Competition heating up
 

A slashdot article mentions that Google now has IMAP.
Found a couple of comments from our beloved Bron in the discussion thread: here and here.

This should put some pressure on FM to continue improving at a fast pace. After all, it is hard to compete with free...

Anybody leaving for Gmail IMAP?
 

Hello. I've been with fm for several years and never had a problem. But now gmail are doing IMAP I'm thinking of switching over (mainly because it's free). Are there any reasons why I shouldn't do this? Thanks.
David

Once they roll out IMAP to my account, I'm definitely going to give it a shot, and if it looks like it's working reliably, I may well let my FM account expire next year.

Here's my take on it. As I tally the pros/cons, it's a harder decision to make:

FM pros vs. Gmail:
-- fast loading / snappy response even on slow connections
-- excellent sub-addressing allows easy, on-the-fly "disposable" addresses which are more universally accepted than gmail's "plus" addressing.*
-- robust domain-management options
-- integrated file storage accessible via DAV/FTP
-- very strong IMAP support
-- responsive support team
-- 6GB mail storage at "enhanced" level
-- very good address book with import/export options
-- excellent, customizable spam protection
-- no advertising for paid accounts
-- excellent forwarding of messages/summaries to SMS
-- very powerful filtering options

FM cons vs. Gmail
-- ancient, kludgy interface (new one looks promising, but when will it roll out?)
-- no message threading
-- inability to search across folders makes it incredibly difficult to find messages.
-- $50/year for enhanced account
-- poor mobile support

I am definitely NOT leaving fastmail.

One size fits all vs. highly customizable.

Didn't even need to think about that decision.

I do hope this will provide some pressure to get other things going like a calendar, and sync'able addressbooks... ;)

/cl

drchadwick, that's a useful list.

Anyone have thoughts on pros/cons for spam filtering? I think the filters at FM are pretty great, especially now that the per-user-bayes option is up and running. But I've heard good things about gmail, too. Can anyone compare?

I'm not about to switch, but IMAP at gmail makes it at least something I might imagine.

For me, it's not about the money - email's really important to me, and $50/yr is more than reasonable for the best email I can get.

But a really good way to search my email online - that's very very appealing.

I don't even have a Google account anymore. Same goes for Windows Live ID. Once Yahoo will make a Yahoo ID compulsory for del.icio.us, I'll have to look if that's worth it anymore as well. The route the interface is currently taking for their relaunch doesn't make it seem very likely...

One thing I avoid is using the services by the three large search companies (except anonymous search of course). You are always logged in, they monitor your searches, analyze your mails, what ads you click and what not. Now they only build profiles on your personality to show you targeted ads but who can say what the future has in petto. No thanks.

That being said, I don't see Gmail anywhere remotely in the same performance-league as FM. I don't care about $50 a year.

Calendar? Did someone say Calendar?? :D
I am also excited about the prospect of these two items.

Misha, you asked about Gmail--I've had an account (and now a google apps account) with them for years, and frequent their message boards as well. I am shocked at the number of people that write in and say "Help! My account has been compromised/hijacked/stolen". The first issue is of course the security of the account, but the second is that these people are always so frustrated they cannot contact anyone in person at Google, or get any sort of response or resolution. I've seen it waay to much for me to put any important info in my google accounts......

$50 ? I'd go way higher than that to keep what I've got here.

I'll come out and say it: it's quite unlikely FM's going to come up with something as good as Google Calendar. It's incredible now and improving constantly. Why re-invent the wheel? As I've said time and time again, the more time FM developers spend on peripheral stuff, the longer the needed improvements to e-mail take. Message threading, cross folder search, address book synching -- these often-requested features address the core functionality of FM: e-mail.

Definitely. I put that as a solid "plus" in FM's favor. Unless Gmail becomes a paid service (or offers paid support) that will probably continue to be a downside to Gmail.

I use both systems a lot and I rarely see spam in either account.

Worth noting, however, that I make extensive use of FM's sub-addressing ("whatever at xxx.fastmail.fm") to create "disposable" addresses, and if any address starts getting spammy, I just cut it off.

Gmail similarly offers plus-addressing ("username+whatever at gmail.com") which theoretically could be used the same way. But that plus sign throws off a LOT of web forms, so it ends up being almost impossible to use.

Bottom line: Gmail's spam filters are great and so are FM's. I think you're in good hands either way.

Other Pros of FM over GMail:
* Blazingly fast: I can open my FM account and start checking several mailboxes while GMail is slowly thinking about loading my mailbox.
* standard html: I can easily open messages in new tabs by middle clicking rather than having to deal with everything in a single tab. It just suits my workflow much better.

And quite frankly, I trust FM not to lose my mail more than I do Google. I use GMail as a backup for the occasions when FM goes down, but overall I'm am much more satisfied with FM's reliability. I'll be looking into the GMail IMAP features, but I'm definitely staying with my FM Full account.

andy

Definitely a plus. I added that to the list I made above.

I now forward my email to gmail, but I still keep my fastmail account
a) because I don't want to break my old address
b) because I much prefer the whatever@username.fastmail.fm addressing to Google's approach - even if I've never been able to figure out how to get gmail to search for messages sent to a particular user name that I generate

I like it that user suggestions actually stand a chance of getting implemented by the Fastmail team.
And that it fetches my Hotmail account.

But I, too, hope that this move of Gmail puts some extra pressure on Fastmail to get some main email features implemented (e.g. searching, which gmail does provide) and improve on mobility (i.e. address book syncing, which gmail does not provide, yet).

Granted. But...

Somebody has got to have developed an open source calendar in linux that is at least half way good - that the FM guys could impliment into the system as a start. Good golly, even EmailDiscussions.com has a calendar. :D

/cl

I think this move certainly does put a lot of pressure on us, good IMAP support has been one of our long term advantages which this clearly impacts.

Which really leaves support, features, reliability, security, privacy and openness as things we have to concentrate on.

Rob