19 ms·

Amazing 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

Amazing 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 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.
- no-reply 4y ago
  This 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 ago
    The 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 ago
      Inertia is a killer.
      - jjoonathan 4y ago
        Owning your mail domain reduces the inertia by a lot.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        selcuka 4y ago
        It only takes a few "improvements" to the "export data" functionality. Here comes the inertia.
        Semaphor 4y ago
        Exporting 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
    [deleted]
  - danielheath 4y ago
    Pretty sure they’re employee owned since 2013, which limits how much BS can be brought in.
  - jph00 4y ago
    Actually we sold FastMail to Opera, and since it didn't really work out, bought it back again. Based on that experience, I'd be surprised if FastMail got (re-)acquired...
    - zinekeller 4y ago
      > Actually we sold FastMail to Opera Can you elaborate what happened in the Opera era or are you under an NDA?
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - josephg 4y ago
    Hopefully not for awhile. Fastmail is bootstrapped and profitable. They aren't beholden to outside investors trying to 10x their money. Fastmail also just doesn't have that sort of culture. (Source: I have friends there). They aren't looking to be a unicorn. They seem very happy to have a profitable business that they can nurture for decades. Culturally, they're growing a garden, not launching a rocket ship. Eventually the company will change hands. Knowing some of the people involved, I trust that when that happens, they'll find good stewards.
    - Thorentis 4y ago
      Everybody has their price though. They may not ever IPO or raise venture capital, but if Google came along and offered them $50b I doubt they'd say no.
  - Gareth321 4y ago
    I've come to embrace this as the business lifecycle. It's quite well-studied. Eventually, all businesses rest on their laurels; over-price, under-compete, and allow space for newer entrants. If we consider the positives here, this creates fantastic market and product dynamism, and (in theory) prevents companies becoming country-sized monopolies. I'm actually more concerned about companies which remain competitive and loved over generations. The kind of global power they could wield is scary.
- amelius 4y ago
  It 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 ago
    So 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 ago
  This 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 ago
I 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 ago
  I can understand ruling out GSuite but why did you rule out protonmail?
  - beachy 4y ago
    I believe it was cheaper back then. Doesn't seem to be now :)
  - jjoonathan 4y ago
    I 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 ago
    I 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 ago
    I 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 ago
I'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 ago
  It 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 ago
    Breaches happen, and backdoors can be exploited. Australia requires encryption backdoors. This isn't merely a state actor problem.
    - ocdtrekkie 4y ago
      Fastmail 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 ago
      The 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 ago
Same. 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 ago
  I 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 ago
How is their spam detection?
- c16 4y ago
  Actually 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 ago
  I pretty much never see spam.
- klibertp 4y ago
  Better 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 ago
Too bad that after a while they will be acquired too. Becoming slowly unreasonably priced and our data sold etc. Arbitrage opportunity.
kaboomshebang 4y ago
Totally 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 ago
Yep. 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 ago
The 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 ago
  This 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 ago
    I too have heard about many surprisingly draconian policies in australia
  - ocdtrekkie 4y ago
    It 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 ago
      A government forcing backdoors into E2E is always a big deal, not with standing on if it impacts fast mail or not
      - ocdtrekkie 4y ago
        But 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 ago
I 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 ago
  Yea, 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.

teaearlgraycold 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.

no-reply 4y ago
This 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 ago
  The 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 ago
    Inertia is a killer.
    - jjoonathan 4y ago
      Owning your mail domain reduces the inertia by a lot.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - selcuka 4y ago
        It only takes a few "improvements" to the "export data" functionality. Here comes the inertia.
        Semaphor 4y ago
        Exporting 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
  [deleted]
- danielheath 4y ago
  Pretty sure they’re employee owned since 2013, which limits how much BS can be brought in.
- jph00 4y ago
  Actually we sold FastMail to Opera, and since it didn't really work out, bought it back again. Based on that experience, I'd be surprised if FastMail got (re-)acquired...
  - zinekeller 4y ago
    > Actually we sold FastMail to Opera Can you elaborate what happened in the Opera era or are you under an NDA?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- josephg 4y ago
  Hopefully not for awhile. Fastmail is bootstrapped and profitable. They aren't beholden to outside investors trying to 10x their money. Fastmail also just doesn't have that sort of culture. (Source: I have friends there). They aren't looking to be a unicorn. They seem very happy to have a profitable business that they can nurture for decades. Culturally, they're growing a garden, not launching a rocket ship. Eventually the company will change hands. Knowing some of the people involved, I trust that when that happens, they'll find good stewards.
  - Thorentis 4y ago
    Everybody has their price though. They may not ever IPO or raise venture capital, but if Google came along and offered them $50b I doubt they'd say no.
- Gareth321 4y ago
  I've come to embrace this as the business lifecycle. It's quite well-studied. Eventually, all businesses rest on their laurels; over-price, under-compete, and allow space for newer entrants. If we consider the positives here, this creates fantastic market and product dynamism, and (in theory) prevents companies becoming country-sized monopolies. I'm actually more concerned about companies which remain competitive and loved over generations. The kind of global power they could wield is scary.
amelius 4y ago
It 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 ago
  So 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 ago
This 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 ago

I 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 ago
I can understand ruling out GSuite but why did you rule out protonmail?
- beachy 4y ago
  I believe it was cheaper back then. Doesn't seem to be now :)
- jjoonathan 4y ago
  I 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 ago
  I 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 ago
  I 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 ago

I'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 ago
It 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 ago
  Breaches happen, and backdoors can be exploited. Australia requires encryption backdoors. This isn't merely a state actor problem.
  - ocdtrekkie 4y ago
    Fastmail 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 ago
    The 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 ago

Same. 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 ago
I 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 ago

How is their spam detection?

c16 4y ago
Actually 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 ago
I pretty much never see spam.
klibertp 4y ago
Better 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 ago

Too bad that after a while they will be acquired too. Becoming slowly unreasonably priced and our data sold etc. Arbitrage opportunity.

kaboomshebang 4y ago

Totally 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 ago

Yep. 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 ago

The 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 ago
This 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 ago
  I too have heard about many surprisingly draconian policies in australia
- ocdtrekkie 4y ago
  It 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 ago
    A government forcing backdoors into E2E is always a big deal, not with standing on if it impacts fast mail or not
    - ocdtrekkie 4y ago
      But 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 ago

I 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 ago
Yea, 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.