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EdGillett · 10 Jul 2002, 11:44 PM

Hi all,

Righty - I got my new FastMail account yesterday. And I am very impressed.

Let's give you a lil background - I'm the Head of Web Development for an internet firm in London, so I know my internet and email. I spend all day emailing - if my clients can't get through to me on email it's very VERY dull.

Business email goes on POP3, I also have my own personal POP3 email and my own domain name (edgillett.com registered through freeparking.co.uk) which is setup to point to my own Exchange 2000 Account hosted with Netstore (netstore.com).

I've been using the Netstore service for 2 years (minimum contract!) and when I set it up I paid around £550 for the 2 years. Email's that important to me ...

Why did I go for Exchange? well, like most people who are floating around these forums I was fed with dealing with POP3 on multiple machines ... yes there are work arounds - I could leave a copy of all my inbound email on the server and have the last machine delete it, or let the server hose them after 10 days of whatever ... but this has lots of issues:

What about your sent items?
What about maintaining an organised folder hierarchy?? (I have hundreds of folders, all nested per project per company etc.)

What about maintaining my Outlook Contacts and Calendar across all these multiple machines? Hmm ... yes you certainly can't do that easily over POP3 - you used to be abled to use a feature called NetFolders in Outlook 2000 but Microsoft pulled the plug on that one - no longer in Outlook XP.

So, Exchange seemed like the way to go - and all went swimmingly - all my email from my new domain were being sent straight to the exchange server, and I was picking up my POP3 email and syncing it back up to the exchange server so that wherever I was I had the latest email in the latest organisation etc etc.

Exchange also gave me OWA (Outlook Web Access) which provided a fairly gruesome interpretation of Outlook on the web. So I could access all my email via the web as well.

BUT WHAT ABOUT FastMail???
========================

Why have I changed? Because I was so sick and tired of my machine dying whilst trying to sync Outlook. MAPI is a hideous protocol and Exchanged Outlook really can be quite painful. Busy syncing mails? Let's suck your processor power dry shall we ....

Aside from that, I was up for renewing my Exchange Account in November, and decided to see what I could do aside from Exchange ....

For my £500 (£250/year let's say) I got 150MB of storage on an exchange server.

With FastMail I have an Enhanced Membership (currently $39.95?) and $29.95 per year for subsequent years. And I have 150MB on an IMAP server. And, erm ... I've only paid $39.95 ... ok ....

"Doesn't do your contacts and notes and tasks etc. though does it??" Well, actually it does - http://www.bynari.net - there's a product called InsightConnector (which works with the FastMail servers) which will enable Outlook to do just that - store "Special Folders" on a compliant IMAP server.

If I went over budget on space on my NetStore service they were going to clobber me some figure per month for additional space. If I want to I can buy up to 500MB of space for $99 on FastMail. AND THAT'S A ONE OFF FEE. As in I can be using that space for the next 25 years and so long as I pay my $30 a year for my membership, that's it ....

WOW.

IMAP is blissfully fast after the terror which was MAPI and the web based access is superb. I love the fact that I can use my own stylesheet and that for my needs it does pretty much everything I need on the (Admittedly for me quite rare) occasions that I need to view my mail over the web when I don't have a configured copy of Outlook handy.

I'm this impressed after less than 24 hours of discovering the fastmail.fm site. I have signed up as an enhanced member and have 250MB of storage.

And, for the record, IMAP is superb. I'm converting as many people as will listen to me. And I'm converting them to use FastMail. After all, it does exactly what it says on the tin.

And my God - the developers actually listen to the community of users and interact on the forums - this is no corporate entity - this is a team of people who like what they do ... and do it very well.

Thanks for a superb service FastMail - I still can't believe you're offering what you are for the price you're doing it for ...

10 Jul 2002, 11:44 PM	#83
EdGillett Member Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: Guildford, UK Posts: 88	From Exchange 2000 to FastMail Hi all, Righty - I got my new FastMail account yesterday. And I am very impressed. Let's give you a lil background - I'm the Head of Web Development for an internet firm in London, so I know my internet and email. I spend all day emailing - if my clients can't get through to me on email it's very VERY dull. Business email goes on POP3, I also have my own personal POP3 email and my own domain name (edgillett.com registered through freeparking.co.uk) which is setup to point to my own Exchange 2000 Account hosted with Netstore (netstore.com). I've been using the Netstore service for 2 years (minimum contract!) and when I set it up I paid around £550 for the 2 years. Email's that important to me ... Why did I go for Exchange? well, like most people who are floating around these forums I was fed with dealing with POP3 on multiple machines ... yes there are work arounds - I could leave a copy of all my inbound email on the server and have the last machine delete it, or let the server hose them after 10 days of whatever ... but this has lots of issues: What about your sent items? What about maintaining an organised folder hierarchy?? (I have hundreds of folders, all nested per project per company etc.) What about maintaining my Outlook Contacts and Calendar across all these multiple machines? Hmm ... yes you certainly can't do that easily over POP3 - you used to be abled to use a feature called NetFolders in Outlook 2000 but Microsoft pulled the plug on that one - no longer in Outlook XP. So, Exchange seemed like the way to go - and all went swimmingly - all my email from my new domain were being sent straight to the exchange server, and I was picking up my POP3 email and syncing it back up to the exchange server so that wherever I was I had the latest email in the latest organisation etc etc. Exchange also gave me OWA (Outlook Web Access) which provided a fairly gruesome interpretation of Outlook on the web. So I could access all my email via the web as well. BUT WHAT ABOUT FastMail??? ======================== Why have I changed? Because I was so sick and tired of my machine dying whilst trying to sync Outlook. MAPI is a hideous protocol and Exchanged Outlook really can be quite painful. Busy syncing mails? Let's suck your processor power dry shall we .... Aside from that, I was up for renewing my Exchange Account in November, and decided to see what I could do aside from Exchange .... For my £500 (£250/year let's say) I got 150MB of storage on an exchange server. With FastMail I have an Enhanced Membership (currently $39.95?) and $29.95 per year for subsequent years. And I have 150MB on an IMAP server. And, erm ... I've only paid $39.95 ... ok .... "Doesn't do your contacts and notes and tasks etc. though does it??" Well, actually it does - http://www.bynari.net - there's a product called InsightConnector (which works with the FastMail servers) which will enable Outlook to do just that - store "Special Folders" on a compliant IMAP server. If I went over budget on space on my NetStore service they were going to clobber me some figure per month for additional space. If I want to I can buy up to 500MB of space for $99 on FastMail. AND THAT'S A ONE OFF FEE. As in I can be using that space for the next 25 years and so long as I pay my $30 a year for my membership, that's it .... WOW. IMAP is blissfully fast after the terror which was MAPI and the web based access is superb. I love the fact that I can use my own stylesheet and that for my needs it does pretty much everything I need on the (Admittedly for me quite rare) occasions that I need to view my mail over the web when I don't have a configured copy of Outlook handy. I'm this impressed after less than 24 hours of discovering the fastmail.fm site. I have signed up as an enhanced member and have 250MB of storage. And, for the record, IMAP is superb. I'm converting as many people as will listen to me. And I'm converting them to use FastMail. After all, it does exactly what it says on the tin. And my God - the developers actually listen to the community of users and interact on the forums - this is no corporate entity - this is a team of people who like what they do ... and do it very well. Thanks for a superb service FastMail - I still can't believe you're offering what you are for the price you're doing it for ...