New FastMail Plans & Pricing

[downthemall]

Originally Posted by robn

From the blog post:

This change is predominantly aimed at new customers, who often our found our pricing structure difficult to understand. If you're happy with your current plan then just keep using it.

You are rising prices 4 years after the last rise. You're changing too many things in a short period of time, without the clients agreeing. You're eroding the classic interface, destroyed the 2-step auth. How much time will pass until Fastmail announces that old accounts must be upgraded to the new plans? 5 dollars a month, for virtually the same thing I used to pay 5 dollars a year? Seriously. I still haven't spent the 5 years (for 5 dollars each) I paid in advance before the last price rise. It added almost no value changing from 100MB to 250MB. Then you'll want to charge for what? For calendar and contacts, that I have for free from a CalDAV/CardDAV provider (Woelkli)? Now I can't bring my family to Fastmail anymore. That's greed. And don't tell me that Fastmail adds privacy, because unencrypted email at rest (it's unencrypted as long the computer is on) is both vulnerable and compromised by intelligence agencies AND hackers. Today for 3.5 dollars a month I can have Gmail for Work (not kidding, just take a look, and it includes 30GB, online office, sync, calendar, contacts, web hosting [more like a wiki] and a promess of phone support 24x7). And I'm not even getting on the issued that 1 american dollar became very expensive around the world. I'm sorry, but you just created a problem for all of us. I beg you to revise your plan.

[David]

Originally Posted by FredOnline

Although it's $10 more, there's 100% more storage (1GB vs 2GB), so overall it's better value.

That is very true Fred but I only use about 400MB.......

After contemplating the price increase though, it seems that (even with the added benefit) Fastmail are wanting to move away from serving the old time traditional user, who uses plain text (for email) - who has little use for extended file storage.

[danieldk]

Originally Posted by David

That is very true Fred but I only use about 400MB.......

After contemplating the price increase though, it seems that (even with the added benefit) Fastmail are wanting to move away from serving the old time traditional user, who uses plain text (for email) - who has little use for extended file storage.

But they also added many useful features the last few years: CalDAV, CardDAV, a web calendar, Android/iOS apps, and decent 2FA support. Compared to a basic e-mail service, the cost per user will go up (development costs, support). So, it's not odd that they have to charge more across the board, Fastmail needs to pay the bills as well. I think their prices are still very fair for what they offer. Of course, it's not possible to please everyone .

[randian]

Now that there's no masteruser, which account has admin rights under the new plan?

Not being able to mix and match accounts is a terrible idea, I'm surprised that change was approved given the obvious use cases requiring mix and match.

[pjwalsh]

Also announced yesterday.

A spiffy new Homepage
https://www.fastmail.com

New user management for multi-user accounts
https://www.fastmail.com/help/account/users.html

Blog announcement

[FredOnline]

Originally Posted by janusz

Of course the 50% price hike will make it much easier to understand

http://www.emaildiscussions.com/show...6&postcount=18

Didn't expect to get any response to this from our FM friends on the forum.

[pjwalsh]

Originally Posted by randian

Now that there's no masteruser, which account has admin rights under the new plan?

Whoever created the account would be account administrator.
There can be more than one account administrator.
Any user can be given Admin rights.

Editable user fields:

• Name: The user's name. This is the name other users in your account will see if they share a folder or calendar with this user.
• Username: The user's email address. Change this to rename the user. Password: You can reset a user's password: we generate a new random password for the user, or you can set your own. Administrators are also able to disable two-step verification if the user has lost their authentication device.
• Disable: Accounts can be locked to prevent access while still accepting new inbound email. Or they can be locked and any new email is bounced back to the sender, making it appear as if this user no longer exists but without losing any existing data in the mailbox.
• Quota: Shows the existing quota for this user. Use this panel to add additional mail and file storage for this user. Adding extra quota costs the same as one extra user. The maximum quota per user is 300 GB.
• Privacy: All user data is visible to all admins on the account by default. Marking a user private stops admins from accessing that user's data. The only way to re-enable admin access is if the user restores it (which they can do from the Password & Security screen).
• Admin: Make this user an administrator.
• Retention: Keep an archive of all this user's incoming and outgoing email for some period of time.

An Admin can:

• Add, remove and update users
• Upgrade or downgrade the plan
• Update billing details
• Manage any custom domains, and their custom login page
• Manage aliases, including wildcard aliases
• Manage any resellers

Manage users
Account Administrators

[ReuvenNY]

I was looking for a detailed comparison page for the new plans. Where is it?

[janusz]

Originally Posted by pjwalsh

Also announced yesterday.

A spiffy new Homepage

If you want to pay more for a new spiffy homepage, please yourself.

[Der]

Assuming I understand correctly that I can add new users to my existing Family account indefinitely, I suppose these changes don't impact me directly.

But I have to say that I will no longer be able to recommend FM to families. It's just overkill. My wife and I combined don't use 25 GB. Heck, we don't use 15 GB, for that matter. And then to add a couple of children's accounts under a family domain...really, $50 apience for possibly more space than they will ever need...it's just too much.

As an aside, I like the 2FA implementation. I think it was well executed and is a pleasure to use.

[placebo]

Originally Posted by grimmrimmer

That's my current hold out for now. My wife and I don't need all of the extra space. It would cost us $100 a year as opposed to the $35 that it would have been. Heck my two kids would bump it to $200. These prices seem prohibitively expensive for families and have pushed me to find an alternative.

Same here. If I were to replicate my current set-up under the new plans, my cost per year would increase from $35 to $100, and that's mostly because I can't host a domain with a basic account. Even if I could, it would close to double the cost per year. Fortunately, it appears I'm grandfathered in for now, but I don't know how long that's going to last.

This pricing scheme kind of reminds me of the big four cell phone companies (in the US). If I want a data plan for my phone, I also have to pay for tons of minutes and text messages I'll never use. So for now, I go without a data plan. With FastMail, if I were a new user and wanted to host a domain, I'd have to pay for 25 GB of storage per user that I'd never use.

[pjwalsh]

Originally Posted by ReuvenNY

I was looking for a detailed comparison page for the new plans. Where is it?

https://www.fastmail.com/pricing/
with
https://www.fastmail.com/help/account/limits.html


old plans
https://www.fastmail.com/help/ourser...ng-legacy.html

[pjwalsh]

Originally Posted by janusz

If you want to pay more for a new spiffy homepage, please yourself.

I don't pay more to see the home page.

If I want to pay more, I get more.

[cptlo306]

Streamlined pricing is nice but if you compare features to other options like Office 365 (Exchange Online) or Google Apps and you're willing to use those providers (I am) then you're getting quite a bit less for the same or more money by using FastMail. $4 (in the US) for Exchange Online gets you a 50GB mailbox with activesync. I think if FastMail added activesync it would be much more comparable to other services (using imap/caldav/carddav isn't as easy or nice as activesync).

[Berenburger]

Originally Posted by cptlo306

.... I think if FastMail added activesync it would be much more comparable to other services (using imap/caldav/carddav isn't as easy or nice as activesync).

I would welcome that.