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Old 16 Dec 2016, 12:25 AM   #1
BritTim
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Fastmail's values

One of the Advent Calendar posts is this.

I would just like to say that, based on my observation, Fastmail truly does follow these principles, and all of them are important to me. I have expressed reservations about some of the changes in culture at Fastmail, but the linked blog post reminds us that they are good guys with good intentions. Their attitudes in these respects do inspire trust.
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Old 16 Dec 2016, 08:13 AM   #2
Terry
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F/m are a nice bunch of guys....

BUT they need to change some of their beliefs and philosophy's, like why can't all the old features be used in the current UI? why do customers have to switch back and forth to get what should be in one UI.

Last edited by Terry : 16 Dec 2016 at 12:37 PM.
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Old 16 Dec 2016, 10:15 PM   #3
Jacinto
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Good day.

The statements are, basically, feel good and self-serving. As we all know, anyone can write anything she or he likes and try to convince others that it is godspeak.

I have no problem with Fastmail giving itself so many kudos, however, the reality is not what FM wants to make us believe. Technically, FM is a class act. Regrettably, at the interpersonal level, it seems to have lost the milk of human kindness.

Why a company chooses to move announcements and some customer support to public media is incomprehensible to me. I don't do Facemail, Tweeter or their ilk.

Fastmail has basically abandoned EMD. Certainly, some comments (including some of my own) have been harsh, but never insulting. We all want FM to prosper, but we also want FM to stop being so thinned-skinned and to listen to its paying subscribers. Fastmail needs to stop assuming that only it knows what is best for its users.

I remember reminding Rob Mueller many years ago that it can take years to gain a customer, but only a split second to lose one. Apparently, my advice went unheeded.

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Old 17 Dec 2016, 06:59 PM   #4
Mugwhamp
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Jacinto View Post
Good day.

The statements are, basically, feel good and self-serving. As we all know, anyone can write anything she or he likes and try to convince others that it is godspeak.

I have no problem with Fastmail giving itself so many kudos, however, the reality is not what FM wants to make us believe. Technically, FM is a class act. Regrettably, at the interpersonal level, it seems to have lost the milk of human kindness.

Why a company chooses to move announcements and some customer support to public media is incomprehensible to me. I don't do Facemail, Tweeter or their ilk.

Fastmail has basically abandoned EMD. Certainly, some comments (including some of my own) have been harsh, but never insulting. We all want FM to prosper, but we also want FM to stop being so thinned-skinned and to listen to its paying subscribers. Fastmail needs to stop assuming that only it knows what is best for its users.

I remember reminding Rob Mueller many years ago that it can take years to gain a customer, but only a split second to lose one. Apparently, my advice went unheeded.

--
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FM can't possibly cater to every user's whims or predilections in terms of the platforms they use to communicate. As they have expanded their user base, they have expanded beyond EMD--though I still see them on here quite a bit--and into the most common platforms frequented today. I've interacted with them at the highest levels, both on here, on Twitter, and when support issues have arisen, and I'm just a common customer, not some hi-tech guru. Of all the companies I use for a variety of purposes, FM is among the most responsive, and have been for the 12 years I've used the service. Zero problems here.
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Old 18 Dec 2016, 09:03 PM   #5
17pm
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Originally Posted by Mugwhamp View Post
Of all the companies I use for a variety of purposes, FM is among the most responsive, and have been for the 12 years I've used the service. Zero problems here.
They've been the most responsive company you've used for the last 12 years? They just recently upgraded their support, because up until very recently, it usually took them days to answer simple support tickets. They, themselves, acknowledged that.

You either use very bad companies (when it comes to support) or you didn't need much from FM.
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Old 19 Dec 2016, 05:50 AM   #6
cmac
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fastmail is a pretty special company. hard to find these days. after years of dealing with an email company who just didn't care i am constantly impressed at how they keep everyone up to date and all the additional info they gave that they don't have to. always glad i made the switch. i hope fastmail can keep it up for a long time to come.
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Old 19 Dec 2016, 06:04 AM   #7
Jacinto
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To: cmac

You must be a recent subscriber.

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.

Having said that, if you're currently thrilled by Fastmail, enjoy it while it lasts.

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Old 19 Dec 2016, 06:41 AM   #8
TheJapanese
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@Jacinto:

So what's wrong with your Fastmail?

What'a the point you don't like?
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Old 19 Dec 2016, 07:05 AM   #9
David
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Originally Posted by TheJapanese View Post
@Jacinto:

So what's wrong with your Fastmail?

What'a the point you don't like?
I do not think that Jacinto is intending to criticise Fastmail, but rather commenting on the massive change the company has undergone.

Jacinto's comments about Fastmail abandoning these forums most certainly hold true.

As an early subscriber I had an account before the company went paid, though I have let my subscription expire a few times, in the past.

Fastmail is a superb company technologically, I am sure. That said, I do believe that they have lost their soul. It seems to be all about the money these days and nothing else.

I also do not wish to to use twitter, facebook, or other social media sites - be damned with them
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Old 19 Dec 2016, 08:00 PM   #10
Jacinto
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To: TheJapanese

It's usually best to read the whole thread before asking questions that have already being answered.

To: David

Thank you, David.

Obviously, you read the whole thread.

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Old 20 Dec 2016, 02:10 PM   #11
brong
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Fastmail.fm
Thanks BritTim for convincing me to engage here again.

Jacinto - I think most of what you've seen in terms of "company change" is our staff being burned out by the negativity that we often encounter here. In particular when it comes to change. Many of the change we've made have been entirely necessitated by the changing landscape that we exist in, and changes in the overall makeup of our userbase. It gets harder and harder when you have more staff working on the same code and more users using each feature to justify doing one cool little hack for a few users - and the cruft of maintaining those cool hacks over time slows down your ability to get anything done.

We've spoken to teams working on free email services that have existed for a long time, and they say that they can't do anything any more, just tweak the ads pretty much, because everyone is so used to the existing interface and unwilling to change.

We've also had to remove features that had security holes big enough to drive a truck through (like user-configurable Javascript running from our domain!)

And it doesn't take many insults to convince our staff that it's not worth their time coming back here. It's a difficult call at the best of times, whether to spend your work time engaging with a handful of users or that same time working on something that will improve the service for everybody - we all have a massive backlog of things we'd like to do (I went through just the bugtracker tasks assigned to me last week, in a marathon 3 hours of meetings with a couple of people - we managed to close about 1/4 of them, but there's lots of aspirational stuff like a really good IMAP/IMAP sync tool to allow people to keep external IMAP services in sync with their fastmail account, that will take a lot of work. Or simplifying the management of our backend servers to the point that they don't need any human intervention to scale out significantly, and recover with zero downtime from a hardware failure rather than the current 10-20 minute outage to a few percent of users when we have a hardware failure)

So I'll come here, then get frustrated at the signal to noise ratio and leave again. It's the same for all of us - the return both in terms of personal happiness and business value just isn't there as much as it used to be, sadly.

But I promised BritTim that I would engage, so here I am.

We wrote the values statement over about a week of really working through what we do and why we do it, that's how we think of ourselves, and it's how we live. If you disagree, that's fine. But yeah, we don't accept that we've lost our soul. Sure we're for profit, we take money for the service we offer, and we take it proudly because we offer a great service for our users. All our users, not just the squeakiest wheels.
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Old 20 Dec 2016, 10:02 PM   #12
cmac
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Jacinto View Post
To: cmac

You must be a recent subscriber.

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.

Having said that, if you're currently thrilled by Fastmail, enjoy it while it lasts.

--
Jacinto
I doubt most companies would be the same 10-12 years later. I've only been using fastmail for a couple of years but have been using paid email services for over 10. personally i don't want fastmail to be free nor do i want to be using an email service where people can get free accounts . I also prefer the new interface to the old one. My old email provider had a similar UI to the classic look and i find it dated. as for lack of communication here, well i guess coming from a provider that has no presence anywhere..ever fastmail impresses me. personally i don't expect companies to regularly post on forums nor do i expect them to take every request into consideration. as long as they keep it working and keep improving, i'm happy.
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Old 20 Dec 2016, 10:13 PM   #13
Jacinto
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. . . personally i don't want fastmail to be free nor do i want to be using an email service where people can get free accounts (i'm guessing this is your mail beef?). . . .
Hello, cmac.

Your guess is incorrect.

Except for a couple of months a long time ago, I've been a paid customer for all the years I've used Fastmail. I'm now subscribed to two legacy Enhanced accounts.

Having said that and not being in the habit of spending other people's money, I don't put down anyone who used or uses a free FM account -- it really isn't any of my business.

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Old 20 Dec 2016, 10:14 PM   #14
cmac
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Originally Posted by Jacinto View Post
Hello, cmac.

Your guess is incorrect.

Except for a couple of months a long time ago, I've been a paid customer for all the years I've used Fastmail. I'm now subscribed to two legacy Enhanced accounts.

Having said that and not being in the habit of spending other people's money, I don't put down anyone who used or uses a free FM account -- it really isn't any of my business.

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yeah i edited my post a bit after reading more replies.
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Old 20 Dec 2016, 10:27 PM   #15
Jacinto
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To: brong

Hello, Bron.

I can only speak for myself, but I'm very happy that you honor us with your presence.

I may not agree with everything you posted, however, I understand what you are saying from your point of view.

Like the rest of life, it's a matter of perception. Whether we like it or not, we all see things differently based on our needs, experiences, beliefs and, unfortunately, prejudices.

I may have made some harsh statements out of frustration about certain Fastmail policies and practices, but I don't believe that I was ever insulting.

My biggest frustration is the fact that Fastmail chose to "abandon" EMD. Hopefully, in spite of your very busy schedule, you will, henceforth visit EMD every then and now.

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