[ioneja]

I haven't read the whole thread, but here's my take on losing the guest and member accounts, and why I think FM is frankly one of the last few email providers with a special combination of features, performance, and reliability and worth spending the money on, despite its flaws and occasional issues.

1) The Internet in general has undergone massive changes since the time FM introduced those accounts.

2) The email market has also drastically changed.

3) People's expectations of what services to get on the Internet (from various services like email) have also changed. For the most part, they are very used to getting just about everything "free."

4) The general business model of "free" and "freemium" services has matured and it requires certain big adaptations from a business point of view or the business will not survive.

5) People's expectations about privacy have diminished so much now that even though they like to complain about invasion of privacy from time to time, they are much more comfortable and willing to have a free service where the service provider mines their data and serves ads to them.

6) Almost all the decent email services that offered "free" or "freemium" or "lifetime" services like that have had to make some drastic changes to their business model or they have been sold off to another party or they have simply gone out of business.

7) The few surviving independent decent email services like FM have had to undergo big changes to survive... they have all adapted one way or another, or they've stagnated, or they've sacrificed some important aspect of quality or service, or they're in the middle of struggling right now and honestly can't predict if they'll stay in business much longer.

8) Privacy, spam, email abuse, deliverability, availability/reliability, phishing, security in general, etc., have all put additional pressure (and cost) on all serious email services to stay on top of their game and adapt to the fluid environment to keep up reliable and stable service for their customers... no longer can you simply "roll your own" quickie little email service and expect it won't need a tremendous amount of attention to keep it working reliably. Coming from an IT background in another life, I've tried running email servers, and it honestly sucked.

9) FM can't possibly stay in business without having an income from some revenue stream. It has to come from somewhere!

10) FM owners made the tactical decision to provide good email services without mining your data and serving ads. They could have gone down that other path to try to compete with GMail, etc., but they decided against.

11) FM can't possibly be held to the standard that they will offer a "lifetime" or "free" or "almost free" product indefinitely WITHOUT collecting some sort of revenue for the resources it takes to maintain those customers.

12) Yes, FM made the mistake, IMO, of making those kinds of offers years ago, but there's no way they could have known the future of how the Internet would evolve.

13) Besides all that, FM's user policy does allow them to make changes to their services, just like every other online service, and from time to time they have to make big changes to stay in business.

14) Additionally, as a business, FM has undergone at least two massive business restructurings during this whole evolution of the Internet (and maybe more that I don't know about) -- a) when they were sold off to Opera, and b) when they bought it back from Opera and became employee-owned. For all intents and purposes IMO, the FM of today is in fact NOT the same FM that made those promises and product offerings many, many years ago. They would NOT have survived if they stayed the same.

15) In fact, for example, they honored their member and guest accounts for far longer than any other decent small Internet company I've seen, even after undergoing massive business owner changes... they've honored those kinds of accounts.

16) If FM hadn't made big changes and adapted along the way, here's the alternative: a) FM would be out of business. b) FM would have been absorbed and lost inside some other big company which most likely would have to mine your data and serve ads. c) FM itself would have had to start mining your data and serving ads. d) Any number of other negative alternatives.

17) FM can't be expected to keep the SAME business model over a decade+ of changes without having to make adjustments so they can stay in business IMO.

18) Remarkably, FM has indeed survived when so many other services have had to make other compromises or have been doomed... and along the way they built a solid infrastructure with good privacy compared to most competitors, excellent reliability, superb performance, improved customer support compared to many years ago, and NO data mining and NO ads.

19) All that, and they continue to hang in there and they look like they are going to survive... they look sustainable.

20) And to get those email services from a company that is only interested in selling email services (as opposed to other companies that use email to actually sell OTHER services), someone only has to pay $3 per month or $30 per year for the basic account.

21) How they handled the cancellation of guest and member accounts was fairly reasonable to me by offering plenty of time and credits and discounts to move over to the current paid accounts.

22) Could they have done much better? Not really. Think about it... we don't know what their accountants know... we don't know how much things actually cost them to maintain... but have you seen an Internet business handle this kind of thing much better? In my book, they handled it better than 95% of the Internet services I've used over the years... and I've had services shut down on me... cloud services dissolve... freemium services get littered with ads...hosting services get ruined... "lifetime" services become unusable crapware... etc... In other words, FM handled this pretty dang well in my book.

23) And I'm not saying that FM is perfect. I've had my gripes over the years, but to be completely honest, I'm sitting here in 2017 using FM every day -- day in and day out -- and it's been rock solid for me for years. It is still "FAST" mail for me and it "just works" -- even their mobile app works well for me. Better than the crapware apps I have used from other services.

24) Yes, they shut down the old interface... but seriously guys... they kept it running for many years and had to maintain all that source code and keep it safe and reliable to use. That takes a huge amount of programming and staff resources... Again, the old interface is a separate discussion, but they have to stay in business and they made the calculation that there were not enough people on the old interface to justify the security and server and other related maintenance issues. They gave plenty of time to let people know what they were doing. And I really liked the old interface too. Hopefully, they'll continue to add cool refinements to the new interface, which is built on a much more sustainable platform of libraries and tools.

25) Email service is NOT an appliance, but people like to think of it that way for some reason. It requires constant maintenance and vigilance, tons of resources to keep it working safely, reliably and securely. It's the gateway to so many of our other services... and it's constantly under attack from every vector you can imagine. It's a highly at-risk kind of service and we expect it to perform perfectly and safely every day. That takes MONEY to pay the people to do it. And you have to get the money from somewhere. Instead of mining our data and posting ads, FM just charges us a reasonable fee.

26) If anything, I want companies like FM to survive... or in the end, all our services will be absorbed into giant monoliths and turned into profile data to push products on us. I'd like one last refuge of relative tranquility and pseudo-privacy left in the online world, and places like FM are here to provide that service.

27) And if that isn't enough to convince you that it's reasonable for FM to drop guest and member accounts, may I humbly remind you of the alternatives: what other services out there actually provide what FM provides for a reasonable cost? Nothing is FREE folks, you'll have to pay for email one way or another. Your email provider will get money to pay for your account one way or another. At least FM just asks for money directly from you. It's the most direct and simple kind of transaction.

Maybe you've found something else you like better, but the most die-hard veterans in this forum know there aren't many good choices left. As for me, I pay for various other email services to keep myself covered in case something goes south with one of the providers... but I have to say that very few email providers come close to the exact combination of features, performance, and reliability that FM offers. In my book, FM is actually a rarity on the Internet and for me, is absolutely worth spending money on.

My two bits only! (Or my 27 bits!) :-)

Best, ioneja