[nnutter]

If you have a spouse and/or kids, and you want them to use FastMail for the same reason you do, consider putting pressure on FastMail to offer a (reasonable) family plan. I’ve been a happy customer for a decade but they’ve raised their prices (which would affect new accounts) and do not offer a family plan so this year be my last year with them.

Edit: typo

[newscracker]

This is a big reason why I list cheaper alternatives to Fastmail whenever the topic of emails comes here. If your needs are more than one mailbox (not aliases), then Fastmail soon becomes prohibitively expensive. A few years ago, when asked about cheaper pricing plans, Fastmail replied that it has no plans (no pun intended) to go cheaper or offer cheaper plans.

There are other alternatives that are cheaper and focus on privacy, reliability, etc. They may not be as famous as the Fastmail brand. Posteo (no custom domain support), Mailbox.org, Runbox, Migadu, Mailfence and Mxroute are just some of the providers out there that give Fastmail a run for the money. Vote with your wallet.

[x0x0]

I suspect Fastmail can't afford to offer cheaper plans. I bet their common customer is a small business and offering cheap family plans would put a huge dent in their revenues. Also, I suspect it would attract people that need tech support. I'd bet a really nice dinner their cfo has modeled the numbers.

[aldanor]

So as to prevent abuse from small businesses, why not request proofs that you are indeed a family, or something of the sort? (there some privacy-related edges in doing that though, and a time expense in verifying those docs...) Or, the other way around, add it explicitly in t&c that small businesses abusing family plans are violating t&c's?

Also, a family plan doesn't have to be 4x cheaper, even a 2x discount might do the trick if we're talking a family of 3-5.

I highly doubt this would put a "huge dent" in their revenues if all the nerds who are currently using their standard plans solo will invite their family members in and would start paying a little bit more than they currently do (e.g. 1.5x); what it would do though is it would earn them some positive karma and visibility on hn, reddit and other corners of the net.

[bad_user]

Before the current prices, they had family plans and the rationale for removing them was that they are struggling to be profitable.

So your hutch goes counter to their direct declaration at the time (I'm a long time customer, don't have references ready, but I can look if you want).

"Positive karma and visibility on HN/Reddit" is laughable. Don't get me wrong, but I see a lot of self-entitlement on these threads, with people supposedly blocking ads for privacy reasons and due to not having a way to give money, yet when something like YouTube Premium happens, they still don't subscribe, because fuck them, too expensive. Brings the "eating your cake and having it too" ideal to a whole new level.

As a matter of fact the cheap or free users generate over 80% of the support tickets, always. And if it's free or too cheap, it means you're the product.

What gets actual positive karma is staying in business and not milking user data in order to serve ads. If you want your data to be milked, Gmail is still free.

[aldanor]

Thanks, these are all good points (and I did a bit of research/googling on the family plans that they had, too).

In a very simple example though: I'm currently considering getting a FM account, but I would only get it for the whole family, e.g. of 4. As of right now, I probably won't because 4 x $50/y is a tad too much.

So, in the one extreme, FM has to support +0 extra customers and gets $0. I'm not happy, they lose a customer, noone wins.

If I subscribe alone, FM has to support +1 customer and gets $50. Since it's their current plan, they are happy with it. FM wins.

Another unrealistic extreme, the whole family is free, FM has to support +4 customers and still gets $50. Obviously they aren't happy with it.

However, if the family gets a discount K, so that a family of four pay (K * $200), where K < 1, we get examples like e.g. they get +4 customers and +$150. If that's above their profit margins, they're happy and we're happy, everybody wins. I'm pretty sure even if K was something like 0.8 this would already attract many, the question is finding a number that suits everyone. Or it could be - get discount X% for family of size Y, so the discount is dynamic, e.g. 0.9 for 2, 0.85 for 3, etc.

I wouldn't categorize these users as "cheap" (why?) since it's not a whole lot cheaper than buying the normal plan X times. As long as there's a non-zero discount, it would be viewed differently by the users (as opposed to the current "fuck off, we don't care" approach).

[x0x0]

Your analysis again skips the cheap family plans (1) cannibalizing the full-price SMB plans; and (2) the families that are already on the normal plans that immediately demand a discount. And implicitly assert Fastmail's cfo hasn't modeled these scenarios and is just leaving money on the table because they don't like money.

[joshmn]

Basecamp is launching their email service soon — Hey.com — as well.

[akudha]

Just speculating here, but it is likely not going to be much cheaper than Fastmail, knowing basecamp's pricing history. I hope they do launch a family plan though

[pointillistic]

I takes years to develop an interface, apps. etc. FM has been doing this for two decades plus

[stanmancan]

I’m in the same boat. I would happily migrate my wife, kid, parents, and possibly even my siblings over if it was more affordable to do so. They don’t see the value in not being in the Google ecosystem, so they aren’t willing to pay themselves, which is understandable. I would be happy to pay for them, but at $50/year per user that adds up too fast unfortunately.

[_urga]

What pricing plan would work for your family?

[stanmancan]

I’m not sure to be honest. At least, I’m it sure what would work for me, but that wouldn’t sabotage their business sales. It might be nice to have a family plan that’s “up to 10” users. It could be used by small companies but anything over 10 would have to migrate to a business plan. I wouldn’t mind it starting at $10/m for 3 accounts and then maybe $2/m for each additional up to 10? That would cap at $24/m for 10 personal email accounts, about 50% off their current pricing.

[_urga]

Thanks! That sounds like what I was also thinking.

[wbond]

I have five children, three of which have an email address. Right now we are on a grandfathered free GSuite account. I would love to get away from Google, but $250 (and $350 in a few years) per year feels pretty steep. Most of the family plans with other software tend to be in the vicinity of ~3 full price users for up to 6. This would feel very reasonable to me.

Just wanted to add my voice that I’d love to see a discounted family plan! Even if there were constraints on subsidiary accounts - it isn’t like my kids are sending 50 emails a day.

Edit: I should note I am already a paying customer with my business email.

[tW4r]

If anyone from fast mail reads this, I would like to agree to this too.

I would love a family plan that would let me put my parents on my domain, however I cannot justify current fast mail pricing for the several emails each week

[tjoff]

This is the only reason I'm not on fastmail.

While I'll easily pay $5 for myself and a few more I'm basically forcing all emails on my domains to go through fastmail. And if I want to lend the domain name for relatives to use for email it seems like a rip-off to expect them to pay 5*$5 a month for a family with three kids.

It really annoys me that you can not use the Basic account (which regardless is very restricted) with a domain. By all means, require that the account that manages the domain at the Standard level but as it is now there is no sensible way to allow add some low-volume mail accounts for relatives or family members that aren't tech-savvy.

[chrisked]

I have migrated 4 people from my family to Fastmail. It was a xmas present. We did the setup together on Christmas Eve and exchanges some mails. Emails sent after that day equal 0. I guess will be ending the contract too. No worth 200 USD / year for 0 mails sent.

That said would support a family plan too. For me it’s important that they are not sitting on a free gmail account.

[aldanor]

Is anyone from FastMail reading this by any chance?..

Another +1 here, currently considering FM for myself, spouse and/or kids, and while for a single person it's bearable, for 4 it becomes overly expensive so we'd have to look for alternatives.

[josephg]

Not yet - most of the fastmail team is here in Melbourne, and it’s 5am. I’m sure they’ll see all this in a few hours and respond then.

[nvr219]

I pay $150/yr for three people. Give me $250 for 10 people. The extra seven people won't be using as many compute/storage resources guaranteed.

[tilolebo]

Same for us. Family of four, I have a basic account.

I'd happily switch to a standard plan if it enabled access to a family feature.

[nunodonato]

I've been with fastmail for about a year now. My wife wants to leave Gmail and have been thinking about Fastmail as well, but the price per user puts us down... waiting for Hey and see what their price plan will be

[dimastopel]

Same here. Family of four + some members of the extended family. I am doing IT for all and would be happy to move everybody to fastmail under the same custom domain.

[kugelblitz]

Same here. I have 2 Fastmail accounts (1 personal, 1 business, paid 2 years in advance for both because I'm certain I will stick around), and use Amazon Prime Family, Spotify Premium Family... would really like to use a Fastmail Family. I use the Professional Plan on my personal account, but my wife would use much much less GB, but I would need to add her with her own 100 GB Professional plan.

[damontal]

I have four kids each with Gmail accounts. And a wife with a Gmail account. Is there any reason for me to migrate to FastMail for myself if I don’t migrate them? The only thing I could think of was that all of our logins are through my Gmail account so I can move those into Fastmail just to have them out of Gmail.

[appleflaxen]

ditto. this is a winning strategy for FM, and with three kids it would be a no-brainer to me. As it is, though, you have only one customer.

[NikolaNovak]

100% agree. I look into it once a year at least (usually multiple times), make some transition plans... but I just can't drop hundreds, almost a grand a year, to fully transition myself and the family :<

I fully understand that there are costs, but I feel having a family plan would increase your revenue and profit.

[dmos62]

That's a lot of mailboxes. Is it like $50 * 8?

[kybernetikos]

They used to have a family account, but they removed it. I'm not sure why.

[bradam]

From a business point of view I think that creating a family plan would likely decrease their revenue (in the short term), as lot of small businesses/professional users would abuse this