Fastmail free will be discontinued. Similar platforms?
 

Fastmail emailed guest users that free accounts will be discontinued end of July. Do you know of any free service that has the same interface or platform? Thank you.

As FMs interface was developed in-house, you won't find the "same interface or platform" elsewhere. Similar, maybe.. Gmail?

I agree with sflorack about the interface and platform, I use OpenMailBox (https://www.openmailbox.org/webmail/) as well as Fastmail, check 'em out.

- Bruce

Nope nothing as good out there....... VERY SAD........

I dont know what happend to them :(

Thank you all very much for the suggestions and information :)

I see OpenMailBox's breakdown of costs for 2017.

Domains €120.- SSL certificate €144.- Infrastructure €19,200.

Given the fact that SSL certificates with Let's Encrypt could be free, and Domains, in my opinion, could be bought for much less than €120, what's to tell that OpenMailBox isn't overstating also the price of Infrastructure?

How do we know this isn't a for-profit organization masquerading as a charity?

They are masquerading quite well then, I've been using their services for close to 6 months and it hasn't cost me a cent. If they do start a 'for a fee only' thing, I might keep using them, if it doesn't cost me too much that is..

- Bruce

Who would want to use them anyway? They offer FREE email service and then take it away. That would make me worry that if you use their domain THEY will have control and charge whatever they choose. Gmail is the most popular email provider for a reason.

for someone that never used fastmail, what does the ui look like? I did an image search but saw a few different variables, so not sure which interface the op is referring to

You can get a basic idea from this YouTube video. (Jump to 9:25 to cut out the unnecessary part..).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uj7orwzt5kk

In terms of free domain email, I believe the best option right now is Zoho. They offer a decent webmail interface and I found their email reliable in some brief testing. I personally wasn't in need of all their other online services (much like G Suite, but more extensive). Zoho's Android app works well too. Migadu offers a free account that allows only 25 emails a day I believe.

looks kind of like polarismail enhanced http://oi49.tinypic.com/2yy2j68.jpg

I would not
 

I don't think it's a great idea to use smaller companies for email. There is more of a possibility that they will close up shop and not be around, or charge you as they please once they lock you in long enough like Fastmail is doing now. The giants like Google, Yahoo and even AOL will be around for as long as email will be around.

..or the other way you can look at it is: you choose to use a domain owned by the email provider, so you locked yourself in.

Isn't this allowing history to repeat itself? Ten years ago, you probably thought "FM will be around forever, so I'll use their domain". You should probably learn from your mistakes..

IMHO, the correct "great idea" is own your own domain and use whatever email provider you want. If it closes shop, change your domain records.