7 ms·

Obviously :) We're just the best! More: Fastmail is a bunch of techies who really enjoy working with email and unlike a lot of the big companies we have a cor

Obviously :) We're just the best! More: Fastmail is a bunch of techies who really enjoy working with email and unlike a lot of the big companies we have a core of people who've been doing this stuff for 20 years, but are also keeping up with (or even writing) the latest standards. It's a good combination. ok, ok - I haven't been at Fastmail for 20 years yet. That's still a couple of weeks away.

andrewSC 2y ago
As a user going on 5+ years now I just wanted to say thanks! Reassuring to hear the team is passionate about what they’re building.
hungie 2y ago
Fastmail is such an obviously better choice than Gmail these days. I moved over a few years ago, and I have zero regrets. I'm a bit nervous that someday they'll sell out or run out of things to build and enshittification will set in, but honestly I haven't seen anything like that yet. The day they start trying to put AI trash in Fastmail, though, is the day I start looking elsewhere.
- kwanbix 2y ago
  How is it better? Honest question.
  - bluGill 2y ago
    They are not an ad company at all and so they don't have a division making a lot of money tracking you. Even if you pay for gmail, that ad division is making a lot more money and is looking for why to track you.
  - homebrewer 2y ago
    This applies to any commercial service (I am using a different one, but it's all the same): no tracking because they have no incentive to (they have the opposite incentive, actually), and responsive support provided by real humans when you need it. Search on HN or elsewhere for what happens when Google's automated systems ban your account and you lose access to email and everything tied to it. You have no recourse and no chance to recover it unless you have inside contacts or manage to stir up a social media shitstorm. You can also use your own domain (for example, tied to your real identity: firstname@lastname.com) and move it to a different provider if your current one goes to pieces. Additionally, I use a separate email address for each service (hn@domain.com, paypal@domain.com, amazon@domain.com, etc.) and can simply remove the alias if it starts receiving spam. You know then who leaked your email to spammers. You can add a random "IV" to be sure (i.e. amazon-5VoXwj5@domain.com).
    - kwanbix 2y ago
      Everything you mention I can do with Google Workspace. The only thing is the automatic banning which could be a huge problem.
      - bluGill 2y ago
        You cannot be sure that google workspace isn't scanning your email for ads/tracking purposes.
  - hungie 2y ago
    I can bring my own domains easily, I'm someone who gives companies <companyname>@example.com. That way if I start getting spam, I can block it easily and I know which company sold my email or had a breach. But they land in the same inbox. I find the UI much snappier, and I don't have to deal with some of the accessibility frustrations of gmail. Plus, it's a service I pay for, and isn't an ad tech offering.
  - troyvit 2y ago
    I use Fastmail for my personal account. I use gmail at work. Fastmail's UI is a ton more user-centric. It just feels more thoughtful to me. Fastmail treats keyboard shortcuts as first class citizens, so you can run it almost completely mouse free. Spam filtering is on par with gmail, if not better. Aliases and throwaway accounts are easy to use if you have your own domain. I don't know how gmail handles that. When you click a link from fastmail it doesn't pass through a fastmail server as gmail does, but instead goes directly to the source. The calendar is decent but it's a hassle to import .ics files. It's readable and searchable though. If you attach external calendars then there's some delay when you change something on the external calendar. That can be annoying. The Contacts manager is OK. It's definitely not special but that also means it's not over-engineered. They have some file storage and notes capabilities which I don't use, and honestly I worry that it's the beginning of adding features for features' sake, but if that continues I can always keep fastmail and move back to Thunderbird or whatever, although that would suck a little bit. The android app seems good, but I came from K9 mail which wasn't the most polished. I don't use gmail on my phone so I can't compare, but to me Fastmail's app proves the adage that the better a tool is, the less you're aware you're even using it. It just does its job and stays out of the way, which is cool. I guess adding new calendar entries on a phone can be annoying. Like you tab the box to add a contact and the dropdown menu is obscured by the edge of the screen, stuff like that.
    - qup 2y ago
      I use the notes. It's nothing special, just a text box. I can write them on my PC and easily edit them on my phone, without any system to maintain for that. One annoyance is that editing notes doesn't auto-save. I've lost some big edits.
    - commandersaki 2y ago
      The files storage is handy and is like a lite version of Google Drive / Dropbox and in other ways has a few more features. Upload files (or save attachments) to folders. Okay that's pedestrian. But then you can share links to the individual files or a folder as a .zip, which is heaps handy. So far google drive can do this already. You can also convert a folder into a website using fastmail's domain or a custom address using your own domain, to share as a listing of files or photo gallery, optionally password protected. I've used this quite a bit.
  - stavros 2y ago
    Really fast/responsive, both the UI and the mail itself, great features, support is great, even power-user stuff is supported in the UI and support knows to set it all up if you talk to them. I really can't recommend Fastmail enough, I'm just sorry I wasted years on Gmail.
  - commandersaki 2y ago
    Works fantastic with catch-all aliases, being able to compose or reply with a custom alias, and automatically selecting the correct alias when replying to an email. I've yet to find a provider's web interface that does this correctly, or allows you to do it at all. Gmail is hostile when it comes to alias / catch-all.
- brongondwana 2y ago
  Thanks! We're all pretty happy to keep doing what we're doing for a long time yet :) Have plenty of new stuff on the go (see the email work happening at IETF, a lot of it's being led or shepherded by someone from Fastmail) AI is... yeah. I can see in theory being able to have an AI answer questions like "who sent me a question I haven't replied to yet?" or "who have I emailed something expecting a response to and not heard back from?" could be powerful - but the tech is really immature and it hallucinates the craziest things. I don't think it's something we need to do in-house - it's something that could be added on with an IMAP or JMAP connector for those who want it.
mrguyorama 2y ago
I have an unfortunately pointed question: How good are you guys at preventing account takeovers? We live in a world where your digital property is backstopped by "send me an email with a link I can click to regain access to a broken account". Everything I've collected digitally over the course of 20 years "belongs" to my email address through that power dynamic. Tens of thousands of dollars of value that I can only maintain access to if I can guarantee that me and me alone have access to my email account, and I will always have access to that account. I would love to get my email away from Google, I do not trust them at all. But they have demonstrated to me multiple times that they are adept at preventing unauthorized access to my account. Do you have behavioral account takeover prevention? Do you have a risk and fraud department whose job it is to ensure that me and me alone have access to that email? Do you have people who I can call and demonstrate my identity to in order to regain access to that email account if it does get hacked? 2FA is not an answer.
- fn-mote 2y ago
  On one hand, I acknowledge Google's security is amazing. On the other hand, I am puzzled by your assertion that 2FA is not the answer. Fastmail has passkeys and TOTP... you are a seriously high profile target if that's not enough for you. > Do you have people who I can call and demonstrate my identity to in order to regain access to that email account if it does get hacked? Google doesn't have this, right? And actively doesn't want it. Once your account is locked down and you're not falling for the phishing attacks, this is the route in. > Tens of thousands of dollars So your security only has to stand up to say $50k of assult? No problem. That's not 0-day money. Just stick with your TOTP 2FA.
  - mrguyorama 2y ago
    You're right, what I actually should have asked is "How do you guarantee I never lose access" If I lose the key to my house, I can change the lock, it's my property. If I lose the key to my Post Office box, the Post Office will charge me money to set up a new key. I have RIGHTS to my physical property and physical business relationships. What happens when I lose my Fastmail key? Currently the status quo is "get fucked". Which is utterly insane to me. My options in that reality are to either, set up 2fa and ensure that I lose my digital life at some point, or not have 2fa and get my shit taken instead. Google doesn't do much in that regard, other than making me confident that they won't let anyone else pollute my ad profile, but I was an actual child when I set that up, and it doesn't cost $5 a month.
irunmyownemail 2y ago
> More: Fastmail is a bunch of techies who really enjoy ...spamming every online discussion about selfhosting email, [just go with Fastmail, it's greeaaaat!] or like that. FTFY
brongondwana 2y ago
Sadly someone flagged the hilarious response "...spamming every online discussion about selfhosting email, [just go with Fastmail, it's greeaaaat!] or like that." before I got back to it. True fact, many of us do love reading HN and chiming in. We don't mind self hosters at all. Eventually they get sick of it and move their email to Fastmail, or in extreme cases come work for us! (it took me a good year of being a Fastmail staff member to finally decide to shut down my own self-hosting and just make it a Fastmail Family account... figured if I was going to get paged by my family for the email being broken I might as well be on the clock)

andrewSC 2y ago

As a user going on 5+ years now I just wanted to say thanks! Reassuring to hear the team is passionate about what they’re building.

hungie 2y ago

Fastmail is such an obviously better choice than Gmail these days. I moved over a few years ago, and I have zero regrets. I'm a bit nervous that someday they'll sell out or run out of things to build and enshittification will set in, but honestly I haven't seen anything like that yet. The day they start trying to put AI trash in Fastmail, though, is the day I start looking elsewhere.

kwanbix 2y ago
How is it better? Honest question.
- bluGill 2y ago
  They are not an ad company at all and so they don't have a division making a lot of money tracking you. Even if you pay for gmail, that ad division is making a lot more money and is looking for why to track you.
- homebrewer 2y ago
  This applies to any commercial service (I am using a different one, but it's all the same): no tracking because they have no incentive to (they have the opposite incentive, actually), and responsive support provided by real humans when you need it. Search on HN or elsewhere for what happens when Google's automated systems ban your account and you lose access to email and everything tied to it. You have no recourse and no chance to recover it unless you have inside contacts or manage to stir up a social media shitstorm. You can also use your own domain (for example, tied to your real identity: firstname@lastname.com) and move it to a different provider if your current one goes to pieces. Additionally, I use a separate email address for each service (hn@domain.com, paypal@domain.com, amazon@domain.com, etc.) and can simply remove the alias if it starts receiving spam. You know then who leaked your email to spammers. You can add a random "IV" to be sure (i.e. amazon-5VoXwj5@domain.com).
  - kwanbix 2y ago
    Everything you mention I can do with Google Workspace. The only thing is the automatic banning which could be a huge problem.
    - bluGill 2y ago
      You cannot be sure that google workspace isn't scanning your email for ads/tracking purposes.
- hungie 2y ago
  I can bring my own domains easily, I'm someone who gives companies <companyname>@example.com. That way if I start getting spam, I can block it easily and I know which company sold my email or had a breach. But they land in the same inbox. I find the UI much snappier, and I don't have to deal with some of the accessibility frustrations of gmail. Plus, it's a service I pay for, and isn't an ad tech offering.
- troyvit 2y ago
  I use Fastmail for my personal account. I use gmail at work. Fastmail's UI is a ton more user-centric. It just feels more thoughtful to me. Fastmail treats keyboard shortcuts as first class citizens, so you can run it almost completely mouse free. Spam filtering is on par with gmail, if not better. Aliases and throwaway accounts are easy to use if you have your own domain. I don't know how gmail handles that. When you click a link from fastmail it doesn't pass through a fastmail server as gmail does, but instead goes directly to the source. The calendar is decent but it's a hassle to import .ics files. It's readable and searchable though. If you attach external calendars then there's some delay when you change something on the external calendar. That can be annoying. The Contacts manager is OK. It's definitely not special but that also means it's not over-engineered. They have some file storage and notes capabilities which I don't use, and honestly I worry that it's the beginning of adding features for features' sake, but if that continues I can always keep fastmail and move back to Thunderbird or whatever, although that would suck a little bit. The android app seems good, but I came from K9 mail which wasn't the most polished. I don't use gmail on my phone so I can't compare, but to me Fastmail's app proves the adage that the better a tool is, the less you're aware you're even using it. It just does its job and stays out of the way, which is cool. I guess adding new calendar entries on a phone can be annoying. Like you tab the box to add a contact and the dropdown menu is obscured by the edge of the screen, stuff like that.
  - qup 2y ago
    I use the notes. It's nothing special, just a text box. I can write them on my PC and easily edit them on my phone, without any system to maintain for that. One annoyance is that editing notes doesn't auto-save. I've lost some big edits.
  - commandersaki 2y ago
    The files storage is handy and is like a lite version of Google Drive / Dropbox and in other ways has a few more features. Upload files (or save attachments) to folders. Okay that's pedestrian. But then you can share links to the individual files or a folder as a .zip, which is heaps handy. So far google drive can do this already. You can also convert a folder into a website using fastmail's domain or a custom address using your own domain, to share as a listing of files or photo gallery, optionally password protected. I've used this quite a bit.
- stavros 2y ago
  Really fast/responsive, both the UI and the mail itself, great features, support is great, even power-user stuff is supported in the UI and support knows to set it all up if you talk to them. I really can't recommend Fastmail enough, I'm just sorry I wasted years on Gmail.
- commandersaki 2y ago
  Works fantastic with catch-all aliases, being able to compose or reply with a custom alias, and automatically selecting the correct alias when replying to an email. I've yet to find a provider's web interface that does this correctly, or allows you to do it at all. Gmail is hostile when it comes to alias / catch-all.
brongondwana 2y ago
Thanks! We're all pretty happy to keep doing what we're doing for a long time yet :) Have plenty of new stuff on the go (see the email work happening at IETF, a lot of it's being led or shepherded by someone from Fastmail) AI is... yeah. I can see in theory being able to have an AI answer questions like "who sent me a question I haven't replied to yet?" or "who have I emailed something expecting a response to and not heard back from?" could be powerful - but the tech is really immature and it hallucinates the craziest things. I don't think it's something we need to do in-house - it's something that could be added on with an IMAP or JMAP connector for those who want it.

mrguyorama 2y ago

I have an unfortunately pointed question: How good are you guys at preventing account takeovers? We live in a world where your digital property is backstopped by "send me an email with a link I can click to regain access to a broken account". Everything I've collected digitally over the course of 20 years "belongs" to my email address through that power dynamic. Tens of thousands of dollars of value that I can only maintain access to if I can guarantee that me and me alone have access to my email account, and I will always have access to that account. I would love to get my email away from Google, I do not trust them at all. But they have demonstrated to me multiple times that they are adept at preventing unauthorized access to my account. Do you have behavioral account takeover prevention? Do you have a risk and fraud department whose job it is to ensure that me and me alone have access to that email? Do you have people who I can call and demonstrate my identity to in order to regain access to that email account if it does get hacked? 2FA is not an answer.

fn-mote 2y ago
On one hand, I acknowledge Google's security is amazing. On the other hand, I am puzzled by your assertion that 2FA is not the answer. Fastmail has passkeys and TOTP... you are a seriously high profile target if that's not enough for you. > Do you have people who I can call and demonstrate my identity to in order to regain access to that email account if it does get hacked? Google doesn't have this, right? And actively doesn't want it. Once your account is locked down and you're not falling for the phishing attacks, this is the route in. > Tens of thousands of dollars So your security only has to stand up to say $50k of assult? No problem. That's not 0-day money. Just stick with your TOTP 2FA.
- mrguyorama 2y ago
  You're right, what I actually should have asked is "How do you guarantee I never lose access" If I lose the key to my house, I can change the lock, it's my property. If I lose the key to my Post Office box, the Post Office will charge me money to set up a new key. I have RIGHTS to my physical property and physical business relationships. What happens when I lose my Fastmail key? Currently the status quo is "get fucked". Which is utterly insane to me. My options in that reality are to either, set up 2fa and ensure that I lose my digital life at some point, or not have 2fa and get my shit taken instead. Google doesn't do much in that regard, other than making me confident that they won't let anyone else pollute my ad profile, but I was an actual child when I set that up, and it doesn't cost $5 a month.

irunmyownemail 2y ago

> More: Fastmail is a bunch of techies who really enjoy ...spamming every online discussion about selfhosting email, [just go with Fastmail, it's greeaaaat!] or like that. FTFY

brongondwana 2y ago

Sadly someone flagged the hilarious response "...spamming every online discussion about selfhosting email, [just go with Fastmail, it's greeaaaat!] or like that." before I got back to it. True fact, many of us do love reading HN and chiming in. We don't mind self hosters at all. Eventually they get sick of it and move their email to Fastmail, or in extreme cases come work for us! (it took me a good year of being a Fastmail staff member to finally decide to shut down my own self-hosting and just make it a Fastmail Family account... figured if I was going to get paged by my family for the email being broken I might as well be on the clock)