[thismodernlife]

Fastmail is an excellent company with an amazing product. The web UI really is insanely fast. And with keyboard shortcuts you can be super productive. They’re also pushing new standards (JMAP) and seem committed to privacy and best practice etc.

Really one of my favourite tech companies.

Not an employee just a happy customer!

[stonesweep]

Regarding privacy - they don't really market this feature much, but Fastmail is one of the only email providers which lets me set up per-app per-service passwords and include ACL restrictions where possible. And you can set multiple per-app passwords for the same service with different ACLs - one can be R/O to your IMAP while another has R/W access for example.

I tested a lot of providers, many of them do not have per-app passwords at all, and the ones that do tend to only allow one per service endpoint. (note: I didn't get a chance to test Zoho, it has them listed as available but I decided against the service for other reasons)

[3princip]

Agree. After using gmail for many years it seemed like an unnecessary expense to pay for email.

Finally jumped to Fastmail 6 months ago and all I can say is I should have done it sooner. Weaning off the big boys and returning to being the customer, not the product, as they say. Feels good.

[corytheboyd]

Count me as another happy Fastmail customer reporting their satisfaction!

I switched off of Gmail to Hey last year when the hype train was at full steam. Hey was... okay, but missing so many features that Gmail had. Most importantly to me was literally any calendar integration, and custom domain support.

Instead of going back to Gmail I found Fastmail after doing some research. It's just exactly what I want, a fast web based client that has the right features. And nothing else. Bravo to the company that makes it :)!

[thismodernlife]

Yeah if you want any sort of power features then Fastmail will win over HEY every time.

[laurent92]

I confirm, excellent email provider.

I won’t comment on privacy since they are based in Australia which doesn’t have freedom of speech and has blanket surveillance laws. But at least it’s not Gmail, so it is safer to conduct business where Google could be competitor.

[thismodernlife]

Yes the Australia thing is unfortunate for them but I imagine this may change over time with a new administration.

I’m not too bothered by it, it’s email and I’m more concerned about high quality product, availability, stability and them not selling my data or using it for ads.

If I wanted to send something truly private by email I’d just use GPG :-)

[skissane]

> Yes the Australia thing is unfortunate for them but I imagine this may change over time with a new administration.

What do you mean by "new administration"? Do you mean if Australia has a change of government? (The term "administration" is used in presidential systems like the US, not parliamentary systems like Australia.)

Both major parties in Australia are big fans of surveillance so I don't think a change of government would make any significant difference to Australia's surveillance laws. The police and intelligence agencies start up a chorus of "we need this to stop terrorists and pedophiles" and both sides of politics reply "of course! of course! whatever you need!"

I don't think the legal situation for Fastmail in Australia is hugely different from that in other countries – look at national security letters in the US, bulk collection warrants issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, etc. Yes, the Australian government can demand information but the same is true in many other countries. The most disturbingly unique thing about Australian laws is the government could – at least in theory – order a company to circumvent encryption or insert spyware into their product's code. Given Fastmail has all the data in cleartext, and it is server-based, I don't think Fastmail has to worry about such orders from the Australian government, they aren't relevant to Fastmail's product.

But if Australian law does become a big issue for their business, they could always relocate elsewhere.

[ocdtrekkie]

Indeed, people have drama'd a lot about Australia's surveillance laws, but they have little applicability to Fastmail. Additionally, if you are worried about government surveillance, your safest bet is just to be storing your data under someone else's government.

If you live in the US, it's very easy for the US to get your data, and more irritating for the US to ask Australia for your data.

[wolco5]

Australia is part of the 5 eyes alliance which automatically shares data between the US/Canada/UK/New Zealand which means it is a safe bet that the US can get this data as easily as it would be on it's own soil.

As an American storing data in Australia creates another problem. The US can't spy in the US on it's own citizens but another country can at the request of the US government and will report everything back to the US.

I would pick Russia or China first...

Or just use protonmail which is designed to offer some protection.

[ocdtrekkie]

This kinda depends whose radar you are trying to stay off of...

If you are planning to be a terrorist, having data in a Five Eyes country is a bad thing, because the CIA can probably get it easily. However, for your garden variety crime, no, the local police department can't easily get the CIA to get information from Australia for them.

So depending on your threat model, this may or may not be a big deal.

[thismodernlife]

Apologies for incorrect political parlance! Yes, I meant a change of government. You’re probably right but one can hope and dream ;-)

[lillecarl]

I don't understand why they stay in Oz. What's the point? Being a SaaS provider they should be able to set up camp in Switzerland and be done with the privacy concerns.

[robjan]

The data centre is located in New York but the staff are in Aus. I guess it's hard to move all of the staff to another country, many of whom are probably quite attached to Aus.

[lillecarl]

Oh sorry for my ambiguity. I meant something like:

1. Get capacity in Switzerland

2. Move data there (big project ofc)

3. Start swizz business

4. Move customer billing to swizz company

5. Make Australian company bill swizz company enough to pay the wages and offices

6. You're now technically not part of spyware haven anymore. (employees could still be pressed for backdoors I guess, but it'd look a lot better on paper)

Loads of VPN companies do this kind of move, though they rent colo all over the place usually.

I did that backpacker year in Australia, believe me I understandthat people don't want to move. It's as close to paradise as I I can imagine a place on earth could be.

I realise its not as simple as projected here, but it must've crossed their minds, as a fastmail customer myself I would like to read about the thought process on the topic.

[csomar]

Their servers seems to be hosted in the USA though. That means they should be subject to US laws?

[amaccuish]

> based in Australia which doesn’t have freedom of speech

By that definition, which countries have freedom of speech? And why must America be the definition of freedom of speech?

[chrisseaton]

> they are based in Australia which doesn’t have freedom of speech

Which countries do have freedom of speech?

[tmpxgdqrcKFuG]

In the US, companies have the freedom to take away an individuals freedom of speech.

[throwaheyy]

What? That makes no sense.

Twitter can’t stop Trump from publishing his own website, nor shouting in a public square, nor just talking in front of the live camera he literally had in his own home but seemed unable to use.

[tmpxgdqrcKFuG]

They can stop Trump from posting on Twitter but I was also being facetious.

[leokennis]

Also a very happy customer. Their mail product is top notch, but so is their calendar. And everything (mail, calendar, notes, storage, contacts) is fast and accessible using standard protocols.

Only thing I still miss is a web interface for managing tasks/to-do’s.

[thismodernlife]

The notes product could do with a bit of love I think.

A todo feature is an interesting idea.

[ashtonbaker]

I'm also very happy with the product - I'll add that their iOS integration for email/calendar/contacts works as almost a seamless replacement for syncing to an iCloud account, which I found really delightful.

[PascLeRasc]

Thanks, that's exactly what I've been looking for. Is that only the $5/month Standard plan or will the $3/month basic plan allow you to add it to iOS Calendar?

[thismodernlife]

Pretty sure you do but that extra $2 buys you a lot more if you can stretch the budget - 30GB storage over 2GB and custom domains. Annual billing is cheaper I think and you can get 10% off first year with a referral link (DM me if you want)

[stonesweep]

The $3 plan doesn't include hosting your own domain, you'll want to go with the $5 plan so you can get [e-mail] up and running. (edit: grammar)

[PascLeRasc]

Doesn’t that come off really pretentious when you give out your email? I don’t think I really want that feature.

[stonesweep]

It could if you let it! So don't let it. :) I spent a lot of time finding my domain and eventually found one that makes people chuckle when they read it, it's lightly funny and innocuous. I work in the tech industry, many (many) people have their own domains - it's not as uncommon as you'd think depending on which circles of friends. It's very common to see a domain based on their last (family) name and several family members share it, I see that a lot and have seen it for 2 decades.

[brongondwana]

It also means that you can move to another provider without having to change your address. I generally recommend having your own domain. It means you can get you own name (and partners/kids can get their own name too) as the local part, otherwise you're fighting for a good localpart name against every other Fastmail customer!

[jryb]

I think that says more about the domain you own than anything else. My last name is fortunately rare enough that my email is [e-mail], and the only comments i’ve gotten are from nontechnical people who didn’t know that was possible and are impressed. I suspect technical people understand how easy it is and just think “must be nice having the .com of your last name still be available for less than tens of thousands of dollars”

[thedanbob]

I've been using my custom domain email for years and no one really cares, except maybe for a few techy friends who have the same. Very rarely I've run into badly written email validators that only accept well-known email domains.

[bartvk]

I never thought about that. But really, why do you think so? Have you ever heard people comment on other people's email addresses?

[wolco5]

not if you buy the right name.

[e-mail]

or

[e-mail]

[finlake]

Although Fastmail in general is offering an excellent service, their support can be too slow in an emergency.

I had my Fastmail account incorrectly flagged by their scripts, account fully disabled, bouncing all my emails. It took 5 days for their support to investigate, admit their mistake, reinstate my account and issue an apology (in the form of 1year subscription). Still, 5 days of emails lost.

[grsmvg]

I had the same, also took 5 days for me because of the timezones. I was a customer for barely 2 days when I was locked out.

I triggered their spam algorithm by using the ‘redirect’ button in Apple mail to send an invoice to my administration tool, which keeps the original sender in the ‘from’ field.

I gave them the benefit of the doubt for now, since their offering is really good.

[thismodernlife]

Ouch, that’s tough :(

Were you on your own domain? In that situation I guess you could have changed DNS and piped it to Gmail temporarily.

[finlake]

Partially, yes.

Oh, and one other thing- they disabled my account silently, no notification, no email, call, sms, anything. Found out only when one of my friends called to ask why my address was bouncing emails. As my account was disabled, I could not even easily submit a support ticket as a customer (which requires to be logged in), had to use some contact form on their website.

[tmpxgdqrcKFuG]

Can I have domain aliases with fastmail? I saw I can have email aliases but can I specifically have a second domain aliased to a primary domain?

EDIT: They do. https://www.fastmail.com/help/receive/domains.html#mirrored

[stonesweep]

Yes - only one domain is the primary/default, you go into their Aliases section and have to set up a [e-mail] to [e-mail] mapping (if you use the add domain wizard it makes it for you). You still need to set up your DNS records for the second domain like the first.

(I bought two domains and did exactly what you're asking - after using the first for a day or so, having decided I liked the other one better I reached in and simply flipped the dropdown and chose the second one to by the default, clicked OK and it all just worked nicely)

When I look at my set message headers, it would appear that your primary @fastmail.com (or whichever of their domains you choose) is your actual primary, and that even your first domain is just an alias to the actual user account domain.

[climb_stealth]

Is this what you have in mind? See the section on mirrored domains.

https://www.fastmail.com/help/receive/domains.html#mirrored

[tmpxgdqrcKFuG]

Yes! That's exactly what I was thinking. I think I like the way fastmail does it more than gmail too.

[climb_stealth]

For what it's worth I have found Fastmail's documentation to be really good. Whenever I had to look up things like configuring email clients or their spam rules I have been pleasantly surprised.

[foofoo4u]

Not sure if this answers your question specifically. But yes, they do allow for domain aliases. I specifically use their wild card alias. For example, let's say I own the domain `mydomain.com`. Fastmail allows me to have `[e-mail]`, `[e-mail]`, `[e-mail]`, etc. on the fly.

[thedanbob]

Yes, on a per-address basis. I have several email addresses aliased to my main account on a different domain.

[tmpxgdqrcKFuG]

Nice. Thinking about it more, I think I could live without it but I have it with Gmail at the moment. I like the per-address basis though, in Gmail I add the domain alias then when I add an email alias that alias applies to all the domains.

[beardbound]

I also am a very happy customer. I moved as much off of Google as possible last year and even moved my mother to a fastmail domain that I manage as well. She quite likes it. The calendar works great with everything and I like that they use one use app passwords and profiles for devices. It makes device management very straightforward.

[kcartlidge]

Another happy customer of many years.

I've got around 10 domains there, each of which have up to 4 addresses. Emails arrive filtered into separate folders in the same account, so I get all that whilst only paying for a single account (they'll even host static sites for all those domains, though I currently use Netlify).

Always performant, excellent web UI for mail, contacts, calendar, and (optionally but included) DNS, and if they have occasional blips I have to say I've never noticed.

Far superior to GMail, which these days seems stale and slow (and possibly only gets away with it because it is ubiquitous enough to set the level of people's expectations).

[analyte123]

I wish I had bought my own domain when I signed up for Fastmail so I could switch more easily. Their web UI usually takes 3+ seconds to load for me on a gigabit connection which is about the same as Gmail, search also takes 2+ seconds which is definitely worse than Gmail. And they haven't upped their storage limit in 6+ years during which the cost of hard drives has fallen 50% or more.

edit: Bulk moving or deleting items in the web interface can take 20+ seconds! It's not that fast, honestly. But maybe there isn't anything better.

[thismodernlife]

I honestly don’t load it that often - it just sits there in a open tab all day. Viewing, moving, composing messages (esp with keyboard shortcuts) is literally instant for me. I have never noticed it being anything other than fast. Same for their iOS app (which I think is largely a web view).

How many things are you moving for it to take that long?!

I accidentally marked everything in a folder as unread recently and that did take a while, but I did get a very helpful progress bar while it chugged away.

[amelius]

I was just looking at their "about us" page, and it seems their technical staff consists of only 3 people, which I think is quite impressive.

[thismodernlife]

I’m pretty sure that can’t be all of them. The founder (or maybe CTO, can’t remember) often pops up on Hacker News.

It would be good if they would blog about more about the company itself actually. I don’t remember them publishing much about that.

[brongondwana]

Yeah, the technical team is quite a few more than that! We're roughly 1/3 support, 1/2 technical (split between ops, backend and frontend) and 1/6 for the rest - which makes us very light on marketing and sales compared to most companies!

[thismodernlife]

Oh wow thanks for replying. How many people in the company in total, if you’re able to say?

Thanks again for a fantastic product and service! I really think you should blog a bit more about the company and culture, that would probably be all the marketing you’d need :-)

[brongondwana]

Currently just under 50 total.

[bencollier49]

I love Fastmail. Well worth the money.

[_lbaq]

I second this, highly recommended!

[hertzrat]

Agreed. Also, I emailed them to clarify their privacy policy and a real human wrote me back to reassure me about the few clauses I was unclear on. We live in an age human support is not that common so this felt great

[benhurmarcel]

Does anyone know if the file storage can be used to sync files? Some kind of improvised Dropbox. Say a script on my computer would sync a few GB over webdav, in order to access them on my phone.

[nailer]

Same here. Used Fastmail at my old company for years and wish my new company moved onto it. Google Mail is so damn slow.