14 ms·
Switching from Gmail to FastMail
- darxius 13y agoFastmail is nice, but I don't see how it removes the right to complain that Gmail is sneaking ads in as email without warning its users first.
- Kurts 13y agoThey're not "sneaking ads as email": http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2013/06/ads-in-gmails-promotions-tab.html http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2013/06/ads-in-gmails-promo...
- jackreichert 13y agoThe fact that they even offer 200mb and 800mb plans makes it hard for me to take them seriously. Shame.
- nly 13y agoSome people won't pay $50/year/user for email, I know my parents won't. I had a hell of a time even getting them to move away from ISP provided mail to GApps. Neither of them have managed to use more than 300MB in 3-4 years. In any case, an account with 8 GB of email storage and 6 GB of file storage (Family account), or 10+2GB (personal account) is still cheaper than Googles 'one plan' service. Google just aren't interested in marketing GApps to enthusiasts and families.
- harrytuttle 13y agoHuh? I've had my email address since 1995. I have 5Mb / 6 emails in my Maildir and that's only because I've got lazy recently. I've recieved probably 500,000 emails over the years. Hoarding email is like recording all your phone conversations and keeping the tapes in your living space. If it's worth keeping, save it elsewhere. If it's not, delete it.
- baudehlo 13y agoI completely disagree. I've kept every email I've ever received or sent since 1996 (close to a million emails, all searchable/indexed) and it has proved extremely useful over the years to be able to find ancient emails very quickly. I'm sure some large proportion of those emails I will never use, or will never be useful, but space is cheap, and keeping them doesn't hurt at all.
- toomuchtodo 13y agoCompletely agree. I've been using Gmail since 2005, and it is fantastic being able to simply search and get emails from that long ago when needed.
- davidcollantes 13y agoThe main problem with abandoning Google is all the services associated with it, not only mail. And paid Gmail continues to offer mobile sync, which FastMail does not. Yet, FastMail looks quite nice.
- masnick 13y agoPush email isn't something I really want, but that's a good point if that is important to you. The other thing I forgot to mention in the post is contact syncing. I'm honestly not sure if I like the contact pollution gmail does more or less than not having sync between FastMail and my phone.
- davidcollantes 13y agoMy contacts are perfect on Gmail, no pollution at all. I use Contacts extensibly (birthdays, addresses, notes and all). They are all synchronized with my OS X Contacts as well, photos included. How are yours getting polluted?
- chadk 13y ago+1 to Masnick. Google Contacts wreaks havoc (when it actually syncs) on my nicely organized vCard-based Contacts, especially when they duplicate cards that are in different or special groups.
- don_draper 13y agoAlso, FastMail doesn't appear to have 2 factor authentication.
- ChemicalHarm 13y agoActually, they do have it: http://blog.fastmail.fm/2013/05/03/google-authenticator-now-supported-for-two-factor-authentication/ http://blog.fastmail.fm/2013/05/03/google-authenticator-now-...
- tehwalrus 13y agoAmerican company, American servers, American jurisdiction. Sure they won't read your email, but the NSA will (just like Gmail.) Update: hmm, so Opera aren't american? interesting. All the servers are definitely in the US though: > "we have standard servers and a high speed connection in the US." - https://www.fastmail.fm/help/overview_about.html https://www.fastmail.fm/help/overview_about.html
- roel_v 13y agoWho? FastMail? They're not American.
- bcvbcvbcv 13y agoServers are in New York.
- jasonlotito 13y agoThat doesn't refute what the GP said though. Fastmail is not an American company.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- jasonlotito 13y agoAfter the GP responded. So yeah, I don't see the point of pointing out worthless out-of-context crap. It happens far too often here. It's rubbish that should be called out so it hopefully stops.
- roel_v 13y agoOh I see now, I always assumed they had their servers elsewhere since they aren't an American company. Hmm I'm going to ask them about that, I'd pay extra if they offered the option of running off non-US servers.
- 13y ago
- Kurts 13y agoI think it's fair to assume that HN is a fairly technical community and could manage such a feat on its own, so these: "here is how to switch from [insert Google service] to its competitor" posts strike me as karma-bait (and they do get votes). As to these ads you're so troubled by: Twitter ads look like tweets, Facebook ads look like Facebook posts, and of course search ads look like search results, at least in Gmail they have their own designated area. They replace the webclip ads when the "promotions" tab is enabled http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2013/06/ads-in-gmails-promotions-tab.html http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2013/06/ads-in-gmails-promo... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6069372 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6069372 Also quoting some random Marco Arment anti-Google troll as though it has some weight or authority doesn't help your point.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- Kurts 13y agoI'm comparing ad formats. And I'm illustrating that in the case of these new gmail ads not only are they restricted to a designated area, they can also be disabled altogether.
- icebraining 13y agoAs to these ads you're so troubled by: (...) Yeah, those are good arguments to avoid using Twitter and Facebook as well.
- Kurts 13y agoBe my guest but when you write the mandatory post don't single out Google as a link bait.
- coin 13y agoinfinite scroll is not a feature
- brongondwana 13y agoclassic.fastmail.fm
- rocky1138 13y agoAm I the only one here that doesn't care about Gmail ads? I don't even notice them.
- masnick 13y agoMy point is that if you don't like Gmail ads, you should investigate switching to something else. I feel like many people are uncomfortable with the ads but might feel locked in. I actually don't care that Google is machine-reading email to serve ads (see http://www.maxmasnick.com/2012/02/12/gmail_paranoia/ http://www.maxmasnick.com/2012/02/12/gmail_paranoia/), but I do care about polluting the interface with ads that look like email for the same reason I don't like the new compose interface. Both make the interface worse, and email is bad enough as it is without bad UI.
- warcode 13y agoOr just, you know, block the ads for a fraction of the effort.
- masnick 13y agoWith what? I _do_ care about running random plugins in my browser that update in the background. There's nothing stopping a malicious plugin from scraping stuff out of your email, and I feel like _that_ is a legitimate security concern!
- gohrt 13y agoThere's nothing stopping a malicious webmail provider from scraping stuff out of your email, which, BTW, is the whole point of this post. Fastmail isn't even under the control of your local firewall.
- Karunamon 13y ago>I _do_ care about running random plugins in my browser that update in the background. Then turn that function off [1]. There's no more security threat from well-known browser plugins from Mozilla's site than well-known packages from your OS's apt repo. And both are open source. [1] http://imgur.com/tivq9o8 http://imgur.com/tivq9o8
- jstalin 13y agoIf you're gonna pay, might as well stick with hushmail.
- savszymura 13y agohttps://twitter.com/ioerror/status/353955117411737600 https://twitter.com/ioerror/status/353955117411737600 >Don't use hushmail. Never use hushmail or suggest it to others - they snitch out their users. Fuck them.
- lloeki 13y ago> MailMate and it's interesting thread hierarchy view. How is it different from the threaded view that has been present since at least Netscape days?
- masnick 13y agoAll the UIs I've seen in the last several years present threads flat (without any hierarchy). If there are other modern mail clients that have this kind of UI, I'd love to see them.
- lloeki 13y agoThunderbird and Postbox https://www.google.fr/search?q=thunderbird+screenshot+threaded&tbm=isch https://www.google.fr/search?q=thunderbird+screenshot+thread... http://www.postbox-inc.com/images/screenshots/1_main_interface.png http://www.postbox-inc.com/images/screenshots/1_main_interfa...
- masnick 13y agoI've actually used Postbox and didn't realize it could do that. Thanks!
- icebraining 13y agosup-mail: http://supmua.org/images/old_screenshot_2.png http://supmua.org/images/old_screenshot_2.png http://supmua.org/ http://supmua.org/
- bowlofpetunias 13y ago> their servers are in New York For us as a European business, that's a dealbreaker. It's not that we are completely paranoid and migrating off of American systems in a big hurry, but moving forward, not in the US and not owned by an American company is a requirement for any new service we use. Even if we didn't care, we have to take into account our clients, and "no data under US control" has become not just a selling point, but a strict condition for many projects. This was already very much the case before the PRISM scandal, and it's only going to get worse now.
- nly 13y agoYou're naive if you think hosting in Europe means you're necessarily any safer.
- tomp 13y agoFor (European) businesses, it's not the issue of safety, but the issue of compliance. If I (EU citizen) have personal data with EU company that stores said data on US-controlled servers, they are potentially viable for breach of data-protection laws. Since these laws are EU laws, it wouldn't be a problem if EU governments would read this data, since that's governed by the same set of laws.
- steveklabnik 13y agoIt doesn't matter if clients are naive or not, it matters if they have a checkbook.
- iandundas 13y agoWell that's how it would seem, in the wake of the Snowden revelations.
- dioltas 13y agoDo you know of any good alternatives with servers outside the US?
- cpursley 13y agoWhat's the point of switching to an inferior email service if their servers are still under US jurisdiction? Might as well stick with Gmail and suffer the adds and NSA spying.
- bcvbcvbcv 13y agoThe point is to not support a company that does things you dont like. But if you dont feel strongly about issues such as privacy, of course you dont see the point.
- cpursley 13y agoThat's the thing -- I do feel strongly about privacy. That's why I don't see the point in switching to another US based service. Better to use a European or Asian provider or roll your own.
- iandundas 13y agoI just bloody switched to fastmail because I thought it was Australian - and unfortunately I really like it. Gutted to hear it's hosted in USA, kinda negates the point of my effort switching away.
- maaaats 13y agoFor me, it's not that I'm afraid of GMail removing IMAP, it's that Gmail IMAP works really, really bad. For an email-client to work well with Gmail, it has to be tailored to Gmail, and that has given me some issues lately. For instance, most of my mail is sorted into labels, skipping the inbox. When using a mail client with IMAP, these labels shows as folders. Deleting the mail from my client, doesn't delete it from Gmail, only removes the label. Useless.
- masnick 13y agoI agree that IMAP will probably stick around in some form. My big concern is if they start doing some kind of rate limiting, it could make it very difficult to get all your email out. However, along these lines the removal of Jabber support from Gmail is a little bit scary (first they removed federation support, then they killed it altogether). Limiting or removing IMAP is not outside the realm of possibilities.
- jmillikin 13y ago> However, along these lines the removal of Jabber support > from Gmail is a little bit scary (first they removed > federation support, then they killed it altogether) Federation support was temporarily disabled, then re-enabled once they got spam filtering in place. Currently, XMPP works perfectly with a Gmail account.
- masnick 13y agoI wasn't aware of that. I actually ran into federation issues a few months ago, but maybe it has been fixed since then. My understanding is that upgrading to Hangouts still disables the old XMPP support.
- jmillikin 13y ago> My understanding is that upgrading to Hangouts still > disables the old XMPP support. Sort of; the web interface will connect to either Hangouts or XMPP, but not both at once. XMPP continues to work fine for non-web clients, such as Pidgin.
- xwowsersx 13y agoI love FastMail's interface and used it for couple of months. Recently, I let my free trial expire and allowed my account to be deleted. Why? Because it's not just about email. Everything, I mean everything, is in my Google account...docs in Drive, 10s of thousands of photos in G+...and it's all integrated so well. Bailing on the email part of the Google suite just adds a layer of disconnect and complexity...it's unfortunately just not worth it to me at this point.
- cake 13y agoGoogle sure is getting bad press lately !
- sheri 13y agoI'm suitably impressed that Fastmail has been around since 1999. At first glance I would have dismissed it as a service which I wouldn't expect to outlive Gmail (and thus be leery about moving to it). It still may not outlive Gmail, but its history seems that its been pretty solid so far.
- nly 13y agoThey were responding to Gmail, by working on a more modern AJAXy web interface, even before Opera bought them. I remember being concerned about the buyout, but it seems it's been nothing but good for them. Opera are a great company.
- johnpowell 13y agoI installed http://www.iredmail.org/ http://www.iredmail.org/ on a five buck a month Droplet at DigitalOcean around six months ago. Seems to work great and I control it. I never use Roundcube. I use IMAP from the built in Mail.app on OS X. There is even a tutorial to set everything up. https://www.digitalocean.com/community/articles/how-to-install-iredmail-on-ubuntu-12-10-x64 https://www.digitalocean.com/community/articles/how-to-insta...
- harrytuttle 13y agoI use a home made version of iredmail I.e. Debian, postfix, dovecot. I use various IMAP clients for access. Works wonderfully.
- vermontdevil 13y agoWhat about spam filtering?
- harrytuttle 13y agoIt uses spamassassin which works pretty well.
- johnpowell 13y agoI maybe get around one spam message a month. And it is always someone trying to sell me web design services.
- maqr 13y agoWhat about backups? I don't worry about Gmail backing up my email (though I probably should), but is there some way to get iRedMail to send encrypted backups to S3 regularly or something?
- jeffasinger 13y agoBackups every few days on a DO server like that costs about $1/mo I believe.
- latchkey 13y agoWhat ads? http://gmelius.com/ http://gmelius.com/
- username42 13y agoAdBlock works perfectly well with gmail (my manual filter is mail.google.com##[class="mq"]). For privacy, I have installed "Mymail-Crypt for Gmail", but I know noone who uses pgp.
- dochtman 13y agoI've been trying FastMail for the past two months or so and have been very impressed; it's actually better than GMail in many ways. Most importantly to me, it seems to be quite a bit faster than GMail for me. One problem I've had is with their spam filtering. I've marked everything spammy as Spam (some 800 messages so far), but I can't figure out how to get things marked as non-spam (so that the personal database gets enabled). I've setup auto-non-spam folders and a lot of messages get routed into those, but they're not being counted as non-spam. I've also moved a few messages manually, and they also don't get counted.
- masnick 13y agoIf you use a custom Sieve script, you can definitely whitelist certain addresses, domains, subjects, body text, etc. Google "fastmail sieve" for more info on this. Also, if you haven't talked to support about this, I'd definitely recommend it. They've always been super helpful with me.
- thrownaway2424 13y agoI'm interested in quantitative evidence of "faster". I have 1.5GB of mail in gmail that I sync to fastmail and gmail is significantly, noticeably faster for me. Especially search. I am skeptical of performance claims especially by people (not referring to you, but to the author of the post) who think mail.app is fast. Mail.app needs several seconds to do things that gmail does in 50 milliseconds, like load a thread with 100 posts, or free text search.
- corobo 13y ago"Ready to give FastMail a shot? I’d suggest: Moving all your existing email to FastMail." This is not how you test things. For those prices vs storage I'd rather roll my own if I had to move off Gmail
- Osmium 13y agoI just did recently, and I'm very happy with the decision. Two feature requests though: 1) Push support for iPhone 2) Have my email encrypted on disk (in the unlikely event there's a security hole or a rogue sysadmin or something, I don't want my email copied wholesale by one attacker) -- I'd pay extra for this
- msh 13y agoBut fastmail don't give you calendar and contacts that you can sync to devices...
- maxsilver 13y agoIs there any service like FastMail, with a FastMail-like quality web interface, that offers ActiveSync support? I don't mind paying a little extra to cover the licensing. But I don't want to be stuck with IMAP again -- the biggest draw for service for me is the "Contacts + Calendar + Tasks + Mail" instant syncing of something like ActiveSync. Rackspace E-mail comes closest from what I've tried. But being stuck on Outlook Web Access isn't awesome.
- purpl3p3rs0n 13y agoNuevaSync offers push for FastMail. http://www.nuevasync.com/index.html http://www.nuevasync.com/index.html
- robszumski 13y agoYou can use ActiveSync with Rackspace Email: http://www.rackspace.com/email-hosting/webmail/mobile-phone/ http://www.rackspace.com/email-hosting/webmail/mobile-phone/
- zw 13y agoWhile I can't find myself living without push, it's not like ActiveSync is the silver bullet. Contacts in Exchange, for example, are a ridiculous and horrible mess with a limit of three on everything and no custom synced fields.
- wambotron 13y agoI find it somewhat disappointing that so many people still rely so heavily on email that they can even become a "power user" of gmail. I check my email a few times a day, and even my work email has gone to once per day. It's an incredible time sink otherwise.
- spdegabrielle 13y agoWhat is the point when you are sending and receiving unencrypted email anyway...
- kailuowang 13y agoI am glad there is a great alternative to Gmail. Somehow somebody has to pay for the service you use. It's either your pocket, or your data, or companies paying for ads. Each service provider can use a different option and it's great for us consumers to have all options on the table.
- dmix 13y agoI recommend Steve Losh's Homely Mutt for replacing gmails web interface with a local client. http://stevelosh.com/blog/2012/10/the-homely-mutt/ http://stevelosh.com/blog/2012/10/the-homely-mutt/ Then this can be combined with an email service that encrypts all incoming emails as they arrive such as Countermail or Lavabit.
- MitziMoto 13y agoDoes anyone out there know of something similar to FastMail (or gmail) that is self hosted? I've been dying for a fast, modern webmail app that I can host myself, but everything I've tried is just terrible (by comparison).
- workhere-io 13y agohttp://roundcube.net/ http://roundcube.net/
- maqr 13y agoI just disabled the 'promotions' tab, and it also disabled it on my android client. If they start sneaking ads in as real email, I'm gone. If I can disable the ads, I'll probably hang out for a bit longer, but it's time to start evaluating alternatives.
- workhere-io 13y agoAnother alternative is http://www.runbox.com/ http://www.runbox.com/ - hosted entirely in Norway which has strong privacy laws.
- tombrossman 13y agoIs Runbox still storing account passwords in plain text? They looked like a great option but when I set up an account recently they emailed me my username and password in plain text. I cancelled immediately but if they get the security basics right I may look at it again.
- dalks 13y agoThis is a false dichotomy and an unfair one. Firstly, fastmail is a paid product that may show you graphic ads if you are using their free tier. (https://www.fastmail.fm/help/advertising_web_interface_ads.html https://www.fastmail.fm/help/advertising_web_interface_ads.h...) To those who are arguing about advertisements not showing up in the Fastmail's paid tiers should also realize that there is the Google Apps for Business accounts, where you don't see ads. It also beats the popular 'if you are paying you are the product meme'.
- masnick 13y agoThere is no longer a free tier for FastMail. As I mention in my post, Google Apps is a lot of overhead for just email. There are additional complexities with switching from gmail to google apps because of the integration with all other google services. If someone was interested in switching from gmail to a paid service, I would argue that FastMail may be a better choice than Google Apps.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- mikelat 13y agoI want to see a gmail type application I can run from my own servers, I don't have much faith in the cloud these days.
- johngalt 13y agoTried fastmail and wasn't impressed. Rackspace email is a great choice. Its cheap and fast. Outages are rare. Has active sync support and IMAP push works on android/iPhone. Rackspace also allows you to run exchange mailboxes alongside IMAP if you have a few users who are still tied to outlook.
- conorh 13y agoWhat were your issues with fastmail?
- johngalt 13y agoIt was two years ago so it may be better now. I had a number of mailboxes to migrate (~200). Their mass input tool didn't work. No timely response to a ticket opened on it. Additionally it seemed like they were chasing the smaller accounts. Whenever I consulted the help/documentation it focused on the converting the 1-5 user shops into paid accounts. There wasn't many resources for someone who walked in expecting to pay $2k/month. I had to dig for details. Eventually I created a paid account just to test all the details. Contrast that with rackspace where everything worked smoothly out of the box. Any limitations were spelled out clearly. In general it felt like all my needs were anticipated. In two years with them I've opened maybe three tickets all solved exceedingly fast.
- stock_toaster 13y agoI wish rackspace email had 2-factor auth and/or application-specific-passwords. :/
- johngalt 13y agoSecure ID token is a little much to ask for $3/month email.
- stock_toaster 13y agoWhere did I ask for SecureID? I was hoping for a TOTP-based mechanism for 2-factor.
- vsvn 13y agoThese kind of posts are useless at most. Lets say 2 months from now FastMail is doing 90% of the things the author didn't like. What then? Switch to yahoo and then do another post why I switched to Yahoo?
- SamWhited 13y agoGreat post; I'd love to try the service but I have over 10 Gigs of content in my current Gmail and can't really justify spending an extra $119.95 a year extra on email. This makes me wish I could though.
- masnick 13y agoThanks! That's a lot of email...how much does it cost to store on gmail?
- thrownaway2424 13y agoNothing. The free tier of gmail is now 15GB.
- brightsize 13y agoSo ... you could get FM's "Enhanced" account (10G mail storage + 2G file storage) for $40/yr and then pay $5/G for additional space. It sounds like $50/year, perhaps less, would get you what you need at FM.
- tippytop 13y agoSnowden used lavabit.com, which is located in the US (and probably being scrutinized a bit more than usual these days). I think it's more important to diversify services than to insist on airtight alternatives. My mail is not terribly exciting, but when combined with the rest of my searches, visited webpages [1], chats, news reading habits, social network connections, and phone location, all housed under Google's roof, it seems like I'm making it easier to piece together my life [2]. At least make it a little difficult by having to go to separate companies with court orders. [1] And web developers contribute to the surveillance by installing analytics code. [2] That of course is the Google AI wet dream, moar data.
- junto 13y agoThanks. I've just created an account at lavabit.com. Will consider paying for this as well, maybe for a custom domain. Nice tip.
- mehrzad 13y agoIf you don't pay, it's not encrypted. https://lavabit.com/secure.html https://lavabit.com/secure.html
- matthewdavis 13y ago>Snowden used lavabit.com, which is located in the US (and probably being scrutinized a bit more than usual these days). Any proof to this? And, no, twitter is not a source of record.
- tujv 13y agohttp://english.ruvr.ru/news/2013_07_12/Snowdens-letter-to-human-rights-activists-made-public-3751/ http://english.ruvr.ru/news/2013_07_12/Snowdens-letter-to-hu...
- kaolinite 13y agoI switched to Fastmail from Google Apps a month or so ago and absolutely love it. Really fast, great web UI and works better with desktop clients than Gmail (none of the weird label issues, duplicate folders, etc). The entire migration process was very smooth too and the support always got back to me within an hour or so.
- klancaster1957 13y agoI did the same thing, also about a month ago. The latest gmail ui updates were bugging me. Now I have all my accounts forwarding to my fastmail account - works great.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- pan69 13y agoIt seems that these Fastmail guys are primarily charging for storage. My question would be, do they allow to set up many different domains and email addresses inside a single account or is this a one email address/domain per account thing?
- wmf 13y agoAn account is only one account, but it can have a number of aliases that varies by plan. https://www.fastmail.fm/pages/fastmail/docs/pricingtbl.html https://www.fastmail.fm/pages/fastmail/docs/pricingtbl.html
- masnick 13y agoYes, you can use as far as I can tell an unlimited number of domains and aliases in a single account. Another plus over Google Apps is that the aliases are domain-specific (as far as I could tell, aliases for Google Apps applied to all domains).
- brightsize 13y agoI've been on the "Enhanced" plan for years now and have at least a dozen domains and maybe a dozen and a half email addresses configured. FM will also let you (if not encourage you to) to use its DNS servers instead of your registrar's, but that's up to you. I generally use FM for DNS hosting but you absolutely do _not_ need to do this to host domain mailboxes with them.
- dkoch 13y agoI've had the same Fastmail account since 2003 -- they were one of the first webmail providers to have strong IMAP support back in the day. It's always been reliable for me with very few outages through the years.
- dtjohnnymonkey 13y agoI've had a Fastmail account for about 10 years and the spam filtering is nowhere near as good as Gmail. There are some days I'll see 20-30 spam messages in my inbox.
- masnick 13y agoI've heard the same thing, but it hasn't really been a problem for me. If it was, I'd try http://mailroute.net http://mailroute.net. Apparently it's supposed to be pretty good at handling spam.
- pwelch 13y agoI'm really interested in switching email providers but is there a solution for calendar? I really enjoy my calendar syncing across multiple devices and sharing with my friends and family. Anyone have some good solutions?
- masnick 13y agoI actually use iCloud because the Google Calendar -> Calendar.app syncing was pretty flakey. Obviously that's a bad choice if you're not all on Apple devices, but if you are I think it works pretty well. Based on this excellent post (https://kkinder.com/2013/05/21/leaving-googles-silo-alternatives-to-gmail-talk-calendar-and-more/ https://kkinder.com/2013/05/21/leaving-googles-silo-alternat...) it seems like there isn't a great drop-in replacement for Google Calendar (except for iCloud).
- zw 13y agoIt's not actually a bad choice at all, though, considering their CalDAV support is best-in-class.
- D9u 13y agoI've been a Fastmail user for about seven years now, but my reasons for choosing Fastmail had nothing to do with security, it has to do with mobile accessibility. From the first time I tried Fastmail I noticed that the site was compatible with my mobile devices, which, at the time (2006), was the exception rather than the rule. When ASA/Opera took the site over, the site quality went down, IMHO, but I still use Fastmail today because it just works.
- jarek 13y agoFor the record, the ASA in "Opera Software ASA" is short for Allmennaksjeselskap, the Norwegian term for a public limited company.
- monkey26 13y agoAre most of you happy with Fastmail's pricing? I'd really like to switch away from Google apps for my families email needs, but would much rather pay $X for a domain and diskspace, and then create accounts as needed. The family plan seems overpriced as well, as I'm the only one who needs large disk space, the other 3 accounts don't need so much.
- monkey26 13y agoOops, just noticed that not all accounts need to be the same capacity. That saves a few dollars.
- monkey26 13y agoSo, is there a market for a hosted email solution with a killer web ui that is not hosted in the US? How about Canada? Just wondering if there is an opportunity here for a non-US startup.
- kayoone 13y agoi dont think so. Its not like Reader which was shut down, gmail will operate like it always has and most people wont bother to switch or simply dont know anything about PRISM/NSA etc. The noise on HN regarding this is extreme because this is a community of people who are really passionate about these topics, most people are not though.
- pilif 13y ago> MailMate and it's interesting thread hierarchy view. How times change. This is how message threading has always worked before we got gmail and Mail.app which I have resisted switching to for years because the just didn't do threading "right". And now get off my lawn :-)
- masnick 13y agoSo I've been told :) I've been using email since like 1996 but had never seen that kind of thread hierarchy display until I used MailMate. I can't believe all these email clients have been holding out on me!
- jes5199 13y agoI actually use gmail's "Priority Inbox" - I'm not into "Inbox Zero", most of my mail I never read. So I like that gmail lets the real human people I talk to regularly pop up into a special zone. I've got my phone set to only make a noise when I get email in Priority Inbox. So sadly, I think gmail still has what's basically a killer app for me.
- brownbat 13y agoFastMail's (one of) my backup accounts. I don't use it often, so I don't really give out the address, but log in once every few months to confirm it still works. It's wall to wall spam every time I open it up, stuff I don't ever see in Gmail. There are tradeoffs....
- Aqueous 13y agoThe ad messages are under the promotions tab. Who clicks the promotions tab? You can even disable it. Honestly, if they were interspersing ad messages with my regular mail it would be a big issue. But just like with search, where ads are separated off to the side, the ads here are clearly marked and separated. So I don't see a problem.