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I’ve used Fastmail for years now on a work account. It’s best feature is that it’s not Google. First, no phone support. Hardly acceptable when even Google has
by godzillabrennus 6y ago
I’ve used Fastmail for years now on a work account. It’s best feature is that it’s not Google.
First, no phone support. Hardly acceptable when even Google has this.
Second, no collaboration suite like Drive/Docs.
Third, no addons I’m accustomed to having in my daily driver email suite. Things I miss include schedule to send later, default reply all, and no priority inbox.
Im stuck using Google for email and maps. I hate google and want to get off them entirely but Gsuite with 1Tb of disk space for my single user personal domain is so powerful and so cheap it’s impossible for me to switch without giving up too much.
Google maps I think has some real competition at least. I’m hopeful Apple Maps gets continued improvements so it can get the job done well enough I can drop Google maps this year.
- stilisstuk 6y agoI feel a bit different: Email is a standard. You are talking about an app. Send later is the job of the application,not the standard. Same with reply all. Intelligent priority inbox is _hard_ but i. Principle the same. When you use gmail you conflate the standard with the app.
- lilyball 6y agoI largely agree with this, except that "Send Later" really does want some form of server support so it will happen even if you quit the app (especially on mobile). That said, there are third-party apps that do this, such as Spark (though they require storing your credentials on their servers). Priority inbox is also something that can be done client-side. FWIW FastMail does actually have internal flags for "$ismailinglist" and "$isnotification" that you can access via advanced search, but they don't have any intelligent customization of these flags, no way to tell FastMail "hey this email was categorized wrong". You can write a Sieve script that adds/removes the flags yourself but that only works for stuff you can detect in a sieve script, i.e. no ML. Still, it's better than nothing when using the web app.
- folmar 6y agoThe Google way, aka masquerading flags as special folders seems to work good for non-aware clients. IMAP actually has client-defined flags, but support on the clients is sketchy and not uniform
- benhurmarcel 6y agoWith Fastmail you're essentially buying the app as much as the service. If you want reliable email service without the nice app, there are much cheaper alternatives.
- r8deoh 6y agoSuch as?
- aladine 6y agohttps://purelymail.com/ https://purelymail.com/ I haven't try it yet, but it is only 10$ per year
- awill 6y ago$10/y seems ridiculously cheap. Too cheap. I'd be worried they may go out of business.
- awill 6y agoI'm a very happy migadu.com user. Set fee for unlimited storage and unlimited addresses. Very simple but effective admin UI too.
- fluential 6y agoMailbox.org
- rodorgas 6y agoI’m a happy user and never touch the web app. It works, but a dedicated mail client is a superior experience.
- afiori 6y agoThe point of these discussions is that the standard (IMAP specifically) is inadequate to a lot of modern use. One good thing that Fastmail is doing is promoting a REST-like IMAP alternative ( https://jmap.io/ https://jmap.io/ ) that makes it easier[1] to go back to the distinction application/protocol. [1] by this I mean that implementing an app like gmail over IMAP would be a terrible idea, while JMAP would be at least a bit better (it also adds browser support as it allows HTTP as transport layer)
- saurik 6y agoWhat, exactly, do you feel is deficient about IMAP vs. JMAP, other than the latter being a protocol that doesn't require a bespoke parser? The only thing even remotely semi-annoying about IMAP that I can think of is the way message identifiers are per-connection (but in some very important way that actually makes sense).
- sjy 6y agoI’ve never been able to search my entire mail archive quickly over IMAP, using Gmail or Fastmail. Mobile IMAP clients seem especially slow and inconsistent.
- saurik 6y agoIMAP exposes a pretty comprehensive server-side query system. If your email is being synced locally then you aren't dealing with an IMAP limitation, as it isn't even using IMAP. If it is searching remotely, wither the email isn't being indexed for those searches or the client is doing some ridiculously poor search strategy. Like, if you actually look at the mechanism IMPA exposes for this, it is pretty powerful. (The only real limitation is that the original SEARCH mechanism is per-"mailbox", but this was fixed a long time ago with the SEARCHM extension. But arguably the correct way to map Gmail to IMAP is to put all your email in one "mailbox" and use IMAP "flags" as labels anyway.)
- sjy 6y ago
- gdrulia 6y agoI'm not sure what do you mean by saying "no phone support"? Fastmail has apps for Android and iOS. I use iOS one and it's quite alright. Did I not understand you statement correctly? Like did you mean that you cannot set it up with other mail apps on the phone?
- Arnavion 6y agoCustomer support via phone call.
- gdrulia 6y agoThanks, this didn't even occur to me.
- abofh 6y agoHow often are you calling support? The only time I've needed them was when I was locked out of the admin account, and there was no way to reach a human.
- Quekid5 6y agoIndeed. I've been using FastMail for email (only) for a couple of years at this point, and I've literally never had to contact their support. It just works. (I'd actually be more worried about the AU legislation about permissible snooping, but... and I can't believe I'm saying this... It works well enough that I don't care. Most providers have learned to not send actual sensitive info by email.)
- phyzome 6y ago« First, no phone support. Hardly acceptable when even Google has this. » ...you can reach Google over the phone?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- namibj 6y agoGsuite has ways, I think.
- jacobsenscott 6y agoDo people use phone support? I've never used it for anything in my life. If I was unable to make something work without phone support I would just switch to another service.
- stormdennis 6y agoI once got on to Microsoft for some phone support, After asking me lots of questions about myself which were necessary before they could answer the specific question I'd already asked, the person on the other end finished up by saying that this was a question I needed to put instead to the vendor who had sold me the product. I can't remember if they asked if there was anything else they could help me with today.
- signal11 6y agoMicrosoft Support can be quite good depending upon the product you need help with. I’ve called them for help with a Office 365 issue and they were very helpful. I’ve called them once for an Xbox issue (I wanted to buy an Xbox 360 game and it wasn’t letting me) and the rep didn’t really have a clue. I ended up finding the answer after searching a few Xbox forums.
- stormdennis 6y agoActually I'd heard that office 365 support was good and in fairness the incident I was talking about was many years ago.
- aladine 6y agoI am happy with Fastmail too. Use it for more than 3 years and never look back. There is a hype about Hey mail recently but I won't buy it: - It is more expensive than my current plan with Fastmail. Hey mail is 99$/year. - As all of my current emails and contacts are in fastmail, I am not likely to switch to another providers. Also, because I am happy user, I don't see the need to switch.
- 8ytecoder 6y agoI used to love google inbox but switched to fastmail when google killed Inbox and it was easy to choose between old gmail and fastmail. Hey might address why I loved about Inbox. However, it’s clearly designed with companies in mind. The $100/yr is steep for a personal email service. Plus, they don’t have custom domains yet.
- memexy 6y agoI used to run my own mail server and it's not actually fun. If you run everything on the cheapest VPS possible then you still end up paying about $50 or thereabouts. So they're in the right ballpark. I'm happy to pay them extra so I don't have to worry about email server maintenance.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- toast0 6y agoI've gotten better email support from fastmail than phone support from G Suite. It's not much use getting on the phone with people who can't solve any problems. Especially since you can't get on the phone with them unless you can login to see the code, and chances are auth issues are about the only actionable thing they'll actually help you with.
- stinos 6y agoSecond, no collaboration suite like Drive/Docs. Let's be realistic: it's an email service. Complaining it doesn't do everything Google does seems a little unfair.
- mywacaday 6y agoThere are three things that are hard to leave Google for: 1. My email address, I've had my firstname.lastname@gmail.com from almost the beginning of Gmail. 2. $99 a year for 2TB of storage that is shared across my email, images and Google Drive 3. Google One, I can share that storage with my wife and kids and also monitor my kids accounts. I hate myself a little for tying my kids into Google with their own Gmail addresses but the process is too easy to ignore, I don't have time to cobble together a mishmash of services. One part of me thinks Google needs to be broken up, the other thinks it will be a pain in the ass.
- methodsignature 6y agoReplacing the data hungry black box of Maps with the closed ecosystem of Apple via Apple Maps isn't a win in my book :(. Still, may be better than no change. I just happen to be intentionally outside of Apple's all-or-nothing ecosystem so it isn't an option for me. Who makes a system like that, are they trying to dominate the world??? If they succeed in their business model, they will probably be more dangerous than Google - a ticking time bomb waiting for shareholder or executive level change toward nafariousness with gargantuan incentive begging for corruption. We already see the dangers based on how they operate the App Store.