CardDAV

[danieldk]

Well. You know what you get when purchasing Fastmail. Since I started my subscription, for only an e-mail service, I got: CardDAV and and Android application.

And no sleepless nights, because I know that Fastmail has excellent replication across servers.

[BritTim]

Originally Posted by danieldk

Well. You know what you get when purchasing Fastmail. Since I started my subscription, for only an e-mail service, I got: CardDAV and and Android application.

And no sleepless nights, because I know that Fastmail has excellent replication across servers.

It has long been my view that Fastmail has only two critical weaknesses. Contacts sync is one, and the lack of emergency rapid support is the other.

I have needed to move several clients away from Fastmail because of the lack of a workable contacts sync. This is a pity, because I do trust the overall robustness of their infrastructure, their strong support for personalities, and their spam management (all better than most of the competition).

[steventay]

Originally Posted by BritTim

It has long been my view that Fastmail has only two critical weaknesses. Contacts sync is one, and the lack of emergency rapid support is the other.

I have needed to move several clients away from Fastmail because of the lack of a workable contacts sync. This is a pity, because I do trust the overall robustness of their infrastructure, their strong support for personalities, and their spam management (all better than most of the competition).

No need to pity or sad if they want to be the next Nokia example

I have been waiting since their free account

[adrianlambert]

I just received this from fastmail support. I hope it's accurate.

We are currently working on CardDAV support, which will provide contact syncing with phones and desktop clients. We hope to have it released within a month or two. You can keep an eye on our blog for any announcements: http://blog.fastmail.com/

In the meantime though, the only way to access your contacts is through our web interface.

[ulmus]

Yeah, yesterday Robn had written about it on his G+ :-)

[adrianlambert]

Originally Posted by ulmus

Yeah, yesterday Robn had written about it on his G+ :-)

I don't know Robn and don't use G+.
Was there any more info there or just that?

[markiehill]

Shows how out of touch FM are with what people need that this is still not done. I mean why would people want to sync their contacts in this day and age ? these new fangled smartphones will never catch on.

I actually think the strap line email, calendar and contacts done right on the web page is pretty deceiving because it really is not done right when you cannot sync your phone correctly.... which every other mail provider provides.

Wasting time posting how great their technical solution is every day of Dec and then rolling out a mobile app says it all really. About time heads were taken out of arses or else there will be no users left.

[adrianlambert]

Personally I'd rather the service arrived late but reliable and robust rather than having my contact list get messed up through them rushing the job. I regard Fastmail as being reliable and robust in their services so far and that's why I'm happy pay for them. Having said all that I'm also very much looking forward to having carddav as soon as is reasonably possible.

[markiehill]

Personally I'd rather the service arrived late but reliable and robust rather than having my contact list get messed up through them rushing the job

Yip years late, it just makes me very cross because in all other respects they are pretty good. Problem is if this myopic view continues then eventually everybody will go use other mail providers and then Fastmail will be no more. Lack of contact support for me (evidenced by the people that have already cancelled for this reason on this forum) and i am sure many others means I cannot use them as my main mail provider even though i want to.

[adrianlambert]

Yes it's late but that may have a lot to do with the opera thing, so it doesn't seem worth giving the current owners a hard time. They appear to be addressing the issue. My experience is that I've not been happy with google's and apple's syncing which is the grand total of my in depth experience. I looked at memotoo and fruux who offer robust dav based services but no email. I don't know of any other providers that do this all in one package beyond the monster internet corporations that want to rifle through your data.

[markiehill]

I don't know of any other providers that do this all in one package beyond the monster internet corporations that want to rifle through your data.

Google rifle through your mail for the free email service not for the paid, Microsoft do not. Google offers active sync to paying customers which is actually pretty good. Microsoft offer activesync and full exchange. There are a bunch of smaller players other people have mentioned on here who offer a full service.

Anyway let's hope we get CARDDAV before the end of the year, might persuade me to switch back. If it is not delivered by the time i come to renew that will be another lost customer. At one time all my friends used to use Fastmail and now nobody does and mostly it is because of lack calender (now fixed) and contacts. Very hard to get people like that back once they have left.

[randian]

Originally Posted by markiehill

At one time all my friends used to use Fastmail and now nobody does and mostly it is because of lack calender (now fixed) and contacts.

Except the minimum account for calendar sync is Enhanced, which is really lame. I can easily justify the price of a Full account for that, but paying double the price of a Full account just to get calendar sync (since Full accounts will offer contacts sync) isn't palatable.

[markiehill]

Except the minimum account for calendar sync is Enhanced, which is really lame. I can easily justify the price of a Full account for that

I think there should be just one price $30.00 a year for unlimited email (not file) storage and calendar and contacts sync for personal accounts and drop all the other prices.

[randian]

Originally Posted by markiehill

I think there should be just one price $30.00 a year for unlimited email (not file) storage and calendar and contacts sync for personal accounts and drop all the other prices.

File storage is more valuable than email storage, since emails are tiny and take up little storage. The $30 business account will have both caldav and carddav, but that's a minimum $45 including the management account. Yes a $40 Enhanced account has more storage and aliases, but for sync purposes if you don't really need the extra account limits FM has effectively priced caldav at $20 a year by itself.

[Berenburger]

Originally Posted by adrianlambert

I don't know Robn and don't use G+.
Was there any more info there or just that?

Rob Norris is an employee of FastMail and the most active member of FM here at this moment.
This was written by him (publicly) on Google+ (if you want to hear inside information, follow him ):

So I now have my +FastMail​ contacts synced to my phone via CardDAV. Still a few weeks away from public beta (assuming no interruptions), but damn, so nice to finally have this running on production data