[brongondwana]

This is a really interesting challenge, both as a person being bombarded by this, but also as someone trying to sell something.

We had a choice at FastMail a few years ago now, when we were still providing free accounts and trying to use advertising - both to the user of the account and in the signature of outgoing email - to cover the operational costs.

In the end we decided to ditch the free accounts entirely, remove all advertising, and focus on providing the best possible experience we can to our paying customers.

Which is great, but we still need at least the second order advertising so that new people become aware that our product exists. We know we could grow a lot faster by throwing away our morals - instead we're experimenting very cautiously with placing advertisements while we continue to rely on word of mouth from happy customers as our main way to find new subscribers.

[DarkTree]

And there it is. Just by using your company's name, you created an on-the-fly advertisement.

Now I know that FastMail is:

1. A paid service

2. A service that cares about their customers

3. A service that doesn't use advertisements to subsidize free accounts