New FastMail Plans & Pricing II - Page 6

BritTim · 21 Nov 2016, 07:15 AM

Just for information, there is a way of avoiding all the accounts needing to be standard accounts. You can have one standard account to host the domains, and, separately create a bunch of basic accounts. with Fastmail user names, but still receiving emails to the custom domain email addresses (which can also be the default for send/reply). There is slightly more setup effort, administratively it is less clean, and (of course) you need to explain to people that their sign in and email address are different. However, it works and can save quite a bit of money.

Quincy_G · 22 Nov 2016, 02:37 AM

Okay, that would be a possibility. Something more uncomfortable but practical. Would unfortunately also cost $ 230, which simply blows the frame for a family.

TheJapanese · 22 Nov 2016, 12:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BritTim

However, it works and can save quite a bit of money.

Hi,

how does it work? Could you explain a bit?

jhollington · 22 Nov 2016, 11:26 PM

The key is that you can have aliases for your domain in your "Standard" account that can point to anywhere — they don't have to only alias addresses that are part of your same package, nor for that matter do they need to even be FastMail accounts.

So you'd set up a single Standard account with your domain and your "primary" address. Once that's in place, you can have aliases that do things like mapping "jane@doe.com" to "janedoe@fastmail.com" (or even "janedoe@gmail.com if you wanted to). Aliases can point to any email address — mail received at that address will simply be redirected to the specified address, wherever it happens to be.

So what BritTim is suggesting is that you'd create "Basic" FastMail accounts for all of your other users, separately. These would all end in "Fastmail.com" (or any one of the other FastMail-provided domains you could choose), and users would need to log in using that domain name. You'd then use aliases in the "Standard" account to map your domain address to these "fastmail.com" addresses.

The other step is that you'd also need to setup "Identities" in each of those accounts to make sure that they're sending from your domain address, since they'd otherwise use the "FastMail.com" domain as the default.

So, to summarize, if you had a family of four people, named John, Jane, Jack, and Jill and the domain "doe.com", you'd basically have the following setup:

Create a single Standard account for "john@doe.com", with the custom doe.com domain.
Create three Basic accounts for "jane@fastmail.com", "jack@fastmail.com", and "jill@fastmail.com"
In the Standard account for John, setup aliases mapping "jane@doe.com" to "jane@fastmail.com" and "jack@doe.com" to "jack@fastmail.com" and "jill@doe.com" to "jill@fastmail.com."
In each of the FastMail.com accounts, to go "Identities & Fetch" and configure an identity for the "doe.com" address for each user (e.g. in the "jane@fastmail.com" account, setup an identity for "jane@doe.com."

gardenweed · 23 Nov 2016, 06:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jhollington

.....

In each of the FastMail.com accounts, to go "Identities & Fetch" and configure an identity for the "doe.com" address for each user (e.g. in the "jane@fastmail.com" account, setup an identity for "jane@doe.com."

When an email is sent from one of the Basic accounts, using a "doe.comm" from address, would it not fail DMARC because those Basic accounts do not own the domain?
(Assuming DMARC is set up for domain "doe.com".)

BritTim · 23 Nov 2016, 01:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gardenweed

When an email is sent from one of the Basic accounts, using a "doe.comm" from address, would it not fail DMARC because those Basic accounts do not own the domain?
(Assuming DMARC is set up for domain "doe.com".)

No, the basic accounts and the standard account both use Fastmail servers.

soromak · 23 Nov 2016, 01:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BritTim

No, the basic accounts and the standard account both use Fastmail servers.

But I assume they would be missing DKIM signing for doe.com, since they will be sent from accounts not assigned with doe.com?

jhollington · 24 Nov 2016, 04:49 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by soromak

But I assume they would be missing DKIM signing for doe.com, since they will be sent from accounts not assigned with doe.com?

Yes, by default that would be the case, but there's an easy way around it....

When you setup the "Identity" for each of the "Basic" users, simply make sure you also select the option to Send messages using an external SMTP server, and specify smtp.fastmail.com, along with the username and password for your PRIMARY "Standard" account (keep in mind that you'll need to generate an App Password for this if you're using two-factor authentication on that primary account).

Do the same if you're using a third-party email client — make sure the outgoing SMTP server uses the username and password of the primary STANDARD account rather than the individual user's "Fastmail.com" account.

This will effectively route all outbound messages through the primary account. Technically, it's the same SMTP server anyway, but because you're logging in with the credentials of the Standard account, you'll inherit the DKIM signing for that domain.

jhollington · 24 Nov 2016, 05:11 AM

That said, DKIM failure shouldn't NORMALLY be an issue unless you're dealing with a server with a VERY restrictive receive policy — such a policy would be restrictive to the point of being "broken" IMHO.

The key point is that YOU control your DMARC record — FastMail does not publish DMARC records for you by default — so yes, not having a proper DKIM signature may break DMARC if you've been silly enough to publish a DMARC record in the "doe.com" DNS telling the world that your messages must be DKIM-signed. Receiving servers will query your DMARC record to try and decide what they should do with your DKIM signature (or a lack of one). No DMARC record on your part normally means that they shouldn't care at all.

This also only affects DKIM. SPF would be a non-issue since, as BritTim pointed out above, all accounts use the same FastMail servers to send messages, so whether you're sending from "doe.com" or "fastmail.com" the message is going through the same SMTP servers that are already listed in the SPF record anyway.

It's also worth noting that FastMail does add its own DKIM signature with the domain of the sending mail server (messagingengine.com) — this is always the case, even when you're using your own domain with a Standard account. So outbound messages WILL have a DKIM signature regardless of how you send them — they just won't necessarily align with your domain, but again that's almost never an issue unless you've published a DMARC record explicitly telling the world that this is required for messages from your domain.

gardenweed · 24 Nov 2016, 07:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jhollington

Yes, by default that would be the case, but there's an easy way around it....

When you setup the "Identity" for each of the "Basic" users, simply make sure you also select the option to Send messages using an external SMTP server, and specify smtp.fastmail.com, along with the username and password for your PRIMARY "Standard" account (keep in mind that you'll need to generate an App Password for this if you're using two-factor authentication on that primary account).

Good trick.
Thanks for that.

paul29 · 25 Nov 2016, 11:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ChinaLamb

I'm genuinely curious, where do you go and get something comparable?

I'm still with Fastmail but have also also opened a plan on mxroute.com (they have a crazy black friday promotion that started today) that I'll put some domains on. I'll keep using Fastmail as my primary email while experimenting with mxroute. If mxroute works out then I may migrate to it from Fastmail at renewal time which is in around 5 months iirc. I have the Enhanced plan which wasn't really cost effective for a low volume user like me, but it was there when I needed it and I liked Fastmail's quirky special features like alternative logins. Those have gone away and it feels more mainstream now. I have a while to decide, or could renew and put it off another year, or whatever.

One weird thing is that I'm bothered by the price increases even though I'm not personally affected by them. They make FM less attractive for new users, IMHO, and I saw FM as useful in a "movement" to get people away from yahoo/gmail. It's harder to pitch that way now.

sleepycat · 18 Feb 2017, 09:01 AM

I was actually here to look for a solution for something else (about hiding my sender IP -- anyway, will post in a different thread), but ended up realizing there was a price increase and spent the next couple hours reading through all the interesting posts

Just as an example, I currently have a business plan for 4 family members costing $135. With no mix-n-match allowed, it will be $50*4 = $200. That's quite a substantial (50%) increase and makes me to have a second thought about the whole arrangement.

If mix-n-match is allowed, it would be $30*3 + $50 = $140. That's a bit easier on me, psychologically.

I just took a look at the usage. 3 accounts use no more than a few hundred MBs each. Mine is also only in the range of GBs -- I have a pretty strict policy about not sending pictures/videos in email..
So, while I appreciate the lower prices per GB for the new plan, it's not really applicable for me.

It's mentioned above as an option to do mix-n-match by using aliases. I really appreciate the info in the explanations, especially about DMARC and DKIM, but it just seems too much work, especially considering it will be a burden on other users besides myself. I used to run a mail server in my basement, then graduated to running sendmail on VPS, then decided that I wanted to spend $100 or so to make this someone else's problem. Now, if I have to spend money AND deal with awkward workaround, then it's no good.

So, here is my message to the owner/shareholders. Please consider that I actually spent some time to register an account here and type this out, I am trying to provided you with constructive feedback.

I understand you need to make money to stay in business, so that my email will be reliable, instead of like dealing with those VPS providers who often drop off like flies. So, I get it.

But OTOH, take my situation of 5GB or so total email storage for 4 accounts, you can't possibly be losing money on an annual rate of $135 or $140.

Am I willing to pay another $60 just to forget about it? Maybe. Maybe for another year or even longer, if I procrastinate. Will I pay $200 a year (allowing adjustment for inflation) for the next 10 years? Highly doubtful. $120 is a magic number -- 10 bucks a month seems OK. $200 is already becoming something I need to justify -- to myself, not even to wife

Again, I do get it that you are not making money (or much) on the $25 account, but for accounts that pay $100+, you can't be doing too bad on them.

So, please do consider that allow some provisions of mix-n-match.
Or, perhaps charge storage separately. I know storage is not free. So, let those "idiots" who send videos in email pay

Don't penalize everyone else..

n5bb · 18 Feb 2017, 09:43 AM

My suggestion is that you file a support request with your comments. This is a public forum and isn't run by FastMail. Your specific situation may interest them.

Bill

jhollington · 22 Feb 2017, 01:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sleepycat

Just as an example, I currently have a business plan for 4 family members costing $135. With no mix-n-match allowed, it will be $50*4 = $200. That's quite a substantial (50%) increase and makes me to have a second thought about the whole arrangement.

Well, in your case the good news — for now at least — is that you can still mix-and-match with your legacy plan, at least for as long as FastMail continues to grandfather the legacy plans in.

I currently have a "family" level account, which is more or less the same as a business account in terms of FastMail's approach, and not only do I have mixed-and-matched account levels, but I'm able to renew those at those levels and even add new users under any one of the legacy plan levels — that's Lite/Full/Enhanced/Premier in my case, but although the plans and names differ for business users, I suspect the same should be true there as well.

Of course, there's no guarantee that this will continue to be the case — FastMail has promised to leave legacy plans unchanged for the time being, but they could obviously choose to change direction on that at any time, and to make matters even more complicated, you can't even "lock in" longer term with a family/business plan as they only allow you to renew for a year at a time.

22 Nov 2016, 11:26 PM	#79
jhollington Essential Contributor Join Date: Apr 2008 Posts: 371	The key is that you can have aliases for your domain in your "Standard" account that can point to anywhere — they don't have to only alias addresses that are part of your same package, nor for that matter do they need to even be FastMail accounts. So you'd set up a single Standard account with your domain and your "primary" address. Once that's in place, you can have aliases that do things like mapping "jane@doe.com" to "janedoe@fastmail.com" (or even "janedoe@gmail.com if you wanted to). Aliases can point to any email address — mail received at that address will simply be redirected to the specified address, wherever it happens to be. So what BritTim is suggesting is that you'd create "Basic" FastMail accounts for all of your other users, separately. These would all end in "Fastmail.com" (or any one of the other FastMail-provided domains you could choose), and users would need to log in using that domain name. You'd then use aliases in the "Standard" account to map your domain address to these "fastmail.com" addresses. The other step is that you'd also need to setup "Identities" in each of those accounts to make sure that they're sending from your domain address, since they'd otherwise use the "FastMail.com" domain as the default. So, to summarize, if you had a family of four people, named John, Jane, Jack, and Jill and the domain "doe.com", you'd basically have the following setup: Create a single Standard account for "john@doe.com", with the custom doe.com domain. Create three Basic accounts for "jane@fastmail.com", "jack@fastmail.com", and "jill@fastmail.com" In the Standard account for John, setup aliases mapping "jane@doe.com" to "jane@fastmail.com" and "jack@doe.com" to "jack@fastmail.com" and "jill@doe.com" to "jill@fastmail.com." In each of the FastMail.com accounts, to go "Identities & Fetch" and configure an identity for the "doe.com" address for each user (e.g. in the "jane@fastmail.com" account, setup an identity for "jane@doe.com."

21 Nov 2016, 07:15 AM	#76
BritTim The "e" in e-mail Join Date: May 2003 Location: mostly in Thailand Posts: 3,095	Just for information, there is a way of avoiding all the accounts needing to be standard accounts. You can have one standard account to host the domains, and, separately create a bunch of basic accounts. with Fastmail user names, but still receiving emails to the custom domain email addresses (which can also be the default for send/reply). There is slightly more setup effort, administratively it is less clean, and (of course) you need to explain to people that their sign in and email address are different. However, it works and can save quite a bit of money.

22 Nov 2016, 02:37 AM	#77
Quincy_G Member Join Date: Jun 2012 Location: Germany Posts: 51	Okay, that would be a possibility. Something more uncomfortable but practical. Would unfortunately also cost $ 230, which simply blows the frame for a family.

24 Nov 2016, 05:11 AM	#84
jhollington Essential Contributor Join Date: Apr 2008 Posts: 371	That said, DKIM failure shouldn't NORMALLY be an issue unless you're dealing with a server with a VERY restrictive receive policy — such a policy would be restrictive to the point of being "broken" IMHO. The key point is that YOU control your DMARC record — FastMail does not publish DMARC records for you by default — so yes, not having a proper DKIM signature may break DMARC if you've been silly enough to publish a DMARC record in the "doe.com" DNS telling the world that your messages must be DKIM-signed. Receiving servers will query your DMARC record to try and decide what they should do with your DKIM signature (or a lack of one). No DMARC record on your part normally means that they shouldn't care at all. This also only affects DKIM. SPF would be a non-issue since, as BritTim pointed out above, all accounts use the same FastMail servers to send messages, so whether you're sending from "doe.com" or "fastmail.com" the message is going through the same SMTP servers that are already listed in the SPF record anyway. It's also worth noting that FastMail does add its own DKIM signature with the domain of the sending mail server (messagingengine.com) — this is always the case, even when you're using your own domain with a Standard account. So outbound messages WILL have a DKIM signature regardless of how you send them — they just won't necessarily align with your domain, but again that's almost never an issue unless you've published a DMARC record explicitly telling the world that this is required for messages from your domain.

18 Feb 2017, 09:01 AM	#87
sleepycat Junior Member Join Date: Feb 2017 Posts: 6	I was actually here to look for a solution for something else (about hiding my sender IP -- anyway, will post in a different thread), but ended up realizing there was a price increase and spent the next couple hours reading through all the interesting posts Just as an example, I currently have a business plan for 4 family members costing $135. With no mix-n-match allowed, it will be $504 = $200. That's quite a substantial (50%) increase and makes me to have a second thought about the whole arrangement. If mix-n-match is allowed, it would be $303 + $50 = $140. That's a bit easier on me, psychologically. I just took a look at the usage. 3 accounts use no more than a few hundred MBs each. Mine is also only in the range of GBs -- I have a pretty strict policy about not sending pictures/videos in email.. So, while I appreciate the lower prices per GB for the new plan, it's not really applicable for me. It's mentioned above as an option to do mix-n-match by using aliases. I really appreciate the info in the explanations, especially about DMARC and DKIM, but it just seems too much work, especially considering it will be a burden on other users besides myself. I used to run a mail server in my basement, then graduated to running sendmail on VPS, then decided that I wanted to spend $100 or so to make this someone else's problem. Now, if I have to spend money AND deal with awkward workaround, then it's no good. So, here is my message to the owner/shareholders. Please consider that I actually spent some time to register an account here and type this out, I am trying to provided you with constructive feedback. I understand you need to make money to stay in business, so that my email will be reliable, instead of like dealing with those VPS providers who often drop off like flies. So, I get it. But OTOH, take my situation of 5GB or so total email storage for 4 accounts, you can't possibly be losing money on an annual rate of $135 or $140. Am I willing to pay another $60 just to forget about it? Maybe. Maybe for another year or even longer, if I procrastinate. Will I pay $200 a year (allowing adjustment for inflation) for the next 10 years? Highly doubtful. $120 is a magic number -- 10 bucks a month seems OK. $200 is already becoming something I need to justify -- to myself, not even to wife Again, I do get it that you are not making money (or much) on the $25 account, but for accounts that pay $100+, you can't be doing too bad on them. So, please do consider that allow some provisions of mix-n-match. Or, perhaps charge storage separately. I know storage is not free. So, let those "idiots" who send videos in email pay Don't penalize everyone else..

18 Feb 2017, 09:43 AM	#88
n5bb Intergalactic Postmaster Join Date: May 2004 Location: Irving, Texas Posts: 8,929	My suggestion is that you file a support request with your comments. This is a public forum and isn't run by FastMail. Your specific situation may interest them. Bill