[samhu]

It seems to me that through all the static, this discussion boils down to two conflicting (and irreconcilable) views

1) Those of "one-time payment" Members, who feel that Fastmail is obligated to uphold the pledge it made during its formative years by continuing to stand by the service it promoted and sold. Additionally, what Fastmail proposes will, through no fault of these Members, result in them incurring a recurring charge for the continued use of Fastmail, or the inconvenience of abandoning an email address they have used for 8-15 years.

2) Those from people who are not "one-time payment" Members who, by choice, have been paying a subscription for their email service in one form or other and feel that it is fair for Members to start paying for their Fastmail service, and that if they don't want to do so, can, without much effort, complete the process of informing contacts/organizations of their impending email address change and move quietly on.

There is also a small fraction who insists that if one really wanted to ensure email address continuity, getting one’s own domain is the only way to go. These savvy folk seem to not see that only a tiny fraction of email users even know what that is, let alone choose to do so when they start using email. Just look into a typical address book; how many personal domain name email addresses do you see in it?

And speaking about fractions, it has dawned on me that if the discussion about the ending of the classical interface (which started the same time as this one and which on Page 4 states only 1-2 percent use regularly) can garner over twice the number of replies this thread has, we may well be talking about an even smaller fraction of Fastmail users still on a "one-time payment" legacy account. (Not a valid conclusion if Fastmail has not yet informed many legacy Members of the impending change).

Anyway, as we are not privy to how many such legacy accounts there are out there, here's a bit of speculation on my part. Pick a number - 1000? 5000? At the lower number, the sum involved would be USD3k/month, and at the higher end, USD15k/month. And that's with a 100 percent conversion rate from "one-time payment" to "subscriber". If this amount is so critical to Fastmail, maybe we all shouldn’t be so smug about the longevity of any of our Fastmail email addresses? Just a thought.