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Fastmail isn't entirely faceless either :p But we're definitely not still the 3-man show that we were before the Opera years (up until 2010). Obviously, I thi

Fastmail isn't entirely faceless either :p But we're definitely not still the 3-man show that we were before the Opera years (up until 2010). Obviously, I think Fastmail is worth the extra for the multi-copy redundancy & backups, new features, contributions we're making to the standards world, and not being dependent on a single person - the past few years in particular we've been focusing on not only being able to survive any server dying, but also being able to survive the unavailability of any single person! Anyway - glad you're happy. Fastmail will still be here if you ever find that you want to move back.

pwrplus1 5y ago
Oh sorry I did not mean to suggest Fastmail was a faceless megacorp, I was thinking of Google, MS, Apple, etc. I fondly recall many years ago I had some WebDAV issue and got a reply directly from you saying you'd fixed the issue but you were just heading out to dinner and so you'd push to production when you got back. That convinced a few friends to join too. After about 10 years, Fastmail felt it was shifting to a more "enterprise" focus, which I can understand, and I just wanted to try something a little more "indie web".
- brongondwana 5y ago
  Hah, yeah - fair enough. Glad I could fix your issue. Ahh, Webdav. I know the XML libraries a lot better these days and could make that code a lot tighter, but it's still chugging along just fine, pretty much untouched since :) As for enterprise focus - not so much enterprise, but we are focusing more on the non-technical user. All the power is still there under the hood and available, but it's not so much in your face if you don't want it to be!
  - crossroadsguy 5y ago
    Hi, is there going to be a plan like the lowest tier of mailbox.org (esp. the price)? People who just need email with 1-2GB and probably a catch all?
    - brongondwana 5y ago
      No, that isn't likely. The email storage used is part of our cost, but a relatively small part compared to the support, operations, and development costs. We don't have any other business subsidising the email service, and we're not intestered in a race to provide the cheapest, no-frills product.
donmcronald 5y ago
Your custom domain pricing is weird. Is it really important to squeeze the extra $20/year out of the first user? It ends up being $50/year for the first user vs $12/year at Zoho. Why not just put custom domains in the basic tier? DMARC reporting could be a huge value add if you could build something in. That whole industry is a massive ripoff and too expensive for small businesses.
- brongondwana 5y ago
  Over 1/3 of our staff are support agents, and support is one of our largest costs, so yes - custom domains do add additional support challenges, and we do need to cover that cost. Thanks for the suggestion with DMARC reporting. It's not something we're going to work on straight away, but I'll add it into the suggestions for the domain features. Definitely we'd only look at building something pretty basic and low-touch, but maybe that's enough for a lot of small businesses.
  - donmcronald 5y ago
    Minimal DMARC reports would be useful. The problem that I see for small businesses is the cost keeps them from even trying it, so they can have problems that never get surfaced. As an example of where I think the current value propositions are bad, DMARCian charges $240/year for the most basic plan that includes 100k compliant messages in a month. Most small businesses won’t do half that in a year. You probably have good stats to grok that. I get it on the support thing. I pretty much never use support, so I guess that’s why I always feel like everything is too expensive. I’m always stunned to see how many employees at smaller tech companies are support. Sometimes I feel like I’m subsidizing users that are too lazy to learn.
    - brongondwana 5y ago
      Heh, yep - you are subsidising users that don't know how to do everything - and they are subsidising you by paying for the engineers to build robust and reliable systems with 24/7 operations support, and developers, and standards authors improving the system for the future... along with the support team. Anyway, I've already filed the DMARC request internally, and linked to this thread.
barbazoo 5y ago
I'm happy to pay whatever I'm paying for what you're offering. I had create two support tickets so far and both were dealt with very quickly and by an actual human which makes me trust you guys with my data even more.
- brongondwana 5y ago
  This is the kind of feedback I like to hear! Thank you, and the support team will be pleased to hear that you're happy.
ValentineC 5y ago
It's a shame that I don't think I can ever recommend Fastmail, because I had some really old @fastmail.fm accounts that were grandfathered into their free plan [1], but got deleted because I wasn't in the right frame of mind to log in within the 120 days grace period. [1] https://fastmail.blog/historical/changes-to-fastmail-service-levels/ https://fastmail.blog/historical/changes-to-fastmail-service...

pwrplus1 5y ago

Oh sorry I did not mean to suggest Fastmail was a faceless megacorp, I was thinking of Google, MS, Apple, etc. I fondly recall many years ago I had some WebDAV issue and got a reply directly from you saying you'd fixed the issue but you were just heading out to dinner and so you'd push to production when you got back. That convinced a few friends to join too. After about 10 years, Fastmail felt it was shifting to a more "enterprise" focus, which I can understand, and I just wanted to try something a little more "indie web".

brongondwana 5y ago
Hah, yeah - fair enough. Glad I could fix your issue. Ahh, Webdav. I know the XML libraries a lot better these days and could make that code a lot tighter, but it's still chugging along just fine, pretty much untouched since :) As for enterprise focus - not so much enterprise, but we are focusing more on the non-technical user. All the power is still there under the hood and available, but it's not so much in your face if you don't want it to be!
- crossroadsguy 5y ago
  Hi, is there going to be a plan like the lowest tier of mailbox.org (esp. the price)? People who just need email with 1-2GB and probably a catch all?
  - brongondwana 5y ago
    No, that isn't likely. The email storage used is part of our cost, but a relatively small part compared to the support, operations, and development costs. We don't have any other business subsidising the email service, and we're not intestered in a race to provide the cheapest, no-frills product.

donmcronald 5y ago

Your custom domain pricing is weird. Is it really important to squeeze the extra $20/year out of the first user? It ends up being $50/year for the first user vs $12/year at Zoho. Why not just put custom domains in the basic tier? DMARC reporting could be a huge value add if you could build something in. That whole industry is a massive ripoff and too expensive for small businesses.

brongondwana 5y ago
Over 1/3 of our staff are support agents, and support is one of our largest costs, so yes - custom domains do add additional support challenges, and we do need to cover that cost. Thanks for the suggestion with DMARC reporting. It's not something we're going to work on straight away, but I'll add it into the suggestions for the domain features. Definitely we'd only look at building something pretty basic and low-touch, but maybe that's enough for a lot of small businesses.
- donmcronald 5y ago
  Minimal DMARC reports would be useful. The problem that I see for small businesses is the cost keeps them from even trying it, so they can have problems that never get surfaced. As an example of where I think the current value propositions are bad, DMARCian charges $240/year for the most basic plan that includes 100k compliant messages in a month. Most small businesses won’t do half that in a year. You probably have good stats to grok that. I get it on the support thing. I pretty much never use support, so I guess that’s why I always feel like everything is too expensive. I’m always stunned to see how many employees at smaller tech companies are support. Sometimes I feel like I’m subsidizing users that are too lazy to learn.
  - brongondwana 5y ago
    Heh, yep - you are subsidising users that don't know how to do everything - and they are subsidising you by paying for the engineers to build robust and reliable systems with 24/7 operations support, and developers, and standards authors improving the system for the future... along with the support team. Anyway, I've already filed the DMARC request internally, and linked to this thread.

barbazoo 5y ago

I'm happy to pay whatever I'm paying for what you're offering. I had create two support tickets so far and both were dealt with very quickly and by an actual human which makes me trust you guys with my data even more.

brongondwana 5y ago
This is the kind of feedback I like to hear! Thank you, and the support team will be pleased to hear that you're happy.

ValentineC 5y ago

It's a shame that I don't think I can ever recommend Fastmail, because I had some really old @fastmail.fm accounts that were grandfathered into their free plan [1], but got deleted because I wasn't in the right frame of mind to log in within the 120 days grace period. [1] https://fastmail.blog/historical/changes-to-fastmail-service-levels/ https://fastmail.blog/historical/changes-to-fastmail-service...