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Integrating with Fastmail
- yawnxyz 4y agoThis is pretty cool — it basically means we can use Fastmail for transactional emails like "Thanks for signing up" kind of emails along with our regular old emails right? I've been using Mailgun for that as a separate thing; Mailgun is great but the weird lack of API key management freaks me out. Exposing one key exposes EVERYTHING and you have to cycle through all the projects that use your account. So annoying. I wonder if this is going to cause spam headaches for Fastmail and lower their sendability though
- Beltalowda 4y ago> it basically means we can use Fastmail for transactional emails like "Thanks for signing up" kind of emails along with our regular old emails right? I just use SMTP for this (with FastMail). FastMail is not really intended for this as the limits and the like don't really scale to large services, but overall it works well enough (you can create an "app password" which can only access SMTP).
- exolymph 4y agoAmazing to reflect on how much goodwill Fastmail has cultivated with me just by being a reasonably priced, full-featured, competent-support-having service. I'm unlikely to ever do anything with the Fastmail API, but I still upvoted mainly because I'm enthusiastic about the company.
- teaearlgraycold 4y agoGoes to show that even if there are a lot of competitors in a product space you can still do well simply by giving a shit.
- no-reply 4y agoThis takes me back. I remember reading a post on HN about how giving shit about customers actually makes a difference.
- tablespoon 4y ago> Goes to show that even if there are a lot of competitors in a product space you can still do well simply by giving a shit. The sad thing is that it's probably inevitable that someday an MBA will decide to burn that goodwill for some quick cash. Maybe not for a long time, but eventually it will happen. That's the society we've built and live in.
- ocdtrekkie 4y agoThe key thing is, with Fastmail building on open standards and promoting using your own domain, they have very little lock-in here. That future MBA is going to have a hard time keeping people from just moving on.
- deadbunny 4y agoInertia is a killer.
- jjoonathan 4y agoOwning your mail domain reduces the inertia by a lot.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- selcuka 4y agoIt only takes a few "improvements" to the "export data" functionality. Here comes the inertia.
- Semaphor 4y agoExporting data over pop3 and Cal/Card/Web DAV is pretty easy, more than enough tools available. And without them supporting standards, they’d lose their customers.
- deleted 4y ago
- amelius 4y agoIt always depends on whether you can make managers feel like they make a difference; or else they will invent their own ways to make a difference and get a raise.
- teaearlgraycold 4y agoSo I'm not experienced in hiring managers. But I would hope you could select hiring criteria that would avoid this. Don't hire people that fought to become a manager. Don't hire managers that are working to get paid (obviously work gets paid for - but the best workers care about the product more).
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ThePadawan 4y agoThis is why I pay a little extra to my (comparatively) small ISP (Init7). They pick up the phone and answer your questions. They don't have you wait in a queue for 45min and affirm that your call is important to them. They don't give new customers better prices than loyal ones. If they update local bandwidth, you get that for the same price you paid before, without asking. That's it. I gladly pay less than $20 a month extra for all this peace of mind.
- beachy 4y agoI switched my primary email to Fastmail a few months ago. My requirements were simply: - must work well - must be a paid service with proper support from a vendor focused on email (i.e. not consumer gmail) - must allow custom domains (so I can regain control over my email if the provider goes under by updating MX records) - must be the cheapest in the absence of compelling benefits (ruled out GSuite or protonmail) Fastmail fitted the bill and seems to be working as I would expect.
- LouisContant 4y agoI can understand ruling out GSuite but why did you rule out protonmail?
- beachy 4y agoI believe it was cheaper back then. Doesn't seem to be now :)
- jjoonathan 4y agoI switched from protonmail to fastmail recently. Fastmail was a ton faster and didn't randomly forget my sessions. Night and day to use. It also let me use two custom domains without paying twice, which was nice.
- bloggie 4y agoI cancelled protonmail and the subscription ended right away instead of at the end of the paid period, so there’s that. Honestly it was just a bunch of little things that added up. I don’t remember any one thing that was specifically distasteful except for the cancellation. I’m on fastmail now.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- waynesonfire 4y agoI had a bad experience as well. Been a long time proton user. I had a CC incident where the proton mail annual charge was incorrectly, without my confirmation labeled unauthorized. PM cut off access to my account for 4 days as the issue was being resolved with them. Like, yeah I get it shitty situation and they probably have to deal with a bunch of scammers but I think it was way too extreme of a response given I explained what happened and have been a long term customer. I'm thinking about going back to Gmail now.... any ideas how to defend against this? For example, have a tested procedure to change MX records of the custom domain to another provider or even self hosted in order to restore email access while an issue is being resolved?
- zamalek 4y agoI'm extremely enthusiastic about the company, I loved their product. I just couldn't deal with the concept of both Australian and American jurisdictions. If they protected data by hosting in pro-privacy jurisdictions, I would be back in a heartbeat. As it stands, any claim about privacy is aspirational and completely unrealistic.
- lolinder 4y agoIt depends entirely on your threat model. Their claims about privacy are fine if what you're worried about is ads and tracking rather than government surveillance.
- zamalek 4y agoBreaches happen, and backdoors can be exploited. Australia requires encryption backdoors. This isn't merely a state actor problem.
- ocdtrekkie 4y agoFastmail isn't end-to-end encrypted, so there is no requirement for a backdoor applicable to Fastmail. The Australian law is completely irrelevant to Fastmail except for FUD comments online.
- jeeeb 4y agoThe Australian law allows the government to order telecommunications providers to assist in intercepting telecommunications and assist in implementing the technical capability to intercept communications (aka backdooring stuff). Practically for email there is no need or reason to back door anything to do this though. If asked they’d just pull the content straight from the server, same as Google/MS assuredly do for the US government. So I don’t think the threat model or risk of back doors is increased.
- BatteryMountain 4y agoSame. About a month ago I only knew of them by name but went down the rabbit hole and read all of their docs & checked out their repo's. I'm basically on the edge of de-googling my life because they are the first bunch to give me confidence that there is a long-term path forward. I hope they stay true to their stated mission.
- vladak 4y agoI contemplated the move from Google services and at one point I went ahead and was very pleasantly surprised how easy the move to Fastmail [1] was. [1] with the domain managed by Cloudflare
- Gareth321 4y agoHow is their spam detection?
- c16 4y agoActually really good. I've just checked my spam folder and it's full - nothing has made it through (I'd forgotten it was a thing, much like with Gmail). disclaimer: FM customer.
- kilroy123 4y agoI pretty much never see spam.
- klibertp 4y agoBetter than gmail recently. I have 4 different gmail accounts set to forward to a single FM account. In recent weeks some people here were saying they got spam in their inboxes on gmail, and I also did get a few. They were forwarded to FM which marked them as spam.
- szundi 4y agoToo bad that after a while they will be acquired too. Becoming slowly unreasonably priced and our data sold etc. Arbitrage opportunity.
- kaboomshebang 4y agoTotally agree on this, love the full-featured -- but still very clean and fast -- interface. Been happily giving them some of my money for almost 10-years.
- thom 4y agoYep. I spent the best part of a decade fretting and procrastinating over one day sorting out 3-4 Google domains. When they announced they’d start charging I finally decided to move to and was astonished at how easy the migration to Fastmail was. I was done in about an hour across my desktop, laptop and phone. Haven’t had a single blip of any kind since then.
- jacooper 4y agoThe problem with Fastmail is its based in Australia. A big no no if you care about your privacy. They need to backdoor every session to comply with Australian rules, and every Australian is forced legally to comply, even if in an international company. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-australia-security-data-idUSKBN1O42SR https://www.reuters.com/article/us-australia-security-data-i... https://tutanota.com/blog/posts/australia-surveillance-bill https://tutanota.com/blog/posts/australia-surveillance-bill
- Intermernet 4y agoThis is correct. Fastmail have actually spoken about this, and their silence on any particular topic can possibly be seen as a canary. They're a great company trying to survive in a hostile environment. I really hope that the new Australian federal government will get around to winding back some of the draconian laws the previous mob brought in, but I'm not holding my breath.
- Kalanos 4y agoI too have heard about many surprisingly draconian policies in australia
- ocdtrekkie 4y agoIt is not correct. In order to need a backdoor, the service would have to be E2E in the first place, which it is not. Uninformed HNers bring this up on every Fastmail thread like it's a big deal when it has zero actual impact on Fastmail at all.
- phpisthebest 4y agoA government forcing backdoors into E2E is always a big deal, not with standing on if it impacts fast mail or not
- ocdtrekkie 4y agoBut this is a Fastmail thread, so a government forcing backdoors into E2E is an off-topic comment, actually.
- AnonC 4y ago> just by being a reasonably priced I’d disagree with this for my case and likely for anyone who has two or three or four people at home who need their own mailboxes (not aliases). Fastmail is quite expensive for such cases. Of course, this applies to services like ProtonMail too. But there are services that are far cheaper that have been operating for years and hosted in Europe (the latter is for those who want to avoid hosting in FiveEyes jurisdictions).
- _fat_santa 4y agoI recently renewed my 3 year subscription with them and I've been a customer since 2017, before that I was on GSuite and O365. I still remember coming form GSuite and noticing just how easy it was to set everything up, pretty sure I had everything migrated over in ~1hr. Since then the best news about Fastmail is that their is no news: they just freaking work. Everything is stable and predictable and that's what I want from an email provider. I'm sure that GSuite and O365 have more features for collaboration and I still recommend that customers sign up for O365 since that's what everyone is most used to. But I'll say for personal email, nothing beats Fastmail. But by far the killer feature that they offer is domain aliases. With filtering and aliases, I'm able to run something like 5 domains and 20 distinct email addresses out of one inbox.
- trinsic2 4y agoYea, after awhile of using Fastmail for my own needs, I found that I really liked the service so I decided to setup a reseller account with them and have been switching my att/yahoo/sbcglobal email customers over to this service as there have been some issues with login and resetting passwords due to the merging of att and yahoo. I really like the integration they did with iwantmyname domain name registrar. They make it very easy to setup a custom domain name with the service. Also I have had great experiences with the import tools and security features. The admin interface for managing my customer's accounts is great, its built right into the normal settings interface, and they have good privacy features with the relationship between the reseller and the end user.
- rashidae 4y agoWhy is this better than sendgrid, a part from pricing?
- Vvector 4y agoI don't see it as a replacement for sendgrid. I believe the API is more for the management of a FastMail mailbox. For example, this might allow IFTTT to monitor for emails and take an action.
- outworlder 4y agoThis has nothing to do with sendgrid.
- e63f67dd-065b 4y agoIs JMAP actually used anywhere outside of fastmail? As far as I can tell everything is IMAP, and JMAP is not even on the radar.
- nicoburns 4y agoNot that widely I don’t think, but there was a post about an open source JMAP implementation on HN a few days ago,
- ocdtrekkie 4y agoEssentially the core problem is Gmail is most of the market, and they have a vested interest in keeping people interacting with their proprietary APIs (lock in) rather than switching to an open standard that supports labels, snooze, etc. Startups literally build custom clients entirely around the Gmail API, which means more data to Google. And if Gmail doesn't support JMAP, why would anyone else bother adding it to their app? Monopolies remain the primary blocker on innovation and until we get aggressive about forcing them to use open standards and interoperability, we are going to stay stuck in situations like this one.
- awinter-py 4y agoI think fastmail is trying for an 'everyone supports this standard except for you' strategy could work, I feel like the bigger question is 'will email still be the standard' in 5 years -- it has iffy security, it's complex, nobody can self host it, it doesn't integrate well with other applications (i.e. 'push messaging' features)
- broodbucket 4y agoIf we haven't gotten rid of asking users for postal addresses when there is no chance they will ever be used, we are absolutely never getting rid of email. It's decentralised, there's a paper trail that doesn't disappear when a host goes down or gets compromised, and it's still a competent method of asynchronous communication. Plus, the whole world is never going to agree on the same new thing anyway.
- kbd 4y agoI’ve been meaning to switch to Fastmail from Google Apps forever, I really need to get on that…
- patleeman 4y agoI did it recently. It was pretty painless. Their import tool is top notch.
- azinman2 4y ago+1 to their import tool. I was really surprised at how good an experience that was. So simple and effective. And idempotent - I had to restart it after re-enabling some of the labels and no dups. My only issue is the spam filtering isn't nearly as good. I need to regularly check spam.
- beefsack 4y agoOn that note, I've noticed that the Gmail spam filter has been less effective recently - I get spam coming through to my inbox almost every day now. I've also had some legitimate email going through to the spam box which has very rarely happened with me on Gmail. If there's one thing that will finally push me to jump to something different it would be if spam filtering becomes ineffective.
- broodbucket 4y agoGmail catches more spam than Fastmail does. I almost never get actual spam in my Gmail inbox, though they sometime mark non-spam as spam. Having actual spam turn up in my Fastmail inbox roughly once a week is a little annoying.
- nopenopenopeno 4y agoHopefully they can use this to add a long-desired ‘scheduled send’ feature to fastmail web and apps.
- isthisthingon99 4y agoScheduled send exists, I use it regularly (on web).
- nopenopenopeno 4y agoWow. Good to hear. In that case, I should probably go back to using it.
- krallja 4y agoNext to the Send button there is a little dropdown that contains scheduled send.
- aliasxneo 4y agoI'd love to get out of the 10-year GMail account I own. It's so tightly integrated with other services that it feels like it would take a monumental effort to make happen. Someone send help.
- beachy 4y agoThe best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is now.
- jagged-chisel 4y agoI have fastmail pulling email from my gmail inbox. With those emails in the same inbox with email for my new address, I miss nothing. When I’m ready, I’ll set a rule to move incoming gmail into a folder so I can easily see all the senders with my gmail address. That’s when I can work on changing those accounts to use the new address. However … procrastination.
- aliasxneo 4y agoThis seems like the best path forward. Have you been fairly happy with your migration?
- enraged_camel 4y agoNot OP, but I have the same setup and it has worked flawlessly since I made the switch several years ago.
- ocdtrekkie 4y agoI'll probably have to play with this soon. I'm using my shared hosting's email for an automated utility and I'm trying to move off of needing that shared hosting.
- system16 4y agoI made the switch to Fastmail from Gmail (which I used since it launched) about three years ago and haven't looked back. What a fantastic service at a reasonable price. Their mobile app is also great. About this API in particular, who is it targeting or what type of apps are expected to come out of this? Email clients that leverage Fastmail-specific features?
- encryptluks2 4y agoI agree the service is fantastic but their pricing is still pretty expensive compared to some of their competitors
- ok_dad 4y agoFor me as an American, $5 a month (or less with longer terms) is pretty damn good! Who has cheaper prices that actually competes on features, performance, reliability, goodwill, etc.?
- jmcphers 4y agoHave to disagree about the mobile app, while it looks nice and is full-featured and responsive, it is a glorified webview and is totally useless offline -- you can't search emails or even view them without an active mobile data connection.
- wbercx 4y agoThis is the one thing I wish I checked more thoroughly before I moved 5 domains from Gmail to Fastmail.
- yjftsjthsd-h 4y agoEh, just use another client with IMAP (or maybe JMAP; I haven't dug in enough).
- kilroy123 4y agoThis is my biggest gripe! I travel a lot and often need offline mode. I would also love to be able to use widgets on iOS for the calendar. So many things could be improved with the mobile app.
- lordofgibbons 4y agoI'd love to switch over to Fastmail from Gmail with my custom domain email, but I face two hurdles before being able to move over: 1) Going from $0 to $50/year is such a tough pill to swallow .. 2) I have a ton of documents in Google docs. Will those continue to work, and if not, what's the alternative? Google is terrible for privacy, but at least my sensitive documents aren't going to get stolen. I'm not sure I'll trust a startup to my personal docs. Self-hosting is such a massive pain, so not something I want to do. Would love advice on transitioning away from the big G.
- synicalx 4y agoOn your second point - do you need to transition documents? If it's free you may as well just keep them with Google.
- outworlder 4y ago> I'm not sure I'll trust a startup Is Fastmail considered a startup? They've been there for a while.
- lordofgibbons 4y agoNo, they seem trustworthy. I meant I don't trust a startup to host my documents (Google drive alternative) because Fastmail doesn't have a google docs alternative as far as I'm aware.
- bigyikes 4y agoFor (1): consider that your entire digital life is bound to your email address. In a sense, Google owns you. $50/yr is a small price to pay for truly owning your digital life. That’s what I tell myself, anyway. (I recently renewed my Fastmail subscription for an additional two years)
- devoutsalsa 4y agoI left Gmail for that exact reason. I just didn’t want to wake up one day to find my digital life had been locked out because Google Photos has thought my picture of a funny tree was somehow an object that violates their terms of service. Fastmail has been great, and I also prepaid for multiple years. No complaints.
- OJFord 4y agoThe best thing Fastmail could do (IMO obviously) for JMAP adoption is to open up their own clients to other servers. (i.e. if I'm developing a JMAP server, let me use the Fastmail app to test. If Protonmail wants to focus on server & security, let them recommend 'a JMAP client such as Fastmail' to their customers.) Unfortunately though I tweeted (something snappier to that effect towards) the CTO a while ago; it's 'not on the cards' was the phrasing as I recall. (I'm a former happy customer - I was doing something a bit weird receiving via SES, but no reason to think it wouldn't work, and indeed it did work for years as a paying customer until it broke overnight. Response was no sorry deliberate configuration change. I raced (no access to email!) to get something workable without Fastmail before my renewal that weekend; suddenly it started working again, no further contact from support, but by then I'd got my own solution almost working which I'd always intended on anyway. The JMAP part's still early WIP though, so I really would like to be able to use their client app as a solid reference.)
- LeoPanthera 4y agoAt least for iOS, Mailtemi is a great JMAP client: https://mailtemi.com https://mailtemi.com Other JMAP clients: https://jmap.io/software.html https://jmap.io/software.html
- Mailtemi 4y agoGlad you like it. The plan is to double down on JMAP support. Push notifications, contacts, masked emails, macOS, etc.
- 369548684892826 4y agomailtemi looks like it's the only native JMAP app for iOS, which is great, even the fastmail app isn't native. It's a free app but isn't open source either. Is this a hobby project, or what's the long term plan for mailtemi?
- Mailtemi 4y ago
- outworlder 4y agoI've been on Fastmail for many years. I didn't manage to _quite_ get rid of my gmail address, but it's close. I don't have to open gmail at all - and any mail that still makes it that way is forwarded to Fastmail. I can use my own domain too. It's pretty great. The web interface is simple but it has improved immensely since I've started to use it. I guess this is the missing piece. One thing I miss from gmail is its ability to automatically sort incoming email into categories, even if you don't have filters. Fastmail has all the classic filters, but they do not apply to existing emails, which is a major hassle. I've been using Sanebox to keep it less insane, but I don't like giving access to third parties. I guess I'll play with this thing and write something to organize my inbox.
- encryptluks2 4y ago$9/mo for 100GB doesn't really compete with the $10/mo 2TB Google plan or the one I have now for $12 and get unlimited storat
- cft 4y agoExcept hopefully they won't deplatform and take your emails unlike Google, if their AI doesn't like your email content
- deadbunny 4y agoGo on give us just one example of Google killing someone's account due to email content.
- jjulius 4y agoThis comment has to be missing a "/s".
- jasonpeacock 4y agohttps://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/aug/22/google-csam-account-blocked https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/aug/22/google-cs...
- ok_dad 4y agoIt's a good first step! I hope to someday see the ability to use an API to edit Fastmail DNS entries, add/remove/modify user accounts, access the calendar and notes, etc.
- n8henrie 4y agoStarted the transition from Gmail to FastMail at custom domain yesterday. Presence of an API was definitely important (though I probably should have tested it out during the free trial). Had some initial buyer's regret for no reason in particular (did the 3-year plan for the best price and assuming prices will go up over time), but already feeling really solid. The web client is very snappy, documentation is good, able to import my Gmail messages, contacts, calendars, and even filters in a snap (though imperfectly). Looking forward to seeing how the API compares with my Google API scripts. Definitely seems to be more knobs and buttons for power users (more powerful filters, regex, etc.). While not relevant to FastMail per se, also really glad to finally start the painful process of migrating decades of accounts to my custom domain email, where I hope it will stay forever. Growing concern about the (admittedly slim) possibility of losing access to my Gmail account was a big motivator, as was the recent move to force the Google Apps stuff to a paid plan. So far so good.
- girvo 4y agoI've been a Fastmail customer for nearly a decade at this point. Its the one single subscription service I will never ever balk at: it's been absolutely fantastic.
- chrisweekly 4y agoSame. Bulletproof, "it just works", and it has great perf and overall UX to boot. Couldn't be happier.
- jon_adler 4y agoThis is my 20th year of continuous subscription. They were my first SaaS purchase! I have never once experienced a disruptive issue, and my mailbox is still spam free after all these years.
- justicz 4y agoI know it's a meme that HN loves Fastmail, but it's a good meme. I've been using them for ~5 years and love it. I use their custom email alias feature all the time. The few times I've had to interact with their support it's been prompt + effective!
- deadbunny 4y agoNice that they have a specific support email for jmap bugs. I recently found a calendar UI bug and it took about 6 back and fourths with the customer support first line over a week before they (said they) passed it to the devs. Not the best bug reporting experience. But then again I can't even fathom how I would have reported it to the Google or Microsoft/o365 equivalent.
- commandersaki 4y agoHah I had an interesting experience. I was trying to get Mutt to list the IMAP subscribed folders when there's nested folders but the behaviour was somehow inconsistent with what I expected/really odd. Initially I thought this was due to a feature in IMAP that Fastmail didn't support (well they use Cyrus IMAP so the problem would stem from there). A back and forth with their customer service and they immediately piped it to one of their developers because it was technical and was discussing low level IMAP commands with debug transcripts from Mutt. Turns out Mutt was using an outdated/legacy IMAP command that had been superseded by a new command with its own RFC. Was able to patch Mutt and everything started to work correctly and look consistent. It's not everyday you have a email provider service help you debug/troubleshoot your mail user agent which leads to actual improvements.
- cdnsteve 4y agoWhat scares me about Google is: - the deep integration with accounts you accumulate over time, one click sign-on is easy but with its tradeoffs - the known and blatant indexing it does of your email content to power their profiles of users for ads - the fact it records nearly every transaction and vendor I've used, is scary - I recently sent a friend a one word subject with a link to a tweet and it was red flagged as dangerous sender and content in my friends Gmail, he sent me screenshot - the fact Google is so deeply integrated to state now, in other verticals like YouTube and this disinformation hunt against free speech against anyone who doesn't agree with what you should see or read Time to switch folks, $50 a year to me is worth it.
- jsnell 4y ago> - the known and blatant indexing it does of your email content to power their profiles of users for ads They have made very explicit statements about not using email content to target ads. So it's neither "known" nor "blatant".
- cdnsteve 4y agoThis isn't actually true. Source examples but many more. - https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/google-tracks-your-purchases-heres-how-to-see-what-gmail-knows/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/google-tracks-your-purchase... - https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/5tfd8n/google_knows_what_you_buy_on_steam/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/5tfd8n/google_knows_... -
- themacguffinman 4y agoGoogle doesn't deny that it scans your email for information, it denies that it uses that data for ad targeting and profiling. Your links don't challenge that claim.
- jsnell 4y agoHow does either of those example demonstrate email contents being used for ad targeting? What I see is just a more convenient UI for displaying what I've bought than searching for the individual receipts in the email archive. There's just no ambiguity in Google's statements about email contents not being used for any kind of advertising purposes.
- gunther2 4y agoFastmail is great. I have used them for years. My only issue with them is their policy on recycling usernames https://www.fastmail.help/hc/en-us/articles/1500000277342-Canceling-accounts-and-deleting-users https://www.fastmail.help/hc/en-us/articles/1500000277342-Ca.... Gmail and Proton do not allow for username recycling, for example. I hope Fastmail changes their policy for folks who use an @fastmail.com username.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- bravura 4y agoIs there a good tool to fuzzily merge and de-dup multiple inboxes? Because otherwise I'm going to have to write it myself. I currently have a gmail inbox and hey inbox with partial duplicates in each. I'd like to merge and de-dup my history as a one-time event and migrate to fastmail. The gmail inbox has longer history. The gmail forwards to hey so hey has responses that don't exist in gmail. I've already started with mbox exports and SQLite import, but I'd rather use something pre-existing. Any pointers?
- aendruk 4y agoI’m curious to learn why fuzzy matching is needed—isn’t Message-ID sufficient?
- argulane 4y agoPut everything into a single notmuchmail database. It wil deduplicate the emails and even provide a fast local search interface for all of your mails https://notmuchmail.org/ https://notmuchmail.org/ For gmail you can use lieer to pull everything https://github.com/gauteh/lieer https://github.com/gauteh/lieer (tho it can take hours to pull everything). Fastmail has a similar tool https://github.com/elizagamedev/mujmap https://github.com/elizagamedev/mujmap If you unpack tour mbox into maildir then you can import that too into notmuch After everything is in notmuch you can easily push your mail to fastmail with isync/mbsync https://isync.sourceforge.io/ https://isync.sourceforge.io/ As a bonus point you now also have a easily updatable local backup of your e-mails.
- funride1 4y agoSerious question. How does this compare to purelymail.com?
- whatatita 4y agoI always hear good things about Fastmail but I've not had a chance to use it yet. I set up a Proton / Protonmail accounts years ago and have been happy as a clam with them ever since. Work uses Gmail, though hopefully we can convince them to drop that in the future. May be a time to try fastmail then. It's a hard sell though; businesses get a lot out of the box with GSuite.
- jpeeler 4y agoDoes Fastmail support muting threads, both in the UI and their API? I've been waiting for Google to add muting to their API for years: https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/36759067?pli=1 https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/36759067?pli=1
- steve_adams_86 4y agoApart from Fastmail being amazing for email, they’ve been a great source of customer service to me in several ways. I like to point it out in case people are on the fence and considering a switch. My most appreciated instance was this: Many years ago I was broke and going through rough financial strains. My yearly contract with Fastmail was up and I asked for a grace period. They did it, no questions asked, for 2 months. It wasn’t a thing. When I renewed my contract we settled up and it was all good. It’s been quite a while now and I’m still glad to support them.
- mk89 4y agoIt's always nice when there is a human in the loop. Thanks for sharing!
- dvcrn 4y agoShameless plug for my CLI for creating MaskedEmails that is using these APIs (since beta actually) - https://github.com/dvcrn/maskedemail-cli https://github.com/dvcrn/maskedemail-cli If you're into domain/service-specific email addresses, give it a go!
- MiscIdeaMaker99 4y agoSweet, thank you!
- notemaker 4y agoI just wished Bitwarden would integrate with this... I know 1password has.
- munkkeli 4y agoThey just did! https://bitwarden.com/blog/use-bitwarden-to-generate-email-aliases-with-fastmail/ https://bitwarden.com/blog/use-bitwarden-to-generate-email-a...
- notemaker 4y agoThank you for replying! I wouldn't have seen this on my own
- lcmatt 4y agoPerfect! Just noticed they need to update the Firefox extension though as it's not supported just yet.
- fastforious 4y agoThe feature was added over two weeks ago, but the update hasn't been pushed to Mozilla's repository yet, apparently. https://github.com/bitwarden/clients/releases/tag/browser-v2022.9.0 https://github.com/bitwarden/clients/releases/tag/browser-v2...
- unity1001 4y agoDeliverability is the bigger concern in such cases. Especially for business emails. Gmail seems to have the best deliverability among all that is available.
- math-dev 4y agoReading some of these comments, I wonder how much astroturfing goes on HN these days
- RockingGoodNite 4y agoI was thinking every response is almost incredulously high. Also makes me wonder about the source of all the anti-self-host email posts.
- b0afc375b5 4y agoThere's a specific comment here that is especially suspicious to me, but I didn't want to pry.
- Karunamon 4y agoThe source of those posts are likely people who got burned trying.
- rosywoozlechan 4y agoidk I'm a legit happy customer :\
- mongrol-smush 4y agoI understand why you might be sceptical but your comment has motivated me to decloak and respond. Fastmail really do provide an excellent product. Like many of the other commentators I moved over to them from Gmail and am very glad I did so. Sometimes things truly are as good as they seem.
- math-dev 4y agoYes it’s good to maintain a healthy dose of skepticism and I could (more than likely) be equally wrong, but I hope my comment encouraged others not to take comments online at face value always. For what it’s worth, I signed up to fast mail yesterday, onboarding vs my cloudflare managed domain was a breeze and so far no issues (it’s email hosting (and their iOS app isn’t great), so there’s not much to get excited about on a day to day basis - apart from a long term appreciation of privacy first email). I have just started using the Spark Mail App - now that I am excited about…if it lives up to its hype, it will be a great addition to my workflow.
- nickstinemates 4y agoI have been seriously interested in migrating away from gmail for a long time, but it creates a lot of anxiety. 1. How to effectively migrate. Run dual email for a while? 2. How to effectively back up email all of my content so it is searchable. I've kind of used Google/GMAIL as a dumb filestore in that, I know random messages are there from 15 years ago that I can just use the google search for to bring up. These are things I need to spend time on in order to take it seriously. I'd like to take it seriously.
- marpstar 4y agoWhen I left Gmail for FastMail, I imported my contacts and calendar from Gmail, started fresh with the email. Nothing is forcing you to delete your Gmail, you can always go back and reference it. You can export your mailbox from Gmail and import it into a local mail client, I just didn't bother. For each new service, I'd sign up with my new custom domain email instead of my Gmail. I'd continually check the Gmail for emails that I cared about and would update my email for those services/mailing lists as they came in. Over the period of a couple years. I maybe move one email over a month these days, so we're just about done. With a custom domain, I'll never have to do this again. The best time to start is a few years ago. The second best time is now.
- sitzkrieg 4y agobeen on fastmail a long time but heres what i did: 1.i switched emails over as i logged in so it wasnt as daunting. i did move over biggies like banking and daily stuff immediately 2. later i setup gmail to forward all mail to <gmail at my domain> so i dont miss the stray actual email to old address thats it. 12 domains and zero problems later! i should mention, fastmails spam filter on the default settings is doing drastically better than gmail did for a publicly posted email
- commandersaki 4y agoThe other replies are pretty good. 1. To migrate I'd use their email import utility. I've never used it but I've heard good things. On the Fastmail side set up sender identities so you can compose (and reply) to emails using your @gmail.com address [if you're using gmail addresses]. On gmail side you can continue having a dual email setup by having gmail setup forwarding such that it forwards the email and keeps a copy in gmail. I have 4 gmail accounts setup this way, so I know that I can always fallback to gmail if there's an issue on Fastmail (haven't had one for over a decade with this setup though). 2. Fastmail indexes emails so they're searchable via their web UI. It's pretty good, I've not really had any issues. In my opinion, the best way to use Fastmail is to bring your own domain. One really cool thing about Fastmail Web UI is that it integrates well with catch-all email addresses, so you can have <catch-all-alias>@mydomain.com and when you get emails to that address, when you click Reply it automatically sets your sending identity to <catch-all-alias>@mydomain.com. This ensures your correspondence is consistent with the email aliases you use.
- crossroadsguy 4y agoAn advance gentle warning to people moving to Fastmail: never use the email address on their domain “fastmail.<tld>. Just don’t. Pretend it doesn’t exist. It’ll be difficult to move away from Fastmail if you have to. Because they don’t have any free tier for that which is fine. I regret using it on mailbox.org and I have used it at so many places in last many years that moving away seems tedious and I give up on it even before I start.
- lepetitchef 4y agoLove the Fastmail UI. If you are not using any email client software, please use Fastmail on the browser to enjoy all the latest update in the UI. The most recent feature is Fastmail calendar allows user to change the color of events. You will love the web interface more.
- tanin 4y agoLong time customer of fastmail. Great support. I once forgot to cancel sub, contacted them, and they refunded with no question. Really built the trust. Now I have my personal and side business on fastmail. UX is simple, service is reliable. Keep up the good work.
- rosywoozlechan 4y agoI checked my billing history with Fastmail, and it looks like I've been a customer since 2014. I've never regretted it. I have two emails with GB of space each. I love the web interface, I love the 2fa options, I love android app. All of its clients have easy account switching. Family set up is easy. Custom domain set up is easy. I couldn't see myself using any other service. I have to use gmail for work and it is not great. Confusing tabs, sidebar re-arranged, some kind of interest based twitter feed order for my email. And it's always bugging me to use Chrome, which I don't.
- daniel-grigg 4y agoIf you’re using apple and just want a custom domain you can do so with an iCloud+ subscription. I switched away to it from Fastmail and have been happy since.
- anderspitman 4y agoThe real integration services like Fastmail need is for DNS. It's crazy that I need to understand DNS records and copy/paste them in order to have someone else host email on my behalf. When I sign up for Fastmail, there should be a quick OAuth flow out to my domain registrar for me to delegate a [sub]domain for Fastmail to control, which returns a token they can use to set all the A, AAAA, CNAME, SPF, DKIM, etc up for me. There is a protocol[0] for such a thing, but adoption has been slow, and I found it a bad fit for open source projects. [0]: https://www.domainconnect.org/ https://www.domainconnect.org/
- aeden 4y agoYes, yes, yes! We've wanted to build a connector for them for a while now, but so far, there's no API to pull the appropriate DNS records to automate setup of DKIM.
- anderspitman 4y agoIMO this is an API that should be implemented on your end (dnsimple), not theirs. There are a relatively small number of DNS providers which all provide essentially the same interface (CRUD operations on records), but there are a huge number of services that need to set up DNS records, including open source projects self-hosted by many individuals. It's not realistic for DNS providers to implement integration with every possible service, but the opposite is totally doable. If dnsimple implemented something like DomainConnect, Fastmail could easily integrate. And it's a win-win because it sends traffic your way. As I said, I found[0] DomainConnect to not be a good fit for open source projects in its current form. I've done some work on a new protocol which you can learn more about here[1]. Would be interested to hear your thoughts from the perspective of a DNS provider. [0]: https://github.com/Domain-Connect/spec/issues/64 https://github.com/Domain-Connect/spec/issues/64 [1]: https://takingnames.io/blog/introducing-takingnames-io https://takingnames.io/blog/introducing-takingnames-io
- joshka 4y agoA quick dnsimple / fastmail question, what is the purpose of the _client._smtp SRV record in you fastmail template? The only thing I can find about it seems like a draft rfc standard that was never finalized. FastMail definitely doesn't have any info on it in their support pages.
- throwaway787544 4y ago
- kureikain 4y agoI love fastmail and its REST api but also at the same time I love to use google stuff like google docs, calendar etc, google voice. Technically I can use all gmail service without using a gmail account but it's always less intuitive somehow and always something break here and there when people invite or tag you in drive or google docs. So I ended up build an email forwarding service, it runs on my own domain, forward email[1] back to my personal gmail. So I still have full control at my own domain level, have the flexibility that gmail give me, and have a REST api to access email. Having this access REST API[2] in hand, I have been thinking I maybe able to scrape bank alert email to build out a a read-only API for my own banking transaction. --- [1]: https://mailwip.com https://mailwip.com [2]: https://mailwip.com/api/#introduction https://mailwip.com/api/#introduction
- Hardwired8976 4y agoQuestion for people with fastmail and a .net custom domain: Do you usually get blocked sometimes? I wanted to send an email to my therapist and one email to my insurance but both had blocked me. A mailbox.org address worked just fine. Is it because of the domain or because of the .net ending?
- Avamander 4y agoI'd propose a third and a fourth reason - your domain's volume is too small and its security setup isn't top-notch.
- 12907835202 4y agoCan you sync Gmail and fastmail so that if you lose one you still have the other?
- colordrops 4y agoIf privacy is your main focus, you probably still want to go with Protonmail, as it's based in Geneva rather than New Jersey.
- kioleanu 4y agoI too am a happy user of Fastmail, but I am plenty dissapointed with the file storage, which was one of the main reasons I switched to them 2 years ago (and not to a competitor). Their support in both cases was just awful and more or less ended in a "sucks to be you message": 1. I wanted to sync a folder from my Windows laptop to the storage through Webdav, using the Windows Explorer (which they list as a supported client). I would get speeds of maximum 5kb. Opened a ticket, went back and forth and the customer support person suggested that I try with another (paid) client to see if the speeds are better. I downloaded a trial, tried it out and it was indeed better. Reported back and the person says something summarized as: see? here you go, just use that client (that cost another 50 euros) 2. I find this one much worse: they disabled support for FTP access to the storage. I get an email 1 (ONE) day before saying something like: hey, there's no FTP starting tomorrow, we did send an e-mail but didn't include _you_, here's 15 dollars for your trouble. I was using FTP actively to back-up the website of my small business nightly. Of course I email support and tell them hey, c'mon, this is unnaceptable, you can't just tell me one day before, give me a solution, something. The reply came almost immediately and said: we sent an e-mail informing everybody 3 months ago, deal with it (???).
- switch007 4y agoI’ve been a customer for years but never touched their file storage, calendar etc. I just don’t feel they’re big enough to have real quality focus on anything other than email. That’s just the impression I get. Happy to be corrected
- devilkin 4y agoCalendar and contacts are improving in great strides. I use it heavily.
- nicky0 4y agoSounds
- password4321 4y agoFastmail [updated: allowed] customers to spoof email as From: other customers, unless you manage your custom domain's DNS DMARC p=reject. This is a social engineer's dream come true! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18996200#18997054 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18996200#18997054 (2019) https://fastmail.blog/advanced/spf-dkim-dmarc https://fastmail.blog/advanced/spf-dkim-dmarc (2016)
- nmjenkins 4y agoThis has not been true for some time. You must verify you can receive email at an address before we allow you to send with it from Fastmail.
- password4321 4y agoGlad to hear this! It seems some content should be updated then? https://www.fastmail.com/about/bugbounty https://www.fastmail.com/about/bugbounty > We are quite aware that users can set arbitrary From addresses on emails, that our SPF records allow arbitrary hosts to send email as our domains, and that our DMARC policy is not enforcing passes. These policy decisions are by design, and we track the actual sender in a separate header. https://www.fastmail.help/hc/en-us/articles/1500000280461 https://www.fastmail.help/hc/en-us/articles/1500000280461 (not as clear here) > Fastmail domains have a DMARC policy of none
- eterevsky 4y agoFrom time to time I'm thinking about switching to Fastmail. I just had a look at Fastmail vs Gmail page (https://www.fastmail.com/gmail-alternative/ https://www.fastmail.com/gmail-alternative/), and I find some of the comparisons inaccurate, and others just plain funny: "No creepy typing predictions" - Fastmail just advertises a missing feature as an advantage "Use your own domain (you@yourname)" - marked as missing on Gmail. On Fastmail you're paying $5/month to have your own account, while in Gmail it's $6 or free if you're grandfathered in with GSuite Legacy. "No ads" - ads are also missing in paid Gmails accounts "Notification settings that respect your attention" - Google makes a big deal of detecting the importance of a particular email threads. I doubt Fastmail is better at this than Gmail. Also Fastmail claims better privacy, but I'm not sure what it is based on.
- stevewatson301 4y agoFurther, at a technical level, a Markov chain can hardly be described as "creepy". Sadly, a lot of folks are not impervious to marketing snake-oil, such as the one you pointed above.
- californical 4y agoWe’ll, it’s creepy because of where the data comes from (in gmail). It reads common patterns in email, then uses that to make predictions. The predictions aren’t creepy, but using my emails in “anonymized” training data is creepy. Note: I am a (very happy) Fastmail user, and I do not use Google at all anymore
- eterevsky 4y agoGoogle certainly doesn't use emails as training data. Source: I work for Google and know that there are strict policies regarding what can and can't be used as training data.
- blowski 4y agoI think your original should be clear that you work for Google. It may certainly affect people’s judgement of your comment.
- Collier 4y ago[flagged]
- nonbirithm 4y agoI am generally a happy user of Fastmail, but there are a few improvements I'd like: 1. The "report spam" button doesn't also delete the message on the web version. You have to select "report phishing" instead to do both at once. 2. The UI for updating mail filter rules was buried under several layers of options last time I tried using it, and I don't think there was an easy way to update a filter and re-apply it to existing messages without going through several menus. 3. The UI on Android is sluggish when opening messages at times. I still prefer Fastmail over Gmail, however. A minimal version of the UI like old Gmail's HTML-only view would be nice.
- Semaphor 4y agoReport spam moves it to the junk mail folder, where it gets removed after 60 days. Deleting it instead would be surprising behavior.
- aussiedude 4y agoUntil they offer an office suite, cloud drive and directory that supports SSO/SAML they’ll stay a fringe email provider. Why pay $5 to fastmail when Microsoft offers heaps more.
- Karunamon 4y agoI actually trialed Office 365 when I decided to drop Gmail. Their IMAP import was broken so I couldn't transfer my content over, and the admin dashboard was actually throwing HTTP errors. Customer support was functionally illiterate in English and unable to comprehend the problem, let alone solve it. Disastrous. Email is so foundational to online identity, that I would rather pay for the services of a smaller company that sees it as their main business, rather than an also ran arm of a massive big tech company who sees customer support as an outsourceable cost center to be cut to the bone.
- vivan 4y agoI cannot recommend fastmail to anyone for the simple reason that if your account expires and gets deleted, anyone can create an account with the same email address and take over your identity. This seems like a massive security flaw.
- evgen 4y agoYou should always own the domain your email is sent to. If this is the case then the solution to this problem is trivial with DKIM/SPF, if this is not the case then it does not matter what third-party provider you are using because this can always happen. Your complaint has nothing to do with fastmail.
- amelius 4y ago> You should always own the domain your email is sent to. Can you own a domain name? I was under the impression that it can still expire, which makes this solution about just as bad.
- vivan 4y agoOther email providers don't allow recycling of account names - once they're gone, they're gone. That said, I do agree that using a domain you own is better practice. However, I have been burned there before - I used a .eu domain for pretty much all of my email sign-ups for over a decade, then had the domain yanked away because of Brexit. Yes, my fault for not realising that this would happen (I lay some of the blame with my domain provider for not mentioning it to me at all).
- 4pkjai 4y agoVery cool, I was just thinking I wanted an email API to check my company's customer support inboxes to see if a user has been contacted or not.
- jokoon 4y agoAll I want is a free email, with 500mb of storage, and the ability to sort mails by domains. I don't need storage space to store attachments files. The only thing that matters to me in email is spam detection and the ability to sort and delete as much mail as possible.
- rcMgD2BwE72F 4y ago>All I want is a free email And who's your patron?
- jokoon 4y agoI don't care this is 2022 gmail is free for 15GB, 500MB is not a lot to ask
- rcMgD2BwE72F 4y agoIt's appears free, but advertising companies pay Google so they don't have to charge you for the cost of running Gmail https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6603 https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6603. And clients of those advertisers charge their customers (mostly retail) for their ad expenses as a % of their sold goods and services. So we're all paying your Gmail, society is your patron and you're a free rider. That what "I don't care" mean. I'm happy to pay my ESP so you don't have to and so they don't collect your email data (as sender or recipient). You're welcome.
- joshuawithers 4y agoI want to lose 40kg, we can all dream
- jokoon 4y agoprotonmail does it already
- Haemm0r 4y agoIs there a service like fastmail with pw-encrypted inbox like posteo.de (not pgp based like mailbox.org), bulk mail import/export, custom domain and imap support (as in: no special app required unlike protonmail/tutanota)? Thx.
- Tryk 4y agoProtonmail has imap support with their Bridge application (https://proton.me/mail/bridge https://proton.me/mail/bridge)
- pwpw 4y agoI’ve been with Proton Mail for the past two years, but I recently switched to fastmail after switching from Android to iOS due to how locked down Proton Mail is. I know being locked down is part of Proton’s schtick, and I could kind of put up with only using their app for email. However, being unable to use any app for my calendar and contacts was annoying. It would have made the switch to iOS much easier. Further, the proton mail app on android developed a bug related to alternative routing that I was unable to figure out that led to the app not working for me for over a month. I began realizing that I value being able to freely use my email, contacts, and calendars with whatever app I choose. The fact that I can also sync notes and reminders to my custom domain on fastmail from my iPhone is just a plus. For operating a custom domain and being able to freely move between front ends for those services, I’m really satisfied with fastmail so far, and I’m actually using their web UI for email and calendar because it works well enough for me. My only small gripe is the fastmail app on iOS doesn’t support offline emails. The native Mail app does, but the reason I prefer the fastmail app is native integration with calendar invites. Perhaps if Mail ever supported the JMAP protocol being explained in the post, I could happily use the app, which has become much better with iOS 16.
- Night_Thastus 4y agoOn desktop, Thunderbird works great as a client for accessing Protonmail, and it has those additional features like calendar and contacts and so-on. Not sure if there's a mobile option though, never looked.
- diebeforei485 4y agoI also appreciate that they allowed me to download all my info after cancelling their service.
- andrewdryga 4y agoFun fact: Fastmail supports Russia. When Russia was sanctioned for all the atrocities and Visa/MC became unavailable for them, Fastmail decided to keep providing them services for free. So now if you out of Russia you must pay, but it’s free if if you in a country where 80% of population cheer war crimes.