email host selection advice

[truthseeker]

Seems difficult to get unbiased info about email hosts online due to affiliate programs and gamed review sites. I'm a startup looking for a host for one domain email. Don't need a lot of added features such as calendar sync, etc,just need a good spam filtering system and enuf tech support to get it set up from my domain registrar. I've tried Polarismail, but got a ton of spam and when I tried to get into my account, my password stopped working, They had decent tech support. I dropped the domain I was using so just cancelled the Polaris acct. I am using Apple Mail for a client on desktop & laptop with ElCapitan and iPhone 6.
Fastmail was looking good until I ran across horror stories about arbitrary account cancellations. Does anyone know anything about Greatmail, Appriver.com, the email laundry or PObox.com? Or do you have any recommendations for other hosts that I should check out? Would really appreciate your thoughts.

[pjwalsh]

Originally Posted by truthseeker

Fastmail was looking good until I ran across horror stories about arbitrary account cancellations.

You mean the ancient 'free for life' guest accounts? Not really arbitrary, and wouldn't affect new users. And the guest accounts were given ample notice and generous options to continue on a paid account. (I had one)

[truthseeker]

So you think Fastmail is OK as a paid service?

[pjwalsh]

Originally Posted by truthseeker

So you think Fastmail is OK as a paid service?

Excellent. Very good value, unmatched feature set. I've been using them for over 10 years.

Setting up your domain to use FastMail couldn't be simpler, just change the nameservers to FastMail's.
https://www.fastmail.com/help/receiv...etup-nsmx.html

[truthseeker]

Thanks much pj--appreciate your input.

[janusz]

Originally Posted by pjwalsh

You mean the ancient 'free for life' guest accounts? Not really arbitrary, and wouldn't affect new users

Another story you may wish to consider: a promise was made to keep the "classic" version of the web interface unchanged for ever. This "forever" lasted around 2 years.
Yes, this does not affect new users, but it shows how much you should trust FM's promises.

[TenFour]

I've found POBox.com (now owned by Fastmail) to be the simplest to set up and very reliable so far. No hassles, not the cheapest, very reliable, just works. I haven't used Fastmail itself in quite a few years, but they are definitely one of the better providers. If you use Google stuff anyway, G Suite is very secure and reliable, but not the simplest to set up and manage.

[truthseeker]

Originally Posted by janusz

Another story you may wish to consider: a promise was made to keep the "classic" version of the web interface unchanged for ever. This "forever" lasted around 2 years.
Yes, this does not affect new users, but it shows how much you should trust FM's promises.

Yes, I read the thread of users who were upset at the UI change and how they did not like the new one.

[truthseeker]

Originally Posted by TenFour

I've found POBox.com (now owned by Fastmail) to be the simplest to set up and very reliable so far. No hassles, not the cheapest, very reliable, just works. I haven't used Fastmail itself in quite a few years, but they are definitely one of the better providers. If you use Google stuff anyway, G Suite is very secure and reliable, but not the simplest to set up and manage.

Thanks, I'm looking for an alternative to G Suite because it forces you to lose any existing gmail addresses when you set up a domain email with them.

[TenFour]

Thanks, I'm looking for an alternative to G Suite because it forces you to lose any existing gmail addresses when you set up a domain email with them.

It doesn't do that. I set up a G Suite account and still kept three existing Gmail addresses. They are totally separate things.

[truthseeker]

Originally Posted by TenFour

It doesn't do that. I set up a G Suite account and still kept three existing Gmail addresses. They are totally separate things.

Ok I guess I'm getting wrong info somewhere.Google has always been kinda confusing to me. Thanks for your reply.

[jhollington]

Originally Posted by truthseeker

I am using Apple Mail for a client on desktop & laptop with ElCapitan and iPhone 6.

I'd throw in another strong vote for Fastmail, especially in the scenario you describe above... It works great with Apple Mail, especially on the iOS side, as it's the only service provider out there that actually does proper push e-mail — in fact, Fastmail is better at this than even iCloud, as it pushes ALL mailbox changes (e.g. delete/read/move), not just notifications of new messages.

In my opinion, G Suite is really only a great solution if you plan to live primarily in the Gmail web interface on your desktop and in the iOS Gmail app (or Inbox by Gmail, if you prefer that). You won't get push e-mail support in the iOS Mail app unless you opt to set it up as a "Google Sync" account, which is Exchange ActiveSync, basically, and not without its own quirks. Google's back-end administrative interface for G Suite, while offering a lot of powerful features, can also be a bit inscrutable for the non-technically minded.

[truthseeker]

Thanks- you are so right about Google being inscrutable. The only thing re: Fastmail is they will change the UI and I will have a new learning curve.

I'm also looking at MXRoute, but its UI is cPanel, which kinda scares me, being a techno idiot...

[jhollington]

Originally Posted by truthseeker

Thanks- you are so right about Google being inscrutable. The only thing re: Fastmail is they will change the UI and I will have a new learning curve.

Well, if you're primarily using actual mail clients, the interface doesn't really matter all that much anyway.... The vast majority of the concerns raised by long-time Fastmail users were more about the webmail interface, not so much the administrative interface, and frankly I think for most novice users the new administrative interface is significantly more user-friendly anyway..... even for webmail, it's mostly the "power users" who have concerns about it being retired, for various reasons.

With all of the hue and cry over the "classic" interface being retired, it's also important to understand the entire timeline here... FastMail doesn't change the UI all that often — it's happened once in the decade or so that I've been a FastMail user. I think there was one other major interface change before that, back around 2002 or so.

What you're seeing happening right now is really just the end of a transitional thing.... What a lot of folks are calling the "new" interface was actually first introduced back in 2012, and that UI has remained basically the same since then, with of course the usual iterative improvements.

However, when FastMail debuted the new UI five years ago, instead of simply forcing everybody over onto it, they kept the "classic" UI in place. So in other words, for the past five years, there have been two completely different web UIs for accessing FastMail — the "classic" interface for those users who preferred that and either couldn't or didn't want to move over to the new one, and the "new" interface which is really what the vast majority of current FastMail users are on (really, I'd bet good money that most users who have signed up for FastMail in the past five years probably don't know the "classic" interface even exists).

While FastMail hasn't released any specific numbers, several folks from the company have repeatedly said that only a small number of FastMail users are still on the "classic" interface — as of about two years ago they declared that "the vast majority of users have moved to using it", so I think it's also fair to say that what you're seeing expressed in these forums is coming from that vocal minority of long-time power users. I started as a paying FastMail customer long before the new interface was even a gleam in the company's eye, but happily transitioned to the new UI pretty much as soon as it became available in 2012 as I generally preferred it. That said, however, I'm not primarily a webmail user — I also use Apple Mail on macOS and iOS almost exclusively to access my mail, only falling back to webmail when I'm in a situation where I'm on somebody else's computer and don't feel like pecking out a long reply on my iPhone.

To be clear, I don't want to make light of the concerns of those who prefer the classic interface. Many of their concerns are certainly valid from their perspective, and we're talking about webmail users who have grown accustomed to using the same UI over the course of a decade or more. Further, to be fair, FastMail did suggest that the classic interface would be retained in perpetuity and then more recently decided to discontinue it. However, it's still important to keep it in the proper perspective, especially from the point of view of potential new users... we're talking about a five year process during which both interfaces were available, followed by six months' notice that classic will be going away. I don't think it's realistic for anybody new to FastMail to be concerned that there's going to be another big UI change any time soon.

Frankly, with the speed at which technology moves, I'm of the mind that it's unrealistic to expect a company to continue to maintain a 10+ year old user interface. While I totally sympathize with those users who feel that FastMail broke its promise in this case, I also think that FastMail made some very naive promises back in the day, and I'm certainly hoping the company has learned from its mistakes going forward.

[chickadee]

Superbly written (as usual) and accurate account of how FastMail has evolved, jhollington.

Thank you for your understanding--particularly the lack of snarkiness for those who prefer, and are saddened by the demise of, the classic interface.