I just signed up for FastMail and it died, should I be concerned?

NealJ777 · 27 Feb 2014, 02:30 AM

Hello.

I just signed up for the free trial of FastMail this morning. There is a reason why I need to use something other than GMail and so I am looking for alternatives. I don't want to use Yahoo Mail because of the in your face advertising. I am willing to pay the $10 a year to use FastMail, however it seems that they're currently having server issues:

http://status.fastmail.fm/2014/02/26...l-server-down/

Is this something that I should be concerned about?

What is FastMail's track record?

Thank you

jette · 27 Feb 2014, 03:30 AM

I would like to see what people have to say, since this happened to me, too. I was sending emails all morning, and then the server error happened. When I got back into my account, everything was gone, with nothing in my inbox and no record of my sent emails. I have no idea if they were even sent now!

CyberDyne · 27 Feb 2014, 03:53 AM

Did you also notice this part of that post?

Quote:

Everything will be back to normal in a few minutes.

Try again shortly. These things happen.

To answer your question, I've been with FM for 10+ years and I am far from a 'fanboy', but despite a few disruptions a few years ago their record in my opinion is impeccable, especially for fixing issues quickly.

pachinko · 27 Feb 2014, 04:32 AM

I have the same problem. This morning I couldn't access my email for over an hour. Finally, it came back online but all my messages are gone.

This is only my second day using FastMail and so far it seems like a poor decision. This is my business email and I signed up because of all the great reviews they receive about reliability. I am not able to communicate with clients this morning, which is a huge problem for me.

I opened a support ticket immediately but I haven't heard a peep from anyone there.

The update at status.fastmail.fm says "Everything will be back to normal in a few minutes". I'm sorry but it's been several hours and my messages are still missing. They should at least provide accurate updates on the system status.

Anyone else having the same issue?

Mystakill · 27 Feb 2014, 05:31 AM

jette/pachinko,

Have either of you tried using the "Restore from Backup" option from the web interface to recover your missing emails? To access it, first click the arrow next to your name in the upper-left corner of your browser window, click "Advanced" on the dropdown menu, then click "Restore from Backup" to get to the "Restore IMAP" page. There's a "Restore Deleted Emails" button under the blue note box, which doesn't appear as a button until you hover over it.

After you click that, wait 5-10 minutes and you should see a RESTORED folder appear at the bottom of your folder list. I seem to recall having to logout & then back in in order for it to actually appear.

jette · 27 Feb 2014, 05:53 AM

Mystakill - Yes, I did try the "Restore from backup" button, but still nothing. Still haven't gotten a response from my support ticket. I also sent them a tweet with no response

NealJ777 · 27 Feb 2014, 06:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pachinko

...Finally, it came back online but all my messages are gone.

Okay. That would concern me.

I only had two test messages in the account and I deleted them both this morning (before the server issues), so I wouldn't be able to comment on whether or not my mail is missing.

I just tried logging in to my account and I still cannot logon. It is now almost three hours since I noticed the server problem and I still am unable to access my account. I'm glad I only had a free trial and didn't pay the $10 fee. I'll be looking for another solution.

CyberDyne · 27 Feb 2014, 06:05 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by NealJ777

I'm glad I only had a free trial and didn't pay the $10 fee. I'll be looking for another solution.

3 hours isn't exactly a long time. You've created an account at an unfortunate time. No fault of yours of course but I bet if you try once FM have sorted the problem out, you wouldn't be disappointed. Just my opinion based on many years of experience.

EdinwolfPA · 27 Feb 2014, 07:02 AM

Hello,

For those users impacted by the server issue.......Check the FM Status Blog for an update:

http://status.fastmail.fm/

David

jette · 27 Feb 2014, 07:56 AM

All of my email is back. Hallelujah.

BritTim · 27 Feb 2014, 09:55 AM

Some perspective on this from a long time Fastmail customer ...

This was the most serious outage FM has experienced for several years. It is a concern. However, it is also a confirmation of the overall robustness of FM's setup. Multiple cascading issues caused a several hour outage for a small percentage of FM's users. No mail was lost.

If I was a new FM user, I would probably be worried. However, on mature refection, you may feel better. Very few email services are as transparent about their availability and service outages as FM. The Pingdom report (http://stats.pingdom.com/x8mbe1jgimkn/49229) while it does not identify every outage encountered by a small number of users, is a good indication. For the last several years, overall availability has been excellent, and FM makes no attempt to hide the rare issues that do arise.

William9 · 27 Feb 2014, 12:33 PM

It does make one question how sensitive Pingdom is to outages. This most recent FM outage involved one IMAP server and a problematic failover, but Pingdom still shows 100% uptime.

pachinko · 27 Feb 2014, 12:42 PM

I was without any email service for over 4 hours today but even after service had apparently been restored it was not reliable. I verified that sent emails were being lost by sending messages to my gmail account and co-worker's yahoo account. So actual outage time, in terms of usable service, was at least 8 hours - the entire business day.

It's not true that no messages were lost. All mail that I received today after 6:35AM have not been restored. Considering the fact that all earlier mail was restored, it seems that these messages have been lost permanently.

BritTim - I'm glad to hear that you're happy with FastMail. I will probably be moving on after today. That's despite having just paid them $45 on Monday for a year of business class email.

As for pingdom, it's apparently not reliable. They are showing 100% up-time for FastMail over the last 7 days, which is obviously not true.

Furthermore, I still haven't seen a single response to my service tickets. Not acceptable for a business class service!

BritTim · 27 Feb 2014, 05:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pachinko

I was without any email service for over 4 hours today but even after service had apparently been restored it was not reliable. I verified that sent emails were being lost by sending messages to my gmail account and co-worker's yahoo account. So actual outage time, in terms of usable service, was at least 8 hours - the entire business day.

It's not true that no messages were lost. All mail that I received today after 6:35AM have not been restored. Considering the fact that all earlier mail was restored, it seems that these messages have been lost permanently.

BritTim - I'm glad to hear that you're happy with FastMail. I will probably be moving on after today. That's despite having just paid them $45 on Monday for a year of business class email.

As for pingdom, it's apparently not reliable. They are showing 100% up-time for FastMail over the last 7 days, which is obviously not true.

Furthermore, I still haven't seen a single response to my service tickets. Not acceptable for a business class service!

Some comments ...

First, on Pingdom, I made the point that it does not identify every outage encountered by a small number of users. You were tremendously unlucky in being one of a small percentage of customers on a specific server that failed, and that the replication procedures had an issue, and that the monitoring processes FM had established failed to note the replication problem. These issues were not visible to the basic availability checks made by Pingdom. (It should be noted that, in spite of these cascading issues, the situation was recoverable, albeit after delays that I would have found unacceptable if I was one of those affected.)

Your complaint about no response to your service tickets is valid. This area is one that has long been an FM weakness and is one that they do not seem to have any intention to improve.

On your belief that incoming messages have been lost, note that (because of the nature of the replication process) messages are being delivered slowly and in the order received. Please do let us know if the messages are still not delivered within, say, 12 more hours. This would be even more disturbing than the outage itself. I doubt that will be the case.

Finally, I am very concerned at your report that outgoing messages were being lost. Did you ever receive notifications of non delivery?

I have been generally satisfied with FM over the last 10 years or so, but I am not blind to their weaknesses. It is understandable if your trust in the service has been irretrievably lost.

NealJ777 · 27 Feb 2014, 07:44 PM

Thank you everyone for your responses.

I would like to continue with FastMail during the duration of my free trial and see how things go before I commit any further. It is real easy for me to "switch" my mail around because for this one specific account, it is just an alias that is forwarding mail directly to my FastMail account. With the outage yesterday, I just switched the alias to forward back to my previous account.

When I signed into FastMail this morning, there were two emails for me. It is hard for me to judge how this outage impacted my mail because this account (the alias mentioned above) is less than a week old and not many people have this address.

27 Feb 2014, 02:30 AM	#1
NealJ777 Junior Member Join Date: Feb 2014 Posts: 13	I just signed up for FastMail and it died, should I be concerned? Hello. I just signed up for the free trial of FastMail this morning. There is a reason why I need to use something other than GMail and so I am looking for alternatives. I don't want to use Yahoo Mail because of the in your face advertising. I am willing to pay the $10 a year to use FastMail, however it seems that they're currently having server issues: http://status.fastmail.fm/2014/02/26...l-server-down/ Is this something that I should be concerned about? What is FastMail's track record? Thank you

27 Feb 2014, 03:30 AM	#2
jette Junior Member Join Date: Feb 2014 Posts: 6	I would like to see what people have to say, since this happened to me, too. I was sending emails all morning, and then the server error happened. When I got back into my account, everything was gone, with nothing in my inbox and no record of my sent emails. I have no idea if they were even sent now!

27 Feb 2014, 04:32 AM	#4
pachinko Junior Member Join Date: Feb 2014 Posts: 15	I have the same problem. This morning I couldn't access my email for over an hour. Finally, it came back online but all my messages are gone. This is only my second day using FastMail and so far it seems like a poor decision. This is my business email and I signed up because of all the great reviews they receive about reliability. I am not able to communicate with clients this morning, which is a huge problem for me. I opened a support ticket immediately but I haven't heard a peep from anyone there. The update at status.fastmail.fm says "Everything will be back to normal in a few minutes". I'm sorry but it's been several hours and my messages are still missing. They should at least provide accurate updates on the system status. Anyone else having the same issue?

27 Feb 2014, 05:31 AM	#5
Mystakill Cornerstone of the Community Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Baltimore, MD (USA) Posts: 835	jette/pachinko, Have either of you tried using the "Restore from Backup" option from the web interface to recover your missing emails? To access it, first click the arrow next to your name in the upper-left corner of your browser window, click "Advanced" on the dropdown menu, then click "Restore from Backup" to get to the "Restore IMAP" page. There's a "Restore Deleted Emails" button under the blue note box, which doesn't appear as a button until you hover over it. After you click that, wait 5-10 minutes and you should see a RESTORED folder appear at the bottom of your folder list. I seem to recall having to logout & then back in in order for it to actually appear.

27 Feb 2014, 05:53 AM	#6
jette Junior Member Join Date: Feb 2014 Posts: 6	Mystakill - Yes, I did try the "Restore from backup" button, but still nothing. Still haven't gotten a response from my support ticket. I also sent them a tweet with no response

27 Feb 2014, 07:02 AM	#9
EdinwolfPA Cornerstone of the Community Join Date: Oct 2009 Location: PA Posts: 683	Hello, For those users impacted by the server issue.......Check the FM Status Blog for an update: http://status.fastmail.fm/ David

27 Feb 2014, 07:56 AM	#10
jette Junior Member Join Date: Feb 2014 Posts: 6	All of my email is back. Hallelujah.

27 Feb 2014, 09:55 AM	#11
BritTim The "e" in e-mail Join Date: May 2003 Location: mostly in Thailand Posts: 3,095	Some perspective on this from a long time Fastmail customer ... This was the most serious outage FM has experienced for several years. It is a concern. However, it is also a confirmation of the overall robustness of FM's setup. Multiple cascading issues caused a several hour outage for a small percentage of FM's users. No mail was lost. If I was a new FM user, I would probably be worried. However, on mature refection, you may feel better. Very few email services are as transparent about their availability and service outages as FM. The Pingdom report (http://stats.pingdom.com/x8mbe1jgimkn/49229) while it does not identify every outage encountered by a small number of users, is a good indication. For the last several years, overall availability has been excellent, and FM makes no attempt to hide the rare issues that do arise.

27 Feb 2014, 12:33 PM	#12
William9 The "e" in e-mail Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: San Francisco Posts: 2,281	It does make one question how sensitive Pingdom is to outages. This most recent FM outage involved one IMAP server and a problematic failover, but Pingdom still shows 100% uptime.

27 Feb 2014, 12:42 PM	#13
pachinko Junior Member Join Date: Feb 2014 Posts: 15	I was without any email service for over 4 hours today but even after service had apparently been restored it was not reliable. I verified that sent emails were being lost by sending messages to my gmail account and co-worker's yahoo account. So actual outage time, in terms of usable service, was at least 8 hours - the entire business day. It's not true that no messages were lost. All mail that I received today after 6:35AM have not been restored. Considering the fact that all earlier mail was restored, it seems that these messages have been lost permanently. BritTim - I'm glad to hear that you're happy with FastMail. I will probably be moving on after today. That's despite having just paid them $45 on Monday for a year of business class email. As for pingdom, it's apparently not reliable. They are showing 100% up-time for FastMail over the last 7 days, which is obviously not true. Furthermore, I still haven't seen a single response to my service tickets. Not acceptable for a business class service!

27 Feb 2014, 07:44 PM	#15
NealJ777 Junior Member Join Date: Feb 2014 Posts: 13	Thank you everyone for your responses. I would like to continue with FastMail during the duration of my free trial and see how things go before I commit any further. It is real easy for me to "switch" my mail around because for this one specific account, it is just an alias that is forwarding mail directly to my FastMail account. With the outage yesterday, I just switched the alias to forward back to my previous account. When I signed into FastMail this morning, there were two emails for me. It is hard for me to judge how this outage impacted my mail because this account (the alias mentioned above) is less than a week old and not many people have this address.