go cheaper or offer cheaper plans. There are other alternatives that are cheaper and focus on privacy, reliability, etc. They may not be as famous as the Fastmail brand. Posteo (no custom domain support), Mailbox.org, Runbox, Migadu, Mailfence and Mxroute are just some of the providers out there that give Fastmail a run for the money. Vote with your wallet.
- joshmn 6y ago
  Basecamp is launching their email service soon — Hey.com — as well.
  - akudha 6y ago
    Just speculating here, but it is likely not going to be much cheaper than Fastmail, knowing basecamp's pricing history. I hope they do launch a family plan though
  - pointillistic 6y ago
    I takes years to develop an interface, apps. etc. FM has been doing this for two decades plus
- x0x0 6y ago
  I suspect Fastmail can't afford to offer cheaper plans. I bet their common customer is a small business and offering cheap family plans would put a huge dent in their revenues. Also, I suspect it would attract people that need tech support. I'd bet a really nice dinner their cfo has modeled the numbers.
  - aldanor 6y ago
    So as to prevent abuse from small businesses, why not request proofs that you are indeed a family, or something of the sort? (there some privacy-related edges in doing that though, and a time expense in verifying those docs...) Or, the other way around, add it explicitly in t&c that small businesses abusing family plans are violating t&c's? Also, a family plan doesn't have to be 4x cheaper, even a 2x discount might do the trick if we're talking a family of 3-5. I highly doubt this would put a "huge dent" in their revenues if all the nerds who are currently using their standard plans solo will invite their family members in and would start paying a little bit more than they currently do (e.g. 1.5x); what it would do though is it would earn them some positive karma and visibility on hn, reddit and other corners of the net.
nvr219 6y ago
I pay $150/yr for three people. Give me $250 for 10 people. The extra seven people won't be using as many compute/storage resources guaranteed.
wbond 6y ago
I have five children, three of which have an email address. Right now we are on a grandfathered free GSuite account. I would love to get away from Google, but $250 (and $350 in a few years) per year feels pretty steep. Most of the family plans with other software tend to be in the vicinity of ~3 full price users for up to 6. This would feel very reasonable to me. Just wanted to add my voice that I’d love to see a discounted family plan! Even if there were constraints on subsidiary accounts - it isn’t like my kids are sending 50 emails a day. Edit: I should note I am already a paying customer with my business email.
NikolaNovak 6y ago
100% agree. I look into it once a year at least (usually multiple times), make some transition plans... but I just can't drop hundreds, almost a grand a year, to fully transition myself and the family :< I fully understand that there are costs, but I feel having a family plan would increase your revenue and profit.
- dmos62 6y ago
  That's a lot of mailboxes. Is it like $50 * 8?
damontal 6y ago
I have four kids each with Gmail accounts. And a wife with a Gmail account. Is there any reason for me to migrate to FastMail for myself if I don’t migrate them? The only thing I could think of was that all of our logins are through my Gmail account so I can move those into Fastmail just to have them out of Gmail.
nunodonato 6y ago
I've been with fastmail for about a year now. My wife wants to leave Gmail and have been thinking about Fastmail as well, but the price per user puts us down... waiting for Hey and see what their price plan will be
kybernetikos 6y ago
They used to have a family account, but they removed it. I'm not sure why.

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.
  - jorangreef 6y ago
    Thanks! That sounds like what I was also thinking.

chrisked 6y ago

I have migrated 4 people from my family to Fastmail. It was a xmas present. We did the setup together on Christmas Eve and exchanges some mails. Emails sent after that day equal 0. I guess will be ending the contract too. No worth 200 USD / year for 0 mails sent. That said would support a family plan too. For me it’s important that they are not sitting on a free gmail account.

tilolebo 6y ago

Same for us. Family of four, I have a basic account. I'd happily switch to a standard plan if it enabled access to a family feature.

dimastopel 6y ago

Same here. Family of four + some members of the extended family. I am doing IT for all and would be happy to move everybody to fastmail under the same custom domain.

kugelblitz 6y ago

Same here. I have 2 Fastmail accounts (1 personal, 1 business, paid 2 years in advance for both because I'm certain I will stick around), and use Amazon Prime Family, Spotify Premium Family... would really like to use a Fastmail Family. I use the Professional Plan on my personal account, but my wife would use much much less GB, but I would need to add her with her own 100 GB Professional plan.

bradam 6y ago

From a business point of view I think that creating a family plan would likely decrease their revenue (in the short term), as lot of small businesses/professional users would abuse this

tjoff 6y ago

This is the only reason I'm not on fastmail. While I'll easily pay $5 for myself and a few more I'm basically forcing all emails on my domains to go through fastmail. And if I want to lend the domain name for relatives to use for email it seems like a rip-off to expect them to pay 5*$5 a month for a family with three kids. It really annoys me that you can not use the Basic account (which regardless is very restricted) with a domain. By all means, require that the account that manages the domain at the Standard level but as it is now there is no sensible way to allow add some low-volume mail accounts for relatives or family members that aren't tech-savvy.

aldanor 6y ago

Is anyone from FastMail reading this by any chance?.. Another +1 here, currently considering FM for myself, spouse and/or kids, and while for a single person it's bearable, for 4 it becomes overly expensive so we'd have to look for alternatives.

josephg 6y ago
Not yet - most of the fastmail team is here in Melbourne, and it’s 5am. I’m sure they’ll see all this in a few hours and respond then.

newscracker 6y ago

This is a big reason why I list cheaper alternatives to Fastmail whenever the topic of emails comes here. If your needs are more than one mailbox (not aliases), then Fastmail soon becomes prohibitively expensive. A few years ago, when asked about cheaper pricing plans, Fastmail replied that it has no plans (no pun intended) to go cheaper or offer cheaper plans. There are other alternatives that are cheaper and focus on privacy, reliability, etc. They may not be as famous as the Fastmail brand. Posteo (no custom domain support), Mailbox.org, Runbox, Migadu, Mailfence and Mxroute are just some of the providers out there that give Fastmail a run for the money. Vote with your wallet.

joshmn 6y ago
Basecamp is launching their email service soon — Hey.com — as well.
- akudha 6y ago
  Just speculating here, but it is likely not going to be much cheaper than Fastmail, knowing basecamp's pricing history. I hope they do launch a family plan though
- pointillistic 6y ago
  I takes years to develop an interface, apps. etc. FM has been doing this for two decades plus
x0x0 6y ago
I suspect Fastmail can't afford to offer cheaper plans. I bet their common customer is a small business and offering cheap family plans would put a huge dent in their revenues. Also, I suspect it would attract people that need tech support. I'd bet a really nice dinner their cfo has modeled the numbers.
- aldanor 6y ago
  So as to prevent abuse from small businesses, why not request proofs that you are indeed a family, or something of the sort? (there some privacy-related edges in doing that though, and a time expense in verifying those docs...) Or, the other way around, add it explicitly in t&c that small businesses abusing family plans are violating t&c's? Also, a family plan doesn't have to be 4x cheaper, even a 2x discount might do the trick if we're talking a family of 3-5. I highly doubt this would put a "huge dent" in their revenues if all the nerds who are currently using their standard plans solo will invite their family members in and would start paying a little bit more than they currently do (e.g. 1.5x); what it would do though is it would earn them some positive karma and visibility on hn, reddit and other corners of the net.

nvr219 6y ago

I pay $150/yr for three people. Give me $250 for 10 people. The extra seven people won't be using as many compute/storage resources guaranteed.

wbond 6y ago

I have five children, three of which have an email address. Right now we are on a grandfathered free GSuite account. I would love to get away from Google, but $250 (and $350 in a few years) per year feels pretty steep. Most of the family plans with other software tend to be in the vicinity of ~3 full price users for up to 6. This would feel very reasonable to me. Just wanted to add my voice that I’d love to see a discounted family plan! Even if there were constraints on subsidiary accounts - it isn’t like my kids are sending 50 emails a day. Edit: I should note I am already a paying customer with my business email.

NikolaNovak 6y ago

100% agree. I look into it once a year at least (usually multiple times), make some transition plans... but I just can't drop hundreds, almost a grand a year, to fully transition myself and the family :< I fully understand that there are costs, but I feel having a family plan would increase your revenue and profit.

dmos62 6y ago
That's a lot of mailboxes. Is it like $50 * 8?

damontal 6y ago

I have four kids each with Gmail accounts. And a wife with a Gmail account. Is there any reason for me to migrate to FastMail for myself if I don’t migrate them? The only thing I could think of was that all of our logins are through my Gmail account so I can move those into Fastmail just to have them out of Gmail.

nunodonato 6y ago

I've been with fastmail for about a year now. My wife wants to leave Gmail and have been thinking about Fastmail as well, but the price per user puts us down... waiting for Hey and see what their price plan will be

kybernetikos 6y ago

They used to have a family account, but they removed it. I'm not sure why.