[asdkhadsj]

Switching email providers is reasonably painless, fwiw. Set up forwarding, migrate mail when you can.

Even better if you set up the majority of your non-security-essential mail to be at your own domain, hosted by Fastmail/etc. Then you can easily change your email provider and your contacts don't even care. I've yet to implement this is in my own life, I just switched to fast mail - so I can't speak from personal experience on the domain portion of it.

NOTE: I mentioned non-security-essential email in reference to things like, your bank login or things that could threaten your life essentials. I say this because theoretically (and has happened before), using your own domain increases the attack surface area. My personal plan is to setup custom domain email with Fastmail, but still use the plain [e-mail] for my security focused emails. The majority of my email will still be based on my custom domain for easy portability, but I plan to avoid that for my bank, for example... assuming fast mail lets me.

[nathanaldensr]

I can speak from experience regarding FastMail because that's exactly what I did. In fact, I migrated off a grandfathered Google Apps account with my custom domain to FastMail with that same domain. Yeah, it's a bunch of steps, but I'm very comfortable with making DNS changes. My wife and I have an account; it's worth every penny.

Also, FastMail allows for subdomain handling. I use this feature with nearly every site. You can have *@<YourFastMailId>.<YourDomain>.com route to <YourFastMailId>@<YourDomain>.com just as you'd expect. The way this handling works is even configurable.

[rb666]

Another very happy user of FastMail here, with our own domain. I initially was excited by subdomain handling, but switched back to only using my main account.

Using FastMail-specific features will lock you into this specific vendor once again, one of the main reasons to switch in the first place!

[techsupporter]

To be fair, how FastMail does catch-all delivery like this is standard and easily reproduced st any mail vendor (except Office 365) that supports catch-all, which is most of them. I use a catch-all address with FastMail that is @asubdomainichose.mydomain.org and it is the same subdomain I used with my previous setup before moving to FastMail.

Using a subdomain for catch-all is great because spammers can’t easily discover and flood the subdomain.

[eco]

I'm in the weird Google Apps for Your Domain limbo right now myself. I've wondered what would happen if I switched to something other than GMail but kept my google account with that email address.

I know a long time ago you could set up a Google account using a non-GMail email address but I'm not sure if that's even a thing anymore. That's what I want though. Keep the email address with my own domain that I've used for 17 years and just have a regular old Google account using that email (and keep all my Google services and purchases associated with it).

Google has been absolutely terrible to Google Apps for Your Domain users (who were often Google's biggest supporters back in the day). They've been shoved into this weird second class status where their Google accounts only partially work with Google services. I completely regret ever setting it up.

[snowwrestler]

You absolutely can set up a Google account with any email address you want.

https://accounts.google.com/SignUpWithoutGmail

I use Google services heavily at work, all on a Google account that was created with my work email address. And we are not a Google shop; my employer's email is self-hosted Exchange.

[ryantriangles]

You can continue using your email address for your Google account even if you've got someone else handling the mail now. You can also sign up for a Google account with an email account from any domain or provider.

[StavrosK]

I switched to Fastmail years ago and it was the best mail-related thing I ever did. I was dreading the migration but it literally took ten minutes, switch DNS records (I have my own domain), run Fastmail's import, done.

I still can't believe how fast the UI is. It's by far the fastest web app I've ever used, and the same goes for the service in general.

Seriously, just ditch Gmail now, the alternatives are great.

[int_19h]

Gmail is more than just mail, it's also integration with other Google services, like calendar. How does Fastmail fare in that regard?

[rhblake]

FastMail supports CalDAV. I use my FastMail calendar with Thunderbird (Lightning) and on my iPhone; works great. They also support CardDAV for contacts. /satisfied FM customer since ~2008 or so

[zamalek]

I had to purchase a CalDAV and CardDAV app (which were extremely cheap, mind) for Android, so it's not quite as plug'n'play there.

[smichel17]

Why is jjawssd's (sister) comment dead? Davdroid works great and is free (as in beer and speech), though I would encourage people to donate if it's useful to you.

[StavrosK]

I wouldn't know, I have a self-hosted calendar. From the little I've seen, though, the calendar part of Fastmail is very good too.

[CaptSpify]

Which self-hosted calendar do you use? would you recommend it? I'm in the market for a new one, but the current offerings that I've seen aren't great.

[StavrosK]

I use Radicale and find it great, but there's no UI, so you need to use whatever client you want that supports CalDAV (I use Lightning and the calendar on my phone). Lately I've been liking Nextcloud a lot, and that's a one-stop solution for lots of things, so nowadays I would recommend that if you have a home server or want to pay someone to host it.

[CaptSpify]

Thanks!

I've looked at nextcloud, but IIRC, you have to have the whole suite installed, right? I'd love a way to just use the calendar function.

[ptrklly]

Last time I tried fast mail they didn’t really support labels, only folders. Is that still the case, or is there a good workaround?

[ocdtrekkie]

FastMail is standards-based, so it does not support labels. This is a good thing, and you should stop depending on Google-specific proprietary features. Even when I was on Gmail, I had a lot of issues with labels because the third party mail clients I needed to use didn't support them. The inbox tabs I ended up replacing in Gmail with rules/filters, that moved my social updates, for instance, to an actual social folder which worked properly on third party clients.

That being said, FastMail is also the leading developer/champion of a new mail standard called JMAP, which supports both labels and folders. I suspect, therefore, if it takes off, they may consider supporting labels themselves.

[eksemplar]

I used fastmail for a year and can recommend it, but if you’re European you should probably look up runbox instead as it’s housed in Norway.

That’s what I eventually switched to and it works fine.

[StavrosK]

> assuming fast mail lets me

It does let you, you can create as many aliases as you want (I'm assuming) on any of their or your domains.