Interesting. I switched a little over a year ago too. I like not being the product but find the web client painful. Specifically:

1. No Send and Archive

2. Sending is slooow. E.g. compose email, hit Send, wait several seconds, go back to Inbox. Gmail is instantaneous.

3. Hitting Reply is SLOOOOW to bring up the Reply pane. Fastmail does a POST that takes from 500ms to 5000ms (usually on the lower end but even that is noticeable. On the rare occasion it's longer it's incredibly frustrating).

4. Replying to a message in a thread requires the mouse. In Gmail, the keyboard shortcuts will act on the highlighted message in-thread. In Fastmail the keyboard shortcuts only act on the most recent message in the thread.

5. When viewing an email that is a response to another email, Gmail collapses the initial email and lets you expand it with an ellipsis. Fastmail does no such thing, which means you need to scroll (and scroll and scroll...) when looking up through long threads

6. Search is just OK vs. Gmail, but that's not a huge surprise.

In general Fastmail hasn't impressed me with the pace of development on the web app at all - the issues I had with it a year ago are still exactly the same issue I have today. I don't know how anybody who works on it and dogfoods it can't notice the speed issues every time they send an email.

But it's still nice to not be the product.

I whipped up a quick implementation of Send & Archive for fun which you can hook up with something like Greasemonkey:

  O.require(['mail', 'compose'], function () {
    const composeController = FastMail.mail.screens.compose;
    const mailActions = FastMail.mail.actions;
    const mailToolbar = FastMail.views.mailToolbar;
    mailToolbar.registerView('sendArchive', new O.ButtonView({
      type: 's-send',
      icon: 'icon-paper-plane',
      _isSending: O.bind(composeController, 'instance.isSending'),
      _mayMove: O.bind(mailActions, 'mayMove'),
      isDisabled: function () {
        return this.get('_isSending') || !this.get('_mayMove');
      }.property('_isSending', '_mayMove'),
      label: O.loc('Send & Archive'),
      target: {
        doIt: function () {
          composeController.fire('send');
          mailActions.archive();
        }
      },
      method: 'doIt',
      shortcut: 'cmd-shift-enter',  // (Fairly arbitrarily chosen.)
    }));
    const config = O.clone(mailToolbar._configs.compose);
    config.left.splice(config.left.indexOf('send'), 0, 'sendArchive', '-');
    mailToolbar.registerConfig('compose', config);
  });

It’s not elegant, but it works. It’ll probably break when the web UI switches to JMAP some time next year.

Hmm, that’s odd. In my experience, FastMail’s web app is much faster than Gmail. I also tend to like that the FastMail web app is simple in comparison to Gmail - fewer things to slow it down or break, and few things for me to ignore :)

Interesting, I've only ever run into these kinds of speed issues on the iOS client. I've found the web client (and usually the mobile client) loads a large inbox (hundreds to thousands of messages) much, much faster than Gmail; in fact, that was one of the first things in testing that told me I'd like using it.

I will say that Gmail handles threading better, as you said. Fastmail goes for a more traditional native-client-like approach; it didn't take long for me to switch back to that paradigm, but someone who has only ever known Gmail would definitely see it as a pain point.

The FM web client loads messages faster, but is slower to use in my experience. I’d rather pay a one-time loading cost up front for an app experience that feels native-ish and snappy like Gmail vs having the app feel laggy when I do mainline use cases like send email or compose a reply.

Re threading I’ve had email for 25 years now and def. feel Gmail’s approach is superior, if only because you don’t have to scroll so freaking much!

> 2. Sending is slooow. E.g. compose email, hit Send, wait several seconds, go back to Inbox. Gmail is instantaneous.

Gmail is optimistic about it, while we’re actually sending the message before confirming to you that it’s been sent. (There are sound technical/historical reasons why it’s done the way it is; it’s not trivial to change.)

Once the JMAP spec stabilises (hopefully by the next IETF meeting in March), our web UI will switch to using JMAP, and then I think that sending messages will be done in the background. Not certain, I’m not the one that’s been doing the JMAPification of the FastMail web UI.

> 3. Hitting Reply is SLOOOOW to bring up the Reply pane. Fastmail does a POST that takes from 500ms to 5000ms (usually on the lower end but even that is noticeable. On the rare occasion it's longer it's incredibly frustrating).

This is definitely fixed with JMAP. In a JMAP world the client takes care of creating drafts, parsing MIME messages, defanging potentially malicious HTML, &c. rather than the server as our current implementation does.

> 4. […] In Fastmail the keyboard shortcuts only act on the most recent message in the thread.

Not true: use n/p to focus the appropriate message (same as in Gmail), then r et al. will apply to that particular message.

> 5. When viewing an email that is a response to another email, Gmail collapses the initial email and lets you expand it with an ellipsis. Fastmail does no such thing, which means you need to scroll (and scroll and scroll...) when looking up through long threads

FastMail does collapse the messages that have been read. You can expand individual messages by clicking on them or pressing e (provided you’re using n/p to switch between them), or Shift+e to expand all (Alt+Shift+e collapses all). In consequence of these things, I’m not sure what the issue you’re pointing out is; if you can provide more info we can look into improving it.

You may find it helpful to look at https://www.fastmail.com/help/receive/kbshortcuts.html.

---

For web UI work, we’ve been focusing on Topicbox and JMAP this year rather than FastMail; Topicbox has been a simpler staging ground for various improvements that we intend to bring to FastMail (mostly internal tooling stuff—I’ll be writing a bit about it later in our Advent series), and JMAP will enable various long-desired features (e.g. snooze, delayed/undo send). Next year will see more effort put into the FastMail web UI; my favourite item that we have planned (and I called dibs on implementing most of it!) is service workers for offline support and substantially improved performance (building on top of JMAP’s improvements).

Any plans for a PWA for the mobile version? I use the app on Android, but I recently tried just loading the site in Firefox (Beta/58/Quantum), and I think it runs faster, plus it doesn't have keyboard/autocorrect issues.

We’re still planning all the details around service workers and the likes, but we intend to continue our tradition of having as much as possible in the normal web app, instead of in the app wrappers (the app being mostly just a wrapper around the web interface).

(BTW, the Android app is in the process of being revamped to use the now-sufficiently-capable WebView, which will fix certain issues like the keyboard problems you mention. Not sure what progress is on that.)

FastMail’s web interface is already practically a PWA (from a few years before that term was invented), lacking only the ability to start offline (it copes with transient network connections pretty well), and use of the Web Notifications API (which we’ll probably support at some point, but not use in the app because it provides only a subset of the native functionality we currently use).

I will say having a native wrapper will be worth it even if all it does is allow the quiet hours feature.

(That feature, your use of Source San Pro, and the fact that the calendar always starts with the current week was what sold me on your service.)

Thanks for the info on the future WebView version.

A few years on, muting a thread is the #1 feature I miss from gmail

> "Wow what a coincidence — I switched from Gmail to Fastmail exactly 1 year ago today."

Same, in fact I just got my renewal notice over the weekend, which means either yesterday or today was the day I turned Gmail off for good.

> "I couldn't be happier. I mostly use native clients, but the Web client is a joy to use, and everything I've observed about Fastmail gives me confidence in their service."

I vastly prefer Fastmail's web client to any modern native client, though Claws mail comes close if only for its abundantly configurable interface. I really enjoy the extras with Fastmail too; the Notes and Files apps are perfect for quick access from any device. The fact that their iPhone app is a near perfect mirror of the desktop web client helps too.

> "I never used the Gmail-exclusive features like labels, so switching was pretty easy. I highly recommend it to anyone considering it."

Coming from over a decade of IMAP folders, I hated Gmail labels and found them awkward. Fastmail uses folders and I'm in my happy place with them.

I never thought I'd pay for email service beyond hosting my own, but Fastmail is definitely worth it to me.

> the Notes and Files apps are perfect for quick access from any device

Thanks for this heads-up! I've been looking for a super-simple notes taking method that would span work, home, and mobile. I never realized FastMail has one just under my nose!

Notes even used to work with Notes.app on iOS and macOS before the latter moved to iCloud backed storage.

They're generally great, except for the fact that the iOS client does not allow to send plain text emails. The settings are there, but broken (and have been for about two years). I've reported the bug to them, but they literally told me "it's too much work to fix".

> the Web client is a joy to use

Their web client is the only one I've ever been able to use without wanting to quit email.

When I was moving away from Fastmail, I noticed that Rainloop[1] is a pretty slick, Gmail-inspired webclient, and it's FOSS, but I couldn't find any provider who was actually using it. Can anyone comment?

1. https://www.rainloop.net/

I'm using Rainloop for my personal domains and so far love it. There's very good integration of GPG and (e.g.) Google Drive. Didn't take me long to move away from SquirrelMail or Roundcube after that. Highly recommended.

I'm considering switching (in fact I just registered for the FastMail trial). I'm especially interested in the ability to use catchall addresses with a custom domain, which would allow me to give out an address like <hackernews@mydomain.tld>, and thus determine who shared my email address if I start receiving spam at that address.

This is partly possible with Gmail, as you can use addresses like <myname+servicename@gmail.com>, but not all sites support emails with a + in them.

What differences have you noticed in your year since switching? I'm especially interested in any downsides. My biggest worry about Gmail is the lack of privacy from Google.

I do precisely this with Fastmail and it works a treat. Setting up Fastmail with a custom domain was a joy, I can easily filter based on the To address, and you can setup a wildcard identity so you can trivially send email from whatever name you like at your domain.

To me the only downside is the mobile app isn't quite as polished as Gmail. It doesn't work offline, and I notice occasional bugs or awkwardnesses. But it's still very usable, and I much prefer the Fastmail web interface to Gmail.

Edit: Also, the Fastmail importer didn't work very well on my large number of Gmail messages. It failed a few times and restarting it resulted in duplicate messags.

> To me the only downside is the mobile app isn't quite as polished as Gmail. It doesn't work offline, and I notice occasional bugs or awkwardnesses. But it's still very usable, and I much prefer the Fastmail web interface to Gmail.

But FastMail supports other clients, right? I don't want to be forced to use their web interface or their app; I'm happy with the Apple-written Mail apps.

Yes, they support SMTP and IMAP just fine. In fact, they're one of the few providers that actually support IMAP push with iOS's Mail: https://blog.fastmail.com/2016/12/21/what-we-talk-about-when...

This is the best part of a standards-compliant service like FastMail. Gmail is extremely challenging to use with third party clients because it's custom features aren't supported. I've long had Gmail randomly archive (in no folders) email I told it to delete via an IMAP client, or duplicate items in multiple folders (i.e. labels) or other weird behaviors.

> But FastMail supports other clients, right? I don't want to be forced to use their web interface or their app; I'm happy with the Apple-written Mail apps.

It does, but at least for me the problem is using my separate forwarding-only e-mail address instead of fastmail.com as the sender. As far as I see, I need the native app for this.

FastMail.com can send via a forwarding email address. You'll need to set up authentication at FastMail so it can authenticate to the forwarding service of course.

I don't use the forwarding service to send. I use it to forward incoming mail to FastMail, and in FastMail I just fake the sender address when sending e-mail.

Sadly your use-case is dying. Asymmetric mail flows are becoming harder and harder to support, as DKIM/DMARC alignment and SPF become stronger anti-spam signals, we're going to have to lock down on egress for domains which we don't have proof of control for.

I use aliases (FastMail's term for custom addresses that go to the same inbox) for that reason. They work very well, and I've never had any problems setting up a new one on the fly.

I should have known they offer this sort of thing. I tried spinning up an alias in the past but was unable to find where to do so. Maybe the UI has improved since I tried ~year ago.

They did shuffle things around about a year ago. Aliases are under Settings, in the Admin section.

I've been a FastMail customer for about four years and overall I'm really pleased with their service. Like you I have my own domain, previously used Gmail, and provide custom email addresses to every site I register with. Interesting to see who has sold my email or may have been hacked when a rogue email ends up in my inbox (hi, Sunspel!).

I have one issue with FastMail that I didn't have with Gmail. Every few days/weeks I'll get a wave of backspatter from someone spoofing my domain to spam. I've researched and it doesn't look like there's anything I can do about this. Most of the backspatter ends up in my spam folder, but not all of it does. I don't know if Gmail automatically removed backspatter -- not even sending it to my spam folder -- or if this only started after I transferred my domain.

By backspatter, do you mean things like message bounce alerts? Or replies from the people who received spam messages spoofed from your address?

Backscatter is (I think) when the target server of a spam mail bounces the email back to me, the rightful owner of the domain, typically because the address is not valid (though I sometimes also get out-of-office messages or mailbox full errors).

It works like this: the spammer forges their headers to make it look like the from address is under my domain. My domain has DKIM/SPF set up, so a good recipient will compare the email to the authentication records, see they don't match, and then trash the email. But there are still a lot of mail servers out there that don't have that set up, so they accept the email as valid, process it, then return it to me when the account doesn't exist on their server. Like I said, annoying, but not a lot I can do other than set up rules to trash messages with a subject of "Undelivered Mail Returned to Sender."

Did you also setup DMARC? I've had good luck with that to reduce the amount of backscatter. Although some recipients don't check it, those that do will fast fail anything coming in that doesn't pass SPF or DKIM.

> which would allow me to give out an address like <hackernews@mydomain.tld>, and thus determine who shared my email address if I start receiving spam at that address.

I've been doing this for over 15 years, but with a much simpler setup: I just forward it to another account, which for the last 10-ish years has been an @gmail address. The mails show up in my Gmail inbox as From: the original sender and To: the custom domain.

As a caution: don't forward a top-level domain. You'll get all kinds of dictionary-style spam attacks and it becomes flooded with noise. Instead, use a sub-domain, so you get for example <*@something.mydomain.tld>.

> As a caution: don't forward a top-level domain.

Nice tip, I'll implement that for my setup. I had to stop a catchall on a TLD for the reason you mention and it'll be trivial to switch to a sub-domain. Thanks.

The problem with this is SPF reject domains. Which means your legitimately forwarded email will simply disappear into the void. Hosting your domain at something like fastmail will not have this problem.

I have the same experience. I'm using a mail-forwarding service, so I can't host it with FastMail. FastMail is my third mail provider I'm forwarding to, and I'm not aware of any missed e-mail with any of them this far. Then again I guess I wouldn't be :)

I used Fastmail for a few years. I switched last spring due to two interactions through support channels that left me really despising the apparent company culture, attitudes about intellectual honesty, and general jerkishness.

You're probably considering switching based on your mail needs, so this might not apply to you, however:

In addition to mail, Fastmail also advertises[1] their plans come with their FastMail Files feature. It can be used for one-off file sharing (akin to Google Drive) and even static site hosting (explained in their support docs[2]). However, I learned from the CEO's comments in my support ticket that they're apparently overprovisioned and don't expect everyone to actually use the storage included with their plans.

I just took a cursory look at their landing and pricing pages and see they aren't touting Files loudly right now. (My initial thought is a hope that they took my remarks to heart from the thread that led to my decision to leave, when I said they should "go tone down the hosted storage aspect of your marketing". However, given that the promotional blog post from [1] occurred within the month that followed my comment, I suspect not.) The blog posts and Fastmail documentation[3] about the Files feature are still available, of course, whether or not it's still on the landing page.

This itself would have been only slightly disappointing, but the bad taste came from the passive aggressive responses in the support thread, that this was the same sort of attitude adopted in a previous (unrelated) support thread from a couple years ago, and that in this most recent incident, they decided to go on the offensive and compare using the 25GB storage space for making backups to abuse. (Their choice example being someone trying to abuse an ISP's lax limits on DNS to tunnel IP over it.) I half expect someone to show up here to try and apply a layer of spin in exactly the same way. Bonus points if they ignore my actual use case, try to make it out as if I was trying to do something I wasn't, and then call me the "disingenuous" one again.

1. https://blog.fastmail.com/2017/03/29/faster-files/

2. https://www.fastmail.com/help/files/website.html

3. https://www.fastmail.com/help/files/usage.html

> However, I learned from the CEO's comments in my support ticket that they're apparently overprovisioned and don't expect everyone to actually use the storage included with their plans.

Isn't that true for every file hosting service everywhere? Most people only use a fraction of their available storage, so there's no need to actually provision enough space for everyone to use 100% of their quota. Doing so would be a waste of space.

I switched about 6 months ago. I love having the catchall address although I had that when google managed my custom email domain as well. The web interface is really fast as it does operations in the background so it is really responsive, even at times when your internet connection is spotty. The only real downside is that the phone app (at least the android one) wasn't that good, I currently just use IMAP and k9 mail instead which works well enough.

I did use inbox before (and I still get some email to my gmail account) and it does have nice features like snooze that I miss. But on the whole I am happy with my choice to use fast mail.

I should also add that I seem to get slightly more junk mail than I did before, but it is close and hard to tell, I have not had a real email marked as spam yet, which did happen from time to time with gmail, so this isn't a complaint, just an observation.

I'm not suggesting (at all) that you use them over FastMail, but GSuite also supports catch-all email addresses.

Indeed - but replying from an arbitrary address is one big downside of G Suite’s implementation. In FastMail you can add <star>[0]@example.com as an identity. Selecting this when composing an email allows you to edit the localpart entirely. Similarly, when replying to an email sent to your catch-all and you have an <star>@ identity for the hostname FastMail will automatically set your from address for you.

In Gmail (with G Suite) one has to manually add every identity they may wish to reply from - there’s no <star>@ option. Additionally, it’s impossible to hide your real email address/Google Account address. It’ll always be disclosed in the email headers unlike FastMail.

I’d love if G Suite would make such a workflow easier..

[0] escape characters don’t seem to work here, <star> refers to what’d you think it does

Selecting this when composing an email allows you to edit the localpart entirely. Similarly, when replying to an email sent to your catch-all and you have an <star>@ identity for the hostname FastMail will automatically set your from address for you.

I didn't know that, but it's fantastic news! I was doing things the awkward "gmail" way.

Speaking of which, do you know of any mail client (on iOS or Mac) that supports this? I am using the web interface for replying on most emails because of exactly this feature

Unsure, sorry. I use their iOS app (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/fastmail-email-calendar/id93...) for mobile and their web interface elsewhere

I have my mail hosted at Zoho and they support this.

Edit: Simply throwing this out there in case Fastmail doesn't and you're looking for alternatives. Not shilling for Zoho.

Looks interesting. It seems (from a quick look) like it tries to be a replacement for a lot of Google products, including Docs. It's nice to see that Google and Microsoft have smaller competitors in this area.

Personally, I'm only interested in email. But thanks for letting me know about other options!

Im curious how FastMail and ProtonMail are comparison wise?

I tried out ProtonMail for just a little bit around the time I switched, and personally I found the focus on security and encryption to be at the expense of user experience.

If I recall correctly, ProtonMail was using RoundCube as the webmail interface when I was looking for a service. RoundCube was the reason I left my previous e-mail provider, so I had to give it a pass. Though now their website is showing a rather nice web UI, perhaps they've switched to a new one since then?

We have never used RoundCube in the project's history. You must be thinking of someone else.

I'm gonna piggyback on your comment to ask a question I'm not clear on. Am I correct in that if I don't set a recovery email there is absolutely no way for anyone to get access to my account unless they get my password? If that were to happen I could recover my account by proving to you I am who I say I am (perhaps gov ID plus DNS records), but my previous email will be forever encrypted?

I ask because that is what I want. I want my account to autodestruct if compromised and when recovered I want to be assured that all my personal data has been safeguarded by effectively throwing away the key into the depths of Mordor.

Thanks for the clarification, must indeed be mixing you up with another service!

You might be thinking up riseup.net. They use Roundcube, they target a similar audience, and both have a cryptopunk-ish slant.

I had a quick look -- I was thinking of Posteo. I think they aren't aiming for the exact same customer segment, but I think of both as a small Central European service that values privacy.

I’ve only tried ProtonMail’s iOS client, but have found it to be very easy to use.

Do not forget about tutanota.com. I prefer them to protonmail since they're much cheaper and feature wise are pretty much the same.

I haven't had any downsides at all, for my use cases. I've heard from a few folks that lack of "labels" is a bummer (if you rely on them in Gmail), and their mobile clients aren't quite as good (though I've never used them).

G Suite (formerly Google Apps) supports wild cards so you can use Gmail with arbitraryaddresses@yourdomain.tld.

Been using them for a few years now and they're great. Some things I like:

- plays nice with mbsync

- sane system: real folders, not labels

- customer service with an IRL person

- identities feature

Out of curiosity, why do you consider folders to be sane, and labels not?

To me I always found labels to be the exact same as a folder, but not bound to a single instance. Ie, it is everything a folder has, and more. What am I missing?

I should have been more clear. Folders play way more nicely with IMAP clients as opposed to gmail labels, in my experience.

Labels are one of the very few things I miss when I switched from Google Apps to Fastmail, but labels sometimes do not work well with IMAP. Google Mail exposes labels as IMAP folders, but in an IMAP client, you will have identical messages in different folders. And since traditional IMAP clients are not really equipped to deal with them, label management gets annoying.

Are you happy with the FastMail native mobile apps? I've tried to use Android FastMail but it's quite clumsy compared to Google mail or apps like AquaMail.

I did switch to AquaMail and configured it to use FastMail through IMAP but there is no fast search. A good and fast search for mail is super critical.

Because of the lacking mobile app I'm unfortunately considering the move back to Google Apps.

I've thought about switching many times, and would see myself using the web client, however I wonder if they support the "undo send" feature as GMail does. I cannot see it listed in their features page [1] at least. Can someone shed some light, please? TIA.

[1] https://www.fastmail.com/help/ourservice/features.html

> JMAP will enable various long-desired features (e.g. snooze, delayed/undo send).

says chrismorgan at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15856942

Thanks for the info, that's great to hear :)

The only thing that I complain about with Fastmail is the lack of ability to use the calendar outside of the web UI.

The email side is fantastic.

CalDAV works great! I use their calendar on my Windows Mobile device without a problem[0]. FastMail even, when they had a change that might negatively affect some calendar clients last month, bothered to test large number and notify users who might be adversely affected. I got an email telling me how to resolve the issue with my Windows Mobile device, for example.

https://blog.fastmail.com/2017/11/04/shared-calendar-improve...

[0] Actually Windows 10 has a strange quirk of CalDAV/CardDAV support: It's only supported as part of iCloud account support. The solution is to create a fake iCloud account, and then change the advanced server settings to your CalDAV and CardDAV URLs instead of Apple's URLs. And then put in the correct credentials. This is true of desktop and phone Windows 10 alike.

I haven't had that experience — I have it hooked up as CalDAV to my mac and iphone's native clients.

Hmm, maybe I'm just doing it wrong.

I found the Fastmail calendar to be far more reliable and compatible than Gmail.

Check out DAVdroid if you are on Android (there are other options too). Provides CalDAV/CardDAV to sync with Androids native calendars and contacts.

Maybe try again; I use the calendar with Mac and GNOME native calendar programs just fine

The only thing that keeps me switching away from Gmail is loosing the actual email address.

Fastmail can both send and receive your gmail address (even proxying through Google's SMTP server). So it's easy to switch over gradually, and quietly keep your existing address indefinitely

Why not POP forward? You can also set a custom From...I use a custom domain instead of my old gmail because I was tired of hopping from juno to yahoo to gmail to fastmail.

juno? Damn blast from the past there.

How's the spam filter compared to Gmail?

Fastmail does this thing where it uses a global set of filter rules for everyone, and then after you've spammed/unspammed something like 150 messages, it switches to a more personalized ruleset based on the spam you actually get.

I wager I get one, maybe two spam messages in my inbox per month (out of hundreds captured), and maybe one or two false positives in my entire couple years of having mail there.

In any case, that's a better record than Gmail - they've got a huge issue with directing legitimate mail into the spam can.

I switched to FastMail from Gmail a few months ago and haven’t had any issues with spam.

It is worse than GMail. It tends to come in waves, there can be weeks where I barely get any spam in my inbox and then there is sometimes a couple of messages per day. I guess marking spam (Fastmail also uses a naive-bayes-based filter) and/or servers being added to a blacklist stops those waves.

I don't recall the opposite (false positives) ever happening.

I would say the numbers are generally small enough that it does not bother me.

You can also tweak your spam score threshold in settings.

I've been using Fastmail for over two years now, and I have had zero spam enter my inbox.

On occasion, I've had one or two legitimate emails end up in the Junk folder, but it's extremely rare.

When I was using fastmail, I got lots of spam and I couldn't figure out how to get less. The spam was the reason I stopped using it and went back to gmail primarily. (This was a year or 1.5 ago.) I liked everything else about their service, though.