Guest and Member subscriptions being discontinued
 

FYI, we're finally closing off guest and member accounts entirely. Emails are going to users in batches, so not everybody has received a notification email yet. Everybody will get them, and later we will start adding more obvious warnings on login page and webmail screens.

https://www.fastmail.com/help/account/guest.html

https://www.fastmail.com/help/account/member.html

We have already not allowed new signups at those service levels for quite some time. We are offering very generous discounts for upgrades.

Regards,

Bron.

I do sympathize for this move, but expect some flack for it, especially from the few remaining legacy member account owners. I have a suggestion, that will cost Fastmail little except some administrative costs. As an additional option to the US$15 credit and 50% discount, offer to actually refund the US$15 to those who insist they bought a lifetime subscription and object to paying more. In practice, I think only a minuscule number would take this option.

I'm sure we're happy to refund a few accounts as a one-off.

Sure glad I never bought a "lifetime" account. Would I ever be miffed.

I don't think it's good business but whatdoIknow.

The member accounts were introduced at a critical time in Fastmail's development, when they needed serious funding (when they first went paid) I purchased a member account myself but cancelled it shortly afterward, when I received an email (with a huge attachment) that locked my account up. I remember being seriously annoyed at the time but I should not have been, as I could have set up a rule to refuse these.

That Fastmail have honored their commitment (to keep these accounts valid, over all these years) I consider impeccable. Good on you Fastmail for keeping these accounts open; I thought they would have been shut down a long long time ago.

How about a class action for breach of contract
 

Anyone interested in bringing a class action against Fastmail for breach of contract.

A lifetime subscription is exactly what it says (a subscription for the duration of the life of an individual) and for Fastmail to unilaterally withdraw that service is a breach of contract.

The fact that they have not been available for some time and that they were introduced "at a critical time in Fastmail's development, when they needed serious funding" is completely irrelevant.

Fastmail needed the money and should honour those who stepped in to help them out at that time by buying those lifetime subscriptons.

I thought I'd spotted a bargain and was prepared to take the risk that the company would not disappear completely (the only circumstances in which ending these subscriptions would be inevitable) and bought accounts for my children fully expecting them to last a lifetime.

Each got a neat e-mail address which is in use and will be lost if they fail to pay for a new service.

Perhaps the least Fastmail could do is to offer a free and user-configurable forwarding service for those who don't want to pay to stay.

Ya really .. who would want to be forced to pay WHEN ITS GOING TO GET MUCH WORSE AFTER 30 JUNE!! (When they force everyone to the new interface)

Fastmail has really become a disgusting disgrace..

THEY USED TO BE THE BEST EMAIL SERVICE OUT THERE and now they are becoming just like Yahoo and Google..... Its very sad :(

I suggest you read the Fastmail Terms of Service (in Help) before getting too excited. Be sure to read sections 6, 7, 8, and 11.

Some people have gotten into the habit of inventing a "lifetime" subscription account. There never was such an account. There was no Guest (free of charge) account at the time when Member accounts started about 15 years ago. Fastmail created a "Member" account with a one-time fee so new users could try out an account before getting a Full or Enhanced account. These accounts didn't expire at the end of a year, so there was plenty of time for Member accounts to consider an upgrade to a yearly subscription account. There was no specific expiration date, but no guarantee of the account lasting for a lifetime. See my post about this (nearly four years ago):
http://www.emaildiscussions.com/show...51&postcount=9

Bill

I totally disagree on this. I can't see any signs of FastMail collecting user data and sellig it to whoever, what – for me – is the main difference to those you named. And the reason why it's totally okay for me to pay for my account.

Okay, you don't like the new/recent/default interface. For me, it was one of the main reasons why I signed up for FastMail some years ago. I wouldn't mind if they'd maintain the classic interface until kingdom come as long as this doesn't affect the running and development of the service. Obliously, they can't afford this, so I can understand their decision.

Just my two cents…

Bill Try this http://www.emaildiscussions.com/show...member+account

Bill, I think much of the motivation for the Member account was to encourage sign-ups by those who might upgrade later. However, it was clearly understood at the time the Member accounts were introduced that "one-time payment" meant "lifetime" Fastmail subsequently regretted providing Member accounts, but they did offer them. Whatever the terms and conditions say today does not change the implied terms under which the accounts were offered at the time.

As you say, Fastmail considered and rejected extending one-time payment to Full and Enhanced accounts. The main thread discussing this is instructive:Source: http://www.emaildiscussions.com/showthread.php?t=42971

I sympathize with Fastmail on this, and think the old Member accounts are quite impractical for any current real email use. I cannot really imagine why anyone feels strongly about keeping such an account. However, Fastmail may be on shaky legal grounds here if a few people want to be bloody-minded.

Well, just to play devil's advocate for a moment, I think the issue for some is more the email address associated with the account than the account itself — I believe that's what Quilleron is suggesting above near the end of their post.

From that point of view, I can understand it, and perhaps the suggestion of a forwarding service isn't all that far off, although I can understand how that might be a pain for FastMail to maintain, I definitely think it's something they should at least consider, as this is also going to be a nuisance for anybody who expected to sign up and get an email address that would never change.

Now, that said, while I can understand that point of view, I've always been a firm believer in getting what you pay for. Personally, the only way I can guarantee an email address that will never change is to register and pay for my own domain name — then I can host it at any service that I like (and have done so, over the years).

Again, though, I do feel their pain when it comes to the email address issue — anybody who expected that their FastMail address would exist in perpetuity is going to be forced to either start paying a regular fee or go through the headache of changing away from an email address that they've had for possibly a decade or more. It looks like there's a six-month transition for people to sort this out before the Guest/Member accounts go away, but it's clearly going to be a headache — I know it's something I wouldn't want to have to deal with, considering the vast number of places that have my email address — I still occasionally get relevant emails to a domain name that I haven't used in almost a decade (I still own the other domain as I have some friends and family using it, but I switched away from it for my personal email about a decade ago).

@jhollington I agree with the points you make.

What about the forwarding idea, with the following provisos:

1. you set tthe forwarding address for your account name and aliases when closing the account, but cannot change it again thereafter; and
2. the forwarding is at your risk. It is assumed you test it before closing the account, but no support will be provided if, and this is not unlikely, things like DMARC cause it to start failing in the future.

I think Fastmail could provide the above relatively easily. An interface allowing future changes, or ongoing support when forwarding issues arise would, I think, rule out Fastmail providing this option.

My concern is that the people who paid $12.95 or $14.95 15 years ago, and expect never to need to pay another cent for their email service are just the kinds of people that will feel entitled to free support on complex forwarding issues whenever they should arise. My gut feel is that it would just be setting Fastmail up for future grief.

Yup, I agree with you there. The very fact that we're hearing people use phrases like "class action" suggests that there's an unfortunately aggressive sense of entitlement here, so I can totally understand if Fastmail just wants to "cut bait" to avoid future problems in this area, but it would be nice to see a middle ground that would be reasonable for both sides, as I can totally understand the point of view of folks who felt that they were paying for an unchanging email address that would exist at least for the life of Fastmail —*to again play devil's advocate, there's a valid point to be made that some of those folks would have been better off using Hotmail for free.

All of that said, however, while I recognize that 2002 was a totally different era for the Internet (heck, Gmail was only a gleam in Google's eyes back then), I really do wish more people would understand that you get what you pay for, and expecting any online service to be sustained for little or no money is unrealistic — they're either making money by advertising or they're making money from the users.

FastMail might be able to simply migrate those users over to its Pobox service.

There's plenty of excellent software that I have bought that offers a lifetime licence and unlimited upgrades. I sing the praises of such software whenever I can.

The business model is one which seeks economy of scale by expanding the user-base thereby covering the cost of the onging support of existing users and generating plenty of goodwill along the way.

Unfortunately consequent to broken promises I'll never be able to recommend Fastmail to anyone ever again.

PS What sort of complex forwarding issues exist? a@fastmail.co.uk => b@goodbye.com is all that would be needed isn't it?

Hey BronG, I see the $15 credit (thank you, that's way more than many places do and I greatly appreciate it).

Have a question. I was one of those weirdos that paid the 5 years in advance so I have an enhanced account that doesn't expire until mid 2021. Is that plan going to still be honored or would i need to move to another one? It's not a huge jump in cost ($18 more a year so literally $1.50 more a month) just wanting to know.

FWIW I like paying into the future as much as I can at as many places as I can, but understand that you can't always be grandfathered forever (just saw AT&T up my unlimited grandfathered unlimited iPhone data plan another $5/yr for the 2nd year in a row and I can't do boo about it.

Well, to be fair there's a difference between standalone software and an online service. Most importantly, if the company were to go out of business, or simply stop providing upgrades for whatever reason, it wouldn't necessarily break what you already had — you could keep running the software you'd paid for as long as your operating system continued to support it.

The costs of running an online service are considerably higher than the costs of providing a single software package. Companies can provide upgrades according to what their budget allows for, and if they've promised "unlimited upgrades" that's probably going to factor into how often you see new free upgrades. FastMail has to keep the servers running and provide ongoing support for a live system every single day — they don't have the flexibility of budgeting and scheduling when and how to spend their money in the same way a software developer does.

That said, just to be fair I can think of at least one other online service that I paid for a "lifetime" subscription to 10-15 years ago that I'm still grandfathered in on (dyn.com — I still have hosting for seven domains there and I haven't paid them a nickel in about 15 years), despite their switch to a regular subscription model for everybody else not long after that. So I'm not necessarily defending FastMail here – just saying that I can kind of see both sides — but at the same time I really don't feel that comparing an online service to a standalone software package is a fair comparison.

The complexity comes due to the tendency of modern Internet anti-spam measures to sometimes cause forwarding to "break" depending on what provider you're forwarding to.

In a nutshell, many email domains now publicly list which servers are "allowed" to send mail on their behalf (technically, these are known as SPF records and are published in DNS). If you forward mail through FastMail, all forwarded messages received at your new mail provider will be coming from FastMail's servers, rather than the original servers "authorized" by the original sender. This will cause them to fail anti-spam checks on many services. A search through these forums will reveal many users who have had these problems in both directions — forwarding mail from FastMail to other services, and forwarding mail from other services into FastMail.

Best case scenario is that your messages forwarded from FastMail have a higher spam score and are more likely to end up in your junk mail folder. Worst case scenario is that you lose forwarded messages entirely. Which scenario you end up with will depend entirely on how you're new mail provider (e.g. "goodbye.com") chooses to handle these types of validation failures (and how much control they give you over the rules for that).

Of course, when things break, who does the end user go to, and whose responsibility is it to fix the problem, or at least explain the problem to the user? Chances are that FastMail support would still end up getting a lot of messages from folks who have no idea what's going on, merely that their FastMail address is "broken" in some way, and expecting FastMail to do something about it.

Further, this only covers the underlying mechanics of forwarding — it says nothing about issues around FastMail creating and maintaining a user interface to set things up and manage forwarding in the future. If FastMail did what BritTim suggests — offer to set up a one-time forward for legacy "Member" accounts, that still potentially opens the door to more work for them, as there are still folks who will expect that because they've basically been paying around $1/year for an email account that FastMail still owes them something, which would include not only support requests but requests in the future to change the forwarding address when things inevitably change for them down the road (e.g. they switch mail providers again for whatever reason).

Honestly, my recommendation right now to all of those folks who thought that they had a "lifetime" email address with FastMail is to go out and buy your own domain name, find somewhere to host it, and then go through the process of moving everything over to it. As much of a hassle as that may be, you'll at least know for sure it will be the last time you'll ever have to do that. This is the only way you can guarantee that your address will never change. Even major providers like Gmail and Hotmail/Outlook reserve the right to pull the rug out from under you. Granted, you'll pay more for having your own domain name — not to mention a provider who will host it for you — but you get what you pay for and this is honestly the only way to guarantee an email address for life.

My recommendation is the same, with a slight adjustment.

Since they are getting both a refund and 50% reduction on their Fastmail upgrade, why not plan to host your domain at Fastmail in the short term. The incremental cost is pretty little for a 6-month or 12-month subscription. This ensures a longer period to ensure your correspondents are using your new email address before pulling the plug on the Fastmail address(es).

Am I the only person who reads the Terms Of Service? All TOS documents state that the current TOS always supersedes any previous terms, and that the service provider can terminate or modify accounts at any time for any reason. There were never any lifetime guarantee in the TOS or any other written communication from FastMail. Please read the TOS for FastMail or any other service and you will discover that services are provided at the discretion of the provider.

As you can see in the old EMD threads (such as the one posted by BritTim), FastMail considered lifetime features for Full and Enhanced accounts, but you won't find any mention of lifetime Member features. I have my original Welcome To FastMail email for my member account (sent 10 years ago), and there is no mention of any guaranteed period of service. The Member account was just a way for potential customers to try out the service before purchasing a much more expensive yearly Full or Enhanced account.

I think the key point is that all Member accounts received far more value than anyone anticipated 10-15 years ago when they made the purchase. You have been able to use many enhancements to a Member account (such as two factor authentication and many other features) which were not available originally. FastMail has been encouraging you to upgrade your account for years, and they are even refunding the money you paid in years ago to assist you in the upgrade. I can't understand why anyone thinks they are getting a raw deal here, when many of them received email service for less than US $1.50 per year.

Bill

Yeah, that's a very good point.... I mean, I'd already sort of figured the idea of hosting your domain at FastMail would almost be a given (except for those who are so disgusted by the elimination of Member accounts that they just want to go away angry :) )... but it hadn't even clicked that of course you can move your actual FastMail address over to your new "paid" account for a longer transition period while you continue handing out your new domain address. Good thinking :)

Yup, pretty much the way I've always assumed that any TOS reads anyway. I honestly think that people are being deliberately naive if they truly expected that a one-time payment of $15 would guarantee them an email account for life. Sure, it would have been nice, but as the old saying goes, "you pays yer money...." :)

Honestly, I've always felt more fortunate that some companies are good enough to do things like this. As I mentioned earlier, I signed up for DynDNS back around 2000 when they actually were promising one-time payments for lifetime DNS hosting. I personally consider the fact that I still have seven domains with them and haven't given them a cent in over 15 years to be a privilege, not a right.

That's also a really good point.... Even IF FastMail had promised an account for life, they never made any promises about delivering new functionality to those accounts. Maybe FastMail should have left all of the "Member" accounts back in the relative bronze age of e-mail technology :rolleyes:

Sadly, in a world of Gmail and Hotmail et al, too many people think anything more than free is too much to pay, but I've always felt that to be ridiculous. Even in today's world where there's an article out every other week about the demise of e-mail, for most people e-mail is still a critically important tool for communications. I don't think most people would honestly expect to have telephone service or postal mail for free, yet they're not willing to shell out even a few bucks a month for e-mail (let's face it, even FastMail's new paid accounts start at $2.50/month).

Bill, as I mentioned before, what is most important legally is the terms and conditions at the time the Member accounts were purchased. You cannot unilaterally change the agreement by subsequently putting up a webpage. Check back through archive.org and show me where anything prior to about 2007 implied Member accounts were trial accounts, and claimed the right to unilaterally withdraw Member account service. Look at the FAQ of that time where the Member account was promoted as a lower cost alternative for those needing features not available in free accounts, but unable to afford Full or Enhanced accounts.

I entirely agree that those who have Member accounts have received a good deal. I further agree that Fastmail was largely motivated to offer unlimited term Member accounts in the hope that many would convert later to higher level accounts. Pricing was calculated based on projections of the percentage of Member accounts that would do just that. None of this changes the fact that people were purchasing accounts they expected, and were led to believe, they could use as long as Fastmail remained in business under the same, or better, conditions.

If you believe this to be untrue, find a single post on the forums from 2002-2006 where Jeremy or Rob M contradicted people who spoke of their lifetime subscription. There are none because, while Fastmail regretted it later, early Member accounts were purchased with that as the main selling point.

Saying the Member account was some kind of trial subscription is post facto rationalization, not supported by the facts.

Assuming that the DNS system still keeps working the same way forever, and nothing comes out to replace it that's not compatible.

I do this, I have my own domain (a couple of them actually), but I'm not sure that in 50 years they will still work the same way that they do now. Nothing is forever, particularly in something as new as the internet with so much churn.

I can't even buy spare parts for the Ikea shelves I bought 4 years ago. There's a new model out, and they have different connectors.

People cant expect to pay $15 and think it's going to last 20 years, it was a good deal at the time.
But Fastmail changed so many things in the member accounts and made them almost unusable, it had minimal storage and you were only allowed one alias, plus a lot of other features did not work and when you tried to use them you were asked to upgrade. I deleted my account a few months ago. I just use my local ISP for my back up mailbox.

Personally we have got fed up with all the Fastmail changes and the bits that are now missing in the current UI.

Heh, that's a valid point, I suppose, but honestly I feel that if we get to that point, the very nature of e-mail as we understand it today will have fundamentally changed such that it won't really even matter anymore .... we'll probably be onto neural networks by then :cool:

That said, I'm fairly confident that if anything is going to last on the Internet, it's those things that have already stood the test of time and become standards because of their venerable age. I figure any RFC with a number that originated below, say, 2000 that's still in widespread use today is probably going to be around for a while :)

Let's face it, few of the major Internet players are otherwise interested in actual "standards" anymore, and with so many fiefdoms pushing for their own proprietary implementations, it's the open protocols and standards of yesteryear that survive as the single common denominators across the entire Internet. That's why I laugh at all of these "death of email" articles that pop up every so often.

We are getting off topic, but I cannot resist a short response to this point.

I believe email for personal communications is slowly dying. For the most part, the younger generation do not use it, and are dragging their parents into social media applications as the way of keeping in touch.

In business, there is no imminent prospect of email dying out, but I am not sure about the longer term even there. The increasing use of collaboration software, supporting teams including both internal and external participants, is supplanting email markedly in some organizations. We shall see.

There are people in this thread threatening a class action lawsuit because they $15 spent 15 years ago and want lifetime email? 15 years in internet time is a lifetime. You got lucky paying only a $1 a year for a great service. Now let's move on and stop being ridiculous.

Please appreciate that Fastmail has found a sustainable business model and is still around unlike many other things purchased that long ago.

As a member user I have a few questions about the upgrade offer:

1. Is the 50% off a lifetime promise or just for this year?
2. On the basic account does 50% off + 14.95 credit I originally paid mean I get the first year ($30) nearly free?
3. Are FMs funds so bad they're charging for 16MB accounts they could probably hold on a USB stick?
4. What guarantees are there about pulling the plug if I stop paying again in future (due to lack of funds etc)? I am currently guaranteed FM won't delete my data I would like this to continue (but expect no email sending/receiving)
5. I don't need any new features/account upgrades - can't FM just charge for the account features I have at say $5 pa (call it a new account type if that gets you off the hook legally)?

The discount applies until the end of July, as stated in the email and the help page. However you can buy up to 3 years subscription up front.

We've credited $15 instead of $14.95 so that yes, you can get 1 year basic for free.

As with all accounts, if an account expires due to non-renewal we first shut off sending, then bounce mail, then prevent login, and eventually all data will be deleted.

brownb2...They could do it for that price but they have to get $15 per year for each account to break even.

I agree with your points about personal use to some degree, but a lot of younger folks also don't yet live in a "professional" world where things still rely heavily on traditional email. In other words, it's dying off for interpersonal communication, certainly, but for professional communications I don't see it going away any time soon.... Can I get my household bills sent to me on Facebook or Twitter? What about travel itineraries, online order receipts, communications with accounts, lawyers, etc?

The main reason I don't see email dying off even in the corporate space any time soon — regardless of what businesses may choose to go with internally is that it's the single, common standard that you can use to communicate with almost anybody on the planet. Picture a world where Microsoft Exchange users could only communicate with other Microsoft Exchange users, and Slack users could only communicate with other Slack users, and Google Apps users could only communicate with other Google Apps users.

Maybe someday, some organization will come up with a whole new open standard for Internet communications, but since there's little "profit" in that, I'm not holding my breath; everything that's been done for the past 20 years is individual companies trying to push their own proprietary communication systems in hopes that they can "wag the dog" and get the whole world to adopt their system.

IMO, FastMail should suggest Member plan holders can keep their plan, as long as they accept their accounts to be moved over to the unstable / early beta / experimental source code branch. This way members could keep their plan while helping FastMail try out new features, also potentially (sometimes controversially) new user interfaces.

That sounds (to me) like a great idea, jchevali

I think under Australian consumer law that if the TOC's change,and the old TOC's are not being grandfathered, and the customer is materially negatively affected by the change, then the supplier is obligated to offer the customer the option to exit at no cost to the customer, or accept the new terms.
This happens very regularly on phone and internet plans.

With regard to lifetime guarantees, I think this comes under the terms of an Express guarantee, and if it cannot be met within the terms of the contract, then a refund is normally the remedy.

(I am not a lawyer and the above might be wrong. This is not legal advice. I try to keep abreast of consumer law that applies to me.)

No, there's no benefit to us in doing this. Forcing people who don't choose to be testers into beta testing doesn't lead to good bug reports.

I'm actually amazed that Fastmail has provided many years of service (over a decade in some cases) to Guest and Member accounts for no ongoing fees, far exceeding what I assert would be normal expectations for a service which has continued across two ownership changes.

• Fastmail users were sent an email in April 2010 informing them that the TOS were changing due to their sale to Opera. I just re-read that email.
• And then in October 2013 Fastmail staff purchased the company back from Opera, and the TOS changed again. Customers were offered a chance to discontinue the service when those changes occurred.
• Of course, all Fastmail account holders had to agree to the TOS when they obtained their account and when the ownership changed, and the TOS speaks for itself.
• The Fastmail TOS are not too long. Nothing in these terms seems to me to be unusual, and to my knowledge all email and similar services include terms which allow termination of accounts or any other changes to the service as desired by the service provider. No warranty was implied.
• Fastmail is now offering to give those with Member accounts credits so they can get a one year Basic current account, good through July 2018. This means that some early Member accounts will get the following amazing deal at no current cost (using that $15 they spent so long ago). I really can't imagine how they could be more generous.
  • 15 years of simple email service with 16 MB of storage.
  • 1 year of the latest Fastmail Basic account service (worth $30), with 2 GB of storage and all of the latest features (calendar, address book, etc.).

Bill

Very true Bron. That said, I would love to have a 'cheap' paid, beta testing account.

Cheers

David

I got my fastmail Member account in 2002. I have used it as my primary email address ever since, and I have mostly been very happy with the service.

When I got this account, I could have gotten a free email address from another provider like mail.com instead, but since I liked fastmail's interface and I wanted an email address that would be mine for life, I chose to pay the $15. I also paid for some storage upgrades so that I could save more than the included 16MB of old email.

I was annoyed when they later stopped allowing me to buy further storage upgrades, but at least I still have a functional account that works well.

1. Some of you claimed that fastmail never offered a lifetime membership. That is simply not true. Look at their pricing page from 2002:

http://web.archive.org/web/200212151...ricingtbl.html

which says, "US$14.95 one-time fee, gives you a lifetime member-level account."

and their home page:

http://web.archive.org/web/200302071....fm/mail/login

which says, regarding their Full and Enhanced accounts, "* - Includes lifetime 'Member' account if subscription not renewed."

2. Many of you don't seem to understand the concept of a contract. Fastmail chose to offer a lifetime account for $15. They didn't have to do that; they did it to earn money so they could continue to stay in business. I chose to buy it because I thought it was a good offer even though most other email providers were, then as now, free. I would never have bought it if I had any inkling that they might someday start asking me to pay for it, because (1) I knew that most other email accounts were free, and (2) I had already previously gotten burned when I had to stop using a school email address after graduating and I found out how hard it was to get everyone you know to switch to using a new email address. I figured that paying a modest amount for a lifetime account was better than signing up for a free one that might not last as long.

I did *not* buy the right to keep the account until they decided they didn't feel like supporting it any more. I did *not* buy the right to keep the account until they decided to refund my $15. I bought the right to have an account that I could keep for life. Later I encouraged my wife to do the same. Now fastmail is trying to renege on their promise to support those accounts and extort further payments from myself and my wife to avoid the significant effort and problems that would be caused by trying to get everyone to start using some other email addresses for us.

3. Some of you pointed to some legalistic terms of service on fastmail's current site. None of this is applicable to my purchase in 2002, because none of that was on their site then. The only thing like that at the time was a disclaimer (http://web.archive.org/web/200210160...isclaimer.html) saying that they aren't responsible for damages caused by any defects in their service.

4. Some of you seem to think that charging recurring fees for email is somehow good business or inevitable or whatever. None of this justifies breach of contract.

In my opinion, fastmail should be *really grateful* to the people who paid for member accounts and kept them afloat when they were a small startup company. Without us they wouldn't have survived. Since then, they have succeeded in selling more expensive, recurring-fee services. Good for them. The least they can do is continue to support Member accounts for the lifetimes of their owners. Ideally, they should also continue to support Guest accounts as long as their users log in once every 120 days, which was what they have always said they would do. It's called keeping your promises. It's called being grateful to your early adopters. It's also known as good customer relations and good business.

They wrote "Given the limited number of remaining 'Member' users we have decided to no longer support this account type to help simplify our internal architecture." Sorry, fastmail, you have no right to decide that given the fact that you sold lifetime accounts to your Member users. If it's too much work to keep supporting a separate Member level, you could simply change our accounts to be free Basic accounts. If it's too hard to keep track of who has to pay for a Basic account and who gets it for free, you could give us paid Basic accounts that happen to be pre-paid for 100 years.

Am I going to go to the effort of bringing a class action lawsuit against a small company to keep my email address? No. Am I going to submit to fastmail's extortion and start paying them an annual fee of their choosing for the right to keep my email address alive after I already paid them for the right to keep my email address alive for life? I haven't decided. But whoever at fastmail is making me decide this should be hanging their heads in shame.

And whoever on this board is making excuses for their extortion doesn't understand the concept of a contract.