Fastmail.ca now within the fold!

pjwalsh · 15 Dec 2016, 01:37 PM

https://blog.fastmail.com/2016/12/15/fastmail-ca

Very pleased to learn FastMail has acquired Fastmail.ca.

For some history of the Canadian service:
https://migrate.fastmail.ca/announcement.html

Will fastmail.ca be available soon as a sign-up / alias option?

--
the fastmail.org domain was acquired with Fastmail.ca and is available for sign-up and alias now

jhollington · 15 Dec 2016, 10:26 PM

That's pretty cool.

Reading into the blog post, the delay in making fastmail.ca available as an alias is due to the way they're handling the migration process:

Quote:

This means that emails sent from our interface to addresses @fastmail.ca continued to be placed in our regular outbound queue and then passed on to the existing fastmail.ca MX servers for redirection to the correct location for that user.

So messages addressed to anybody at fastmail.ca, even when sent from the "real" FastMail, are going to be sent to the original service provider's servers, and then delivered locally or redirected as necessary. Since the migration appears to be "opt-in" for the fastmail.ca users, I'm guessing this is how they're ensuring that people who still have working fastmail.ca accounts can continue to receive mail there, and of course there's therefore no easy way to make fastmail.ca available as an alias domain on the "real" FastMail — FastMail would first have to know which addresses are already taken at fastmail.ca, and the MX servers at fastmail.ca would have to either have a lookup table to know what to send over to FastMail, or be set up to send ALL messages that don't match an existing legacy fastmail.ca user over to FastMail.

I'm guessing for whatever reason this simply wasn't an issue with fastmail.org — maybe fastmail.ca was just holding onto that domain and not offering it as an alias to their users?

brong · 17 Dec 2016, 08:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jhollington

I'm guessing for whatever reason this simply wasn't an issue with fastmail.org — maybe fastmail.ca was just holding onto that domain and not offering it as an alias to their users?

Nailed it. fastmail.org didn't have any users on it, so we could immediately configure it as an internal domain.

Cheers,

Bron.

sterdeus · 21 Dec 2016, 04:21 AM

Very interesting indeed. I had no idea FM was in negotiations with fastmail.ca. As a matter of protectionism -- another Canadian company taken over by a foreign one? Well, I would say this one is for the better.

Merovingian · 15 Jan 2017, 12:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by brong

Nailed it. fastmail.org didn't have any users on it, so we could immediately configure it as an internal domain.

Cheers,

Bron.

Any idea for a timeline when fastmail.ca will be available for aliases?

15 Dec 2016, 01:37 PM	#1
pjwalsh Essential Contributor Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: Canada Posts: 312	Fastmail.ca now within the fold! https://blog.fastmail.com/2016/12/15/fastmail-ca Very pleased to learn FastMail has acquired Fastmail.ca. For some history of the Canadian service: https://migrate.fastmail.ca/announcement.html Will fastmail.ca be available soon as a sign-up / alias option? -- the fastmail.org domain was acquired with Fastmail.ca and is available for sign-up and alias now Last edited by pjwalsh : 15 Dec 2016 at 02:21 PM.

21 Dec 2016, 04:21 AM	#4
sterdeus Senior Member Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Canada Posts: 182	Very interesting indeed. I had no idea FM was in negotiations with fastmail.ca. As a matter of protectionism -- another Canadian company taken over by a foreign one? Well, I would say this one is for the better.