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I'm not sure why you can't do those things on FastMail. (disclaimer: I work for FastMail) Sure we have folders rather than tags, which means you can't add mul

I'm not sure why you can't do those things on FastMail. (disclaimer: I work for FastMail) Sure we have folders rather than tags, which means you can't add multiple of them to the same message. Probably the biggest lack is that you can't manage IMAP flags via the web interface. Otherwise, our search is now very powerful (since about March this year) and allows you to build filters that show messages from multiple folders in a single view.

dbpatterson 13y ago
OP here. Fastmail had 4 out of my required 5 features. I used it for a while. I'm still a paying customer (I paid for a bunch of years). Tags were a deal breaker. It's just not sufficient for how I want to organize things.
- brongondwana 13y ago
  I'm going to raise this in our next meeting (Tuesday) and see if there's a way we can have IMAP flags exposed somehow. Along with fast cross-folder searching on flags, we could quite easily implement virtual folders per flag - which I think fills your use-case perfectly. The difficult parts are: 1) UI 2) limits. We have a hard limit of 128 "user flags" because it's in 4 x 32 bit fields in a fixed-width data format. Subtract a few for our internal tooling, and you probably only have 120 you can use for yourself. Would 120 be enough? One thing that many older clients did was had $Label1 => $Label5. That was often enough for people... so I suspect 120 is probably fine.
  - dbpatterson 13y ago
    I think if you'd had that before, I never would have left (and I think many other people would be happy with that).
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
mrgreenfur 13y ago
I love FastMail. Thank you for your work!
- brongondwana 13y ago
  Cheers :)
yfefyf 13y ago
I've just registered FastMail for free trial. Its speed is amazing, much faster than Gmail. And its UI looks great, too. Thank you for your work. It would be better if you have a more desirable .com domain name. I will probably buy an Enhanced account to use my own domains after free trial.
- brongondwana 13y ago
  We have a bunch of .com names as well. But I agree that your own domain is the best approach, both for the ultimate in portability, and the ability to choose whatever localpart you like.
ansgri 13y ago
Tags would be useful, but the UI aesthetics could be better too: now it's too plain and minimalistic. Look at Yandex Mail for example: it's just less boring. I guess you could attract much greater audience by adding theme support and proper marketing in light of this outrage. That said, I like fastmail very much: keyboard navigation, search and overall speed are great!
kijin 13y ago
Just another happy FastMail user here. I don't need tags/labels, so you have everything I need. I have an Enhanced account that is linked to my domain, and an Ad Free account where important mail gets forwarded to. The latter is accessible from my phone, but the former isn't, so if anyone steals my phone they can only see the last few messages I exchanged, and I can just disable an alternative login (similar to revoking an API key) to lock my phone out permanently. I also set up my default personality in the Ad Free account to send all mail through my Enhanced account, so every mail I send from my phone is automatically saved in my Enhanced account and even has the correct DKIM signature. One question, though, and I'm sure a lot of people are curious about it. You are an Australian subsidiary of a Norwegian company, but your servers are in the US. What happens when an American three-letter agency wants to see the contents of your servers?
- volatile 13y ago
  Jeremy Howard, the founder of FastMail, responded to a similar question on Slashdot in October 2009. http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1391605&cid=29632353 http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1391605&cid=2963235... We've had a number of US-based law enforcement bodies over the year try to get hold of our data without going via the appropriate Australian bodies, and it doesn't work out for them. In the end, they have always ended up submitting a request for cooperation via the Australian Federal Police, as they are required to do, and we respond to that request in line with Australian law. Even so, as an Australian I decided to use a hosting company whose servers are physically hosted in Australia.
  - brongondwana 13y ago
    Fair enough. Hosting in Australia is something we consider occasionally, but the bandwidth pricing is just so much higher. It's always worth looking at demand of course - are there enough people who would be willing to pay a premium to have their email in Australia to justify running up a full instance here.
    - volatile 13y ago
josephb 13y ago
Another happy Fastmail user! I just wish it had an address book and calendar that I could sync. Those are the things I miss the most from Gmail.
da_n 13y ago
I signed up for Fastmail enhanced, really like it so far, only things I don't like are the read only LDAP contacts and the security settings. Specifically on the security settings, I want to see support for a limited alternative login which can access IMAP desktop/mobile clients (such as K9) but not have full unrestricted web access. Tags, I can without those if they can't be implemented well. Thanks for a great product.
brendoncrawford 13y ago
Happy paying FastMail customer here. Would love to see CalDav support (public and private), so I can ditch Google once and for all.
- hexis 13y ago
  Seconded, especially with Calendar sharing with specific other people.
kroger 13y ago
I've been using FastMail for a while and I like it a lot. Actually I love the fact that it uses folders instead of tags. The only problem I have with FastMail is that I've been receiving an increased amount of spam in my inbox.
- larsberg 13y ago
  Did you set up the advanced spam filtering and then train it on all of your folders? I also set the super-advanced options and changed the thresholds to around 3.0 (instead of the default, which was I think 5.0), which really helped. It's better than when I hosted on gmail, but I'd say 5-10 per day still get through and have to be reported, after about a month on fastmail. That's only a couple of percent, though (scanning my spam folder, I get something like 10-12 per hour, but this is an e-mail address I've had and not hidden at all since 1997).
  - kroger 13y ago
    I contacted support and they did setup the super-advanced options for me. It seems to be much better now.

dbpatterson 13y ago

OP here. Fastmail had 4 out of my required 5 features. I used it for a while. I'm still a paying customer (I paid for a bunch of years). Tags were a deal breaker. It's just not sufficient for how I want to organize things.

brongondwana 13y ago
I'm going to raise this in our next meeting (Tuesday) and see if there's a way we can have IMAP flags exposed somehow. Along with fast cross-folder searching on flags, we could quite easily implement virtual folders per flag - which I think fills your use-case perfectly. The difficult parts are: 1) UI 2) limits. We have a hard limit of 128 "user flags" because it's in 4 x 32 bit fields in a fixed-width data format. Subtract a few for our internal tooling, and you probably only have 120 you can use for yourself. Would 120 be enough? One thing that many older clients did was had $Label1 => $Label5. That was often enough for people... so I suspect 120 is probably fine.
- dbpatterson 13y ago
  I think if you'd had that before, I never would have left (and I think many other people would be happy with that).
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]

mrgreenfur 13y ago

I love FastMail. Thank you for your work!

brongondwana 13y ago
Cheers :)

yfefyf 13y ago

I've just registered FastMail for free trial. Its speed is amazing, much faster than Gmail. And its UI looks great, too. Thank you for your work. It would be better if you have a more desirable .com domain name. I will probably buy an Enhanced account to use my own domains after free trial.

brongondwana 13y ago
We have a bunch of .com names as well. But I agree that your own domain is the best approach, both for the ultimate in portability, and the ability to choose whatever localpart you like.

ansgri 13y ago

Tags would be useful, but the UI aesthetics could be better too: now it's too plain and minimalistic. Look at Yandex Mail for example: it's just less boring. I guess you could attract much greater audience by adding theme support and proper marketing in light of this outrage. That said, I like fastmail very much: keyboard navigation, search and overall speed are great!

kijin 13y ago

Just another happy FastMail user here. I don't need tags/labels, so you have everything I need. I have an Enhanced account that is linked to my domain, and an Ad Free account where important mail gets forwarded to. The latter is accessible from my phone, but the former isn't, so if anyone steals my phone they can only see the last few messages I exchanged, and I can just disable an alternative login (similar to revoking an API key) to lock my phone out permanently. I also set up my default personality in the Ad Free account to send all mail through my Enhanced account, so every mail I send from my phone is automatically saved in my Enhanced account and even has the correct DKIM signature. One question, though, and I'm sure a lot of people are curious about it. You are an Australian subsidiary of a Norwegian company, but your servers are in the US. What happens when an American three-letter agency wants to see the contents of your servers?

volatile 13y ago
Jeremy Howard, the founder of FastMail, responded to a similar question on Slashdot in October 2009. http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1391605&cid=29632353 http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1391605&cid=2963235... We've had a number of US-based law enforcement bodies over the year try to get hold of our data without going via the appropriate Australian bodies, and it doesn't work out for them. In the end, they have always ended up submitting a request for cooperation via the Australian Federal Police, as they are required to do, and we respond to that request in line with Australian law. Even so, as an Australian I decided to use a hosting company whose servers are physically hosted in Australia.
- brongondwana 13y ago
  Fair enough. Hosting in Australia is something we consider occasionally, but the bandwidth pricing is just so much higher. It's always worth looking at demand of course - are there enough people who would be willing to pay a premium to have their email in Australia to justify running up a full instance here.
  - volatile 13y ago

josephb 13y ago

Another happy Fastmail user! I just wish it had an address book and calendar that I could sync. Those are the things I miss the most from Gmail.

da_n 13y ago

I signed up for Fastmail enhanced, really like it so far, only things I don't like are the read only LDAP contacts and the security settings. Specifically on the security settings, I want to see support for a limited alternative login which can access IMAP desktop/mobile clients (such as K9) but not have full unrestricted web access. Tags, I can without those if they can't be implemented well. Thanks for a great product.

brendoncrawford 13y ago

Happy paying FastMail customer here. Would love to see CalDav support (public and private), so I can ditch Google once and for all.

hexis 13y ago
Seconded, especially with Calendar sharing with specific other people.

kroger 13y ago

I've been using FastMail for a while and I like it a lot. Actually I love the fact that it uses folders instead of tags. The only problem I have with FastMail is that I've been receiving an increased amount of spam in my inbox.

larsberg 13y ago
Did you set up the advanced spam filtering and then train it on all of your folders? I also set the super-advanced options and changed the thresholds to around 3.0 (instead of the default, which was I think 5.0), which really helped. It's better than when I hosted on gmail, but I'd say 5-10 per day still get through and have to be reported, after about a month on fastmail. That's only a couple of percent, though (scanning my spam folder, I get something like 10-12 per hour, but this is an e-mail address I've had and not hidden at all since 1997).
- kroger 13y ago
  I contacted support and they did setup the super-advanced options for me. It seems to be much better now.