[n5bb]

Originally Posted by Jacinto

...My biggest frustration is the fact that Fastmail chose to "abandon" EMD...

Originally Posted by Terry

...Personally I don't see the point of having a F/m forum without someone from F/m participating......you might as well close it down and wait for the influx of support tickets....As you may well know running a business is not all about grabbing the $ it involves keeping your customers by making sure they are happy...

I'm surprised by the implication that Fastmail is aloof from their customers.

• By my count, in 2016 there were 180 posts to this forum by Fastmail staff (brong, robn, and neilj), or about a post every two days on average. In addition, I and several others have communicated here the results of our personal interactions via email with Fastmail staff. I don't think any other email provider had as may posts at EMD by their staff. To my knowledge, there have never been any posts by the staff of larger firms (Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, AOL).
• In 2016 there have been 46 Fastmail blog posts. I don't know of any other email provider (or high technology company, for that matter) who provides such personal comments and technical details about what is going on in their organizations.

Originally Posted by Jacinto

...Don't wish to recapitulate what others and I already posted on this thread. However, the Fastmail that I subscribed to ten or twelve years ago is not the same FM that is in business today...

Happily, that is quite true. You can't expect a business with over 150,000 customers and a small revenue stream from each customer to act like a tiny two-person startup. I work in high technology sales where we I can justify my in-person support at the customer location for products selling for over US $100K, but it's a much different support model for a start-up with free accounts or low cost accounts.

• Fastmail started as a real company in 2002 (two years before the introduction of Gmail). It was just two people, and much of the support was here on EMD. So initially there were a large number of posts by the small Fastmail staff here. For years a large number of Fastmail users had Member or Guest accounts with no ongoing charges (and no official personal support), so those users came to this forum for basic support.
• But now Fastmail is a much larger commercial service with no free accounts (other than short-term trials or grandfathered old Member and Guest accounts) So essentially all users get personal support from Fastmail staff using their ticket system, and there is no reason for them to visit this forum for typical support questions. I'm sure that the effect on the support tickets would be very minor if EMD shut down.
• According to the Fastmail website front page, they have over 150,000 customers in over 150 countries, with over 40,000 business customers. So it's obvious that only a tiny fraction of Fastmail customers participate in these forums, so there is little incentive for their staff to spend much time here.
• I agree with the comments by BritTim about the purpose of the EMD Forums. And remember that even though you don't see a post every day by a Fastmail staff member here, if something of importance is posted here it will be communicated by various forum members to Fastmail staff and someone may post a response if appropriate. If you carefully read the posts by Fastmail staff and those who communicate with them away from EMD (and the blog posts), there is a lot going on in the background which isn't visible here in this public forum.

Bill