[ioneja]

Well for many folks, firstly, that FastMail is not Google.

Google Apps (or "G Suite") as Google likes to call it now, still tracks everything you do. Even though you are paying for it, Google is tracking you. Even though there are no ads in paid G Suite, Google is still tracking you, across everything, across the whole Internet, since it's still plugged into Google in general. You can limit that to some degree with the paid G Suite of course, but you are leaving a personal trail in places you may not realize. That bugs some people, so much so that it supersedes every other issue/feature. Fastmail does not track you at all. Zippo. No tracking, no profiling for marketing data, no sharing of any profiles, internally across a massive platform or externally, etc... In fact, the whole privacy policy in general of G Suite is terrible compared to FastMail -- just read the policies. Additionally, FastMail is located in Australia, and even though the servers are located in New York (actually New Jersey now), it's harder for various reasons for the US Gov to eavesdrop on FastMail accounts, although there are other services out there that do one or two steps better than FastMail in that department. In any case, for those that want to argue that point, FastMail is considered a step or two better than GMail and G Suite in terms of privacy in multiple areas.

Then, IMO, there are a huge number of smaller issues and features that may motivate various folks to pay for FastMail -- and those often boil down to personal preference. For example, in my case, I love how the way FastMail handles domains and aliases. I love the way FastMail allows you to send from any of those domains and aliases as that identity, without revealing the root account. Just look at the headers of any email sent from gmail or G Suite and compare those headers to FastMail. Then send from an alias in either account and you'll see what I mean.

Some people love sieve scripts. Or the fact that FastMail employees are actually the owners of the company. Some people love the standards that FastMail supports (and even maintains). Some people love the way security is handled.

The list goes on. Dozens of little items that some people really love about FastMail that don't exist in G Suite or that Google handles very differently. Sure you have massive collaboration and file features of G Suite, etc.... but can you set up a simple website in 2 minutes with a custom domain and host static HTML files and large files directly without an app framework interfering or messing them up? Nope. But you can in FastMail. The whole file back-end is incredibly simple, but amazingly useful for simple hosting, which Google can't do. Some people just love that. In fact, the burstable file bandwidth and performance of static hosting on FastMail is a secret weapon that most people don't know about... it's really impressive. Features for file hosting and web hosting? Not so many. Performance? Fantastic. And my uptime for my simple static websites has been... you guessed it, 99.99%-100%. And that's included for FREE with my FastMail email account. I was actually able to shut down one of my paid hosting services that I used for simple static file hosting... FastMail does it better and faster. If people only knew how useful that static hosting is... shhhh... let's keep it a secret. Of course if you need any kind of scripting or customizations to your web hosting, then FastMail won't do it... they keep it very, very simple for a reason. They are not a web hosting company. But for some people, what they have built-in is all they need. For me, they've saved me money. Even if I didn't use their email! :-)

Some people also just want a small little specialized service like FastMail to keep on running, and hate to see huge corporations swallow up the little guys and make things worse overall. Some people just like the people who own and run FastMail. (Although some don't. :-) )

Granted, G Suite is extremely powerful, few would deny that. It's a massive suite of tools that can cover tons of things that FastMail doesn't do. But just because you get the kitchen sink thrown in with G Suite doesn't mean you want or need to use a kitchen sink, let alone a kitchen! FastMail is very specific in what it does. G Suite tries to do everything, and in some cases it does it very well, some cases not so much. And then tracks you. ;-)

In my case, I use both. I have clients that love the features of G Suite and for practical purposes I just caved in and use the same tools they do for their projects. The collaboration tools of G Suite are outstanding.

However, I happily pay for FastMail too for many reasons, and I get a ton of value out of it in areas in which G Suite can't compete.

For you, your personal matrix of reasons to go with one or the other (or both) would be very different than mine. My humble suggestion if you are curious would be to really examine all the features -- and I do mean all of them -- even experiment with them for a few months (it's not that much money to pay for a little while) that FastMail provides and you might (or might not) discover a few little gems in there that make it hugely valuable to you, personally.

My two bits only.

P.S.: I also use several other email hosting services, and have paid for and experimented extensively with dozens of them, enterprise and consumer, over the years for clients and myself. I personally recommend FastMail, Runbox, LuxSci, followed distantly by G Suites (aka Google Apps), which I only use out of necessity for clients. Those services tend to balance most pressing issues for most people IMO. BTW this forum is the single best place of advice for anything to do with email that I have ever seen. Search here and ask questions, and you will get a lot of good info.