Fastmail free trial - 3 malfunctions
 

I have been using (and paying for) Fastmail for a decade. Now I am on the “Standard” plan.

This week a friend of mine signed up for a free trial of Fastmail.

My friend shared their password with me.

So far, the new free account received three emails (all from Fastmail) (none of which have been opened or read) and did not send any emails but I have drafted and saved some emails in it. Already there are three malfunctions that do not occur on my paid-for account.

Using the Fastmail iOS app, for a minute or two after logging in, the free trial account consistently malfunctions - in the following two ways.

Firstly, if I select the “Drafts” folder and tap on a draft email from the list, the content of the draft email that opens is missing. Instead, where the content should appear, there is a blank space where text can be typed in. If I type anything into the blank space the previous content is lost.

Secondly, if I compose a new email then save it as a draft then tap on it in the list in the “Drafts” folder, the email does not open. Instead, after a delay of a fraction of a second, the list of draft emails is displayed again.

Using the web interface, the free trial account has the following malfunction - which occurs consistently, regardless of how long has elapsed since I logged in and regardless of whether I use the Safari web browser on the Mac operating system or Microsoft Edge on a Windows PC.

If I compose a new email then save it as a draft then select the “Drafts” folder: in the reading pane, the content of the message is not displayed. Instead, where the content should appear, it says “Loading…” and clicking the “Edit Draft” button has no effect - for at least 1 hour 45 minutes.

I have just informed Fastmail, by email.

Email? Or did you really mean you submitted a ticket which IMO would be the proper way to report any FM problems.

I emailed Fastmail's support team - and they created a ticket.

I did not submit a ticket on my account as it does not have a problem - and I did not submit a ticket on my friend's account as I do not have their permission to do so.

Poor "user experience" for new users
 

Fastmail suggested some remedies - none of which had any effect.

https://www.fastmail.com/help/accoun...laccounts.html says “Users who have not verified their account via SMS cannot download their emails via IMAP or POP” and “Unverified users also cannot see the contents of certain emails via our web interface. We block reading certain emails to prevent spammers and scammers from abusing our trial accounts to make spare accounts on other services. If you need to see the contents of these emails, please verify your account using SMS or become a paid member.”

The description of the Fastmail app in the iOS app store says
“Note: You must be either a paid subscriber or have verified your trial Fastmail account to use this app.”

My friend verified their trial account. That has apparently fixed the issues.

As a new user who hadn’t paid a subscription nor verified their account and wasn’t entirely sure whether or not they had verified their account (especially after they typed in their mobile phone number for "account recovery" purposes), my friend's "user experience" was poor. I think there is scope for Fastmail to improve the experience of a new user of this sort - for example, by informing them (each time they log in to the app, at least) that they can’t use the app, why they can’t use it and what they can do about it.

Fastmail Support filed a bug report with their engineers
 

Fastmail Support escalated my ticket to their senior agents. They were able to reproduce the problem and filed a bug report with their engineers "so this can investigated further and addressed."