No more free 'guest' accounts at fastmail.fm
 

Announcement
Dear **********
Back in January we contacted you with some important information about your **********@fastmail.fm FastMail account.
We're now contacting you again to remind you that from 31st July, 2017 our 'Guest' level plans will be discontinued.
To continue using your FastMail account after this time you'll need to select one of our current plans. Please note: your email address will remain the same.
As a long-time FastMail user we're offering you 50% OFF all upgrades until the end of July, which includes our already discounted multi-year subscriptions.
And if you upgrade now we'll also add all the remaining time until 31 July for free!
Enjoy a better email experience with one of our great FastMail plans
With a Basic, Standard or Professional level account from FastMail, you'll have access to many great features including:
Loads of storage - with plans to suit all user types you can be confident there's always plenty of room for your emails.
Personal support - when you need that extra helping hand, we're here for you.
No ads, no data mining - With FastMail, there's no mining of your personal data and no ads, ever.
FastMail mobile apps - designed for a richer, more intuitive email experience on your mobile device.
Our powerful FastMail calendar - better manage your day-to-day activities.
We're improving FastMail for all our customers
FastMail has always been a premium email service, paid for entirely by the subscription fees of our users.
Historically, 'Guest' plans were limited trial accounts funded by advertising. As the internet landscape evolved, we chose to remove all advertising as it began to compromise the security and privacy we pride ourselves on.
'Guest' level accounts have not been available to new customers since 2012, with the vast majority of Guest users having since chosen one of our paid plans or discontinuing their service.
Again, we thank you for using FastMail over the years, and hope you decide to continue with our service. However, if you decide we're no longer the service for you we also make it easy to download all your data.
Remember, to receive a special 50% discount simply purchase any subscription before 31st July 2017.
Upgrading is easy
Changing to one of our current plans can be done quickly and easily from your existing account. There's no need to create a new account and your current email address will continue to work as normal.
To upgrade your account just head to the 'Billing & Plan' menu screen.
Select your preferred plan and subscription duration and then choose your payment option.
Any discount and credit will be automatically applied when you upgrade.
Keep using your current email address.
Regards,
The FastMail Team

Not exactly hot news. Discussed ad nauseam in the Fastmail subforum.

Definitely OLD news. Worst part is that the new upgrades do not work and there is no upgrade path available per the notice, so after 13 years on fastmail, I will lose my account`in a few days.

I keep hopefull that they will forget this and instead start asking us to start paying for our accounts on the classic side!!!

I told Brong I would pay $50 a month!!!!!!!!! (This is going to make it hard for me)


Why dont people care anymore??

Some people are more adapt to change, apparently.

I don't understand your post.

• I have had no trouble upgrading accounts. Did you have difficulty getting your payment accepted?
• The notice tells you exactly how to upgrade. It does not state that "there is no upgrade path available".
• Guest account owners never paid anything. So they have no credit toward a new paid account except for the 50% discount.
• Member account owners can apply their original membership fee to the new account, as well as the 50% discount. This means that they can get a free Basic account for one year.

Bill

Why is change almost ALWAYS WORSE??

..please see my previous post.

Quite hard to upgrade when there is NO BILLING & PLAN link on the interface. No link = No upgrade path.

It's easy when using a full size device (laptop PC, etc.):

• Log on to the normal user interface at: https://www.fastmail.com
• Click the large Mail button in the upper left
• Select Billing & Plan (top item in the right column of choices)
• You currently can't see the billing choices on a smaller device. You must use a normal PC-sized browser.
• If you have trouble, select the Support button at the top of the Fastmail main website page, then select the first link you see (contact our support team).

Bill

I ONLY use a desktop computer.

I went to your link, clicked LOGON, got a nice WHITE page with BLUE header and 5 vertical BLUE bars in the middle of the page. NO TEXT - NO LOGIN BOXES - NO SUBMIT BUTTONS. One $hitty login page in my book.

If I REALLY wanted to, I could MODIFY that page adding MY OWN boxes and buttons and then login, but I do not see why I should fix WHAT THEY BROKE every time I want to login. And if I did what would I see? More pages for ME to fix BEFORE I could use them?

How do you use your account if you can't log in? Do you use an email client?

The login screen looks like the following (click View to see the image):
https://www.mediafire.com/?ecu4odi9o0dix39

What web browser are you using? Do you have the latest version?

Bill

I am tempted to pay, but then there's different options when paying for a mailbox. There is Runbox, EUMX (although apparently we can get a free gift account as forum members?), there is Posteo, there's the option of getting an own domain at for example Namecheap or Gandi and get a webmail account with that ...
I do fear Fastmail's prices are not the most competitive ones, but on the other hand it has Always been such a great service...

My main issue with paying for email is that I already own numerous domain names that need to be renewed every year, as well as paying for a photo hosting package. I won't claim to be poor but I'm also far from wealthy. For domain names there is no free alternative, for proper photo hosting probably neither (unless Flickr will remain a reliable option despite the take-over by Verizon), for email there are free options such as Gmail, Outlook.com, considering giving Mail.be and Zoho a try too ...

I really like Fastmail though. It's just that of all services on the web one needs, email seems to be the one that has free alternatives. Unlike domains for example. I know you can get free subdomains (.co.tv , .co.nr , .eu.tf , .nl.nu , .eu.org , .de.vu , ... and numerous others) but those are rarely reliable. The only ones that have been around for a lot of years are .de.vu , the ones by Ulimit , .co.nr , .nl.nu and .eu.org (but .co.nr has had technical issues of serious nature lately, and the latter two seem to be unreachable which makes it not a reliable option). So I prefer to stick with paid domain names. And while those aren't too expensive, if you have numerous ones the annual fee does add up...