Fastmail vs GMail - upgrade or move on?

[sadams]

Hi All,

I would like some feedback/comments/views from people here regarding upgrading to a Full account vs defecting to google.

Intro
====
I am Steve and signed up with a member account back in 2002.
Attracted by:

• IMAP - can't live without IMAP
• Speed
• Strong Web Interface (fast, efficient, no ads etc.)
• Fastmail ethos - kinda "by geeks for geeks"
• "Real people" providing the service and support - not some huge faceless bureaucracy who don't care and never reply to issues
• Strong community of users - if somethings broken we'll understand why and dozens of "power users" will be chasing it!

I use it for my main personal (i.e. non business, family & friends) email - I have a yahoo account for shopping and public forums etc.
I use and advocate FOSS - so I guess I am a fairly typical Fastmail customer - certainly the sort of person they would want to attract and retain.

It has served me well and I have had great value for a tiny investment of $15.
However I am finding the limits (16MB quota) are unusable these days when people think it's "normal" to send 5 or 6 MB attachments.
And I find myself having to work hard to manage my quota/account like it was 2002 still!

The Question:
===========
So - how do I solve this?
I have boiled it down to 2 x solutions:
i) Upgrade to a Full account

• Clearly the "right thing to do"
• 600MB should be plenty
• $20 p/a is a god price - is fair and provides value.

ii) Defect to Google

• "Unlimited Storage"
• Strong Interface
• No direct fees/costs
• I am using the calender
• Isn't it just inevitable that we'll all just end up there anyway???? ;-)

I understand and care about the "privacy issues" - however these do not overly concern me with google - although it is a negative for them.
Defecting would make me feel like a "traitor" of course - so there's the angst to deal with !

So.. can others here make some comments.. I could be swayed either way i think.
Tell me why my $20 investment with FM is the right thing to do!

Thanks for the interest,
Steve.

[Merovingian]

Well, for one, read this recent thread. Tell me at google/gmail, will you ever be able to talk to a real person, let alone one of the principal developers and owners??? I think not.

The personal, individual attention you receive here at Fastmail is the reason I am here, along with the endless customization of features.

Also, if you upgrade from Member to Full, you will be able to use several differrent aliases to send to/from. Try this at gmail, and the recipients will see "alias @ aliasdomain.tld, on behalf of youraddress @ gmail.com". Quite useless if you ask me.

Fastmail Full membership also gives access to per-user bayes spam filtering. Again, customize yours as you wish. Gmail does not have any option to change, and has been discussed here recently that gmail chooses for you some emails to delete before reaching your inbox.

I could go on and on, but don't have the time. You really should stay with Fastmail, IMO.

good luck with your choice!



p.s. I have referred 6 friends and family that has changed and joined Fastmail. Not one of them has regretted it.

[ReuvenNY]

Nothing beat the Gmail price...but if you like IMAP, Fastmail's IMAP is much faster and much better overall.

Here is what I do and recommend to others:

Get Fastmail's Enhanced account ($40 a year) so you have much more storage, can host your own domains for email, even have your own website. Then automatically forward all your FM messages to a Gmail account for storage and lightning fast search.
A few points:

• In my view the privacy issue as related to Gmail is exaggerated.

• The overall experience of FM is superior for all the reasons you mentioned above.

• The Full account is a worse value then the Enhanced, though cheaper.

I am sure you will hear many more opinions here, some more detailed and comprehensive then mine. However I have an Enhanced account since they came up with it in 2002 and Gmail since it's inception and I couldn't ask for a better email solution.

[JRobert]

It sounds like you already know you want the Full account and are looking for folks to find gaps or oversights in your reasoning. But our reasons are only our reasons and don't necessarily mean as much to you. You've probably thought of what you find most important. I think you just made your own best case for upgrading, and quite well, too. So now, just do it! (Or think about it for awhile more and then do it. But set yourself a limit on "awhile more" so it doesn't become "forever"). Good luck with your decision.

[akorvemaker]

I had a FM Full account for years (just recently switched to a Family plan), and have used Gmail, and vastly prefer FM. I use the web interface primarily, and I dislike Gmail's. It's so much slower to load, I don't like the conversation view for most purposes, and I can't really organize things into folders. I tend to prefer the folder hierarchy over tags, so FM suits my needs much better. I like the ability to back everything up (including folders) via IMAP. I know Gmail recently added a type of IMAP support, but it's not the same thing.

I recommend the Full account. The improved spam protection and space are well worth it. Or consider getting a Family plan if you also want to host your own domain. It's only a few dollars more for similar mail storage space.

[dewdman42]

Dunno, I am trying to decide also. I've been a FM user for several years now and quite happy with it as an email provider alone. Unfortunately the great guys at Fastmail have not upgraded to include calendaring and contact management, something which most of us sorely need. Currently I use the Bynari plugin with my FM imap account to provide me with calendaring and contact, in outlook. However, I am about to switch to Mac, or at least I will have a Mac desktop and PC notebook, not to mention my phone needs access. So bynari will not help me anymore.

I have looked into Google Apps. As a complete solution it looks quite nice. Apple is rolling out something even better for twice the price (MobileMe). However, FM still has a few mail related features that those other guys are ignoring and I have grown quite fond of them. Namely, the ability to automatically move incoming messages into folders based on search criteria. That is huge. I feel more confident that FM has my mail backed up in general, then what Google is probably doing, though they are probably al using mirroring technology and its not likely to lose everything, and nothing is 100% safe except for my own backups. Anyway, I love that I can have pretty much anything @mydomainname go through my server side filter to be rejected or moved to incoming folders, etc.. None of the other email providers come close to the level of control there and this is really a key feature.

I just wish FM would add true calendaring with web access, and true LDAP contacts with web access, etc.. I would like to be able to use mail, contact and cal from all places interchangeably. Mac or PC, outlook, ical, imail, web based, etc etc... Apple's new service gets my #1 vote for all inclusive package and google apps gets my #2 vote for all inclusive and FM is way down the list. But for just the mail side of things and file storage, FM is probably still the best way to go.

[ChinaLamb]

Originally Posted by sadams

Hi All,

I would like some feedback/comments/views from people here regarding upgrading to a Full account vs defecting to google.

Steve,
You know, I have gone back and forth for years. But, this is what I keep going back to. Fastmail offers the features that really make email work the way I want it to work.

Rob has come through for me a number of times in tweaking some things with the Fastmail front and back ends.

Gmail will always be a mass market email system. That is, they will provide something that appeals to a majority of the people who all need similar functionality.

Fastmail takes care of the rest of us.

So even though I have asked, "Can Fastmail Compete in this Market", I keep coming to the conclusion that, it is absolutely worth the price I pay for my enhanced account.

The other half of the argument is this. I know the privacy concerns with gmail. (1) The argument exists, but is overblown - but it still exists. (2) People are actively working to hack Gmail accounts. I am not sure how easy it would be to get my account back, if, infact, it was hacked. So many aspects of my life depend on my email. And for that, I am not willing to accept any additional risk - no matter how small.

[LazyGun]

Hi.
Here's my two cents.

I have no real knowledge of googles email facilities for the simple reason that I will only ever give up my Enhanced fastmail account when... um. Well never.


Honestly. I'm that happy with it.

I opened my first fastmail account sometime in 2001 when you got all the cool stuff free, it might even have been a beta run. When they finally set up the picing structure I was straight in. Faie enough, they've got a great product. It's actually the only thing on the internet or on my computer where I haven't gone with a free alternative. Well. Except Windows. Ubuntu here I come! The oldest mail I have was sent on 31 Jan 2002 at 4:48 PM.

I would imagine I'm a moderate user. I have never deleted an email although there are some in my trash folder. Mind you, I've also never backed up either which is silly. Not to worry though cos Rob, Jeremy and the crew take care of that for you! I have 7166 emails in 19 different folders taking up 194MB Out of six Gb. And I also have some files serving as a website using up 5.4MB out of 2Gb. Here's a blast: http://www.emaildiscussions.com/showthread.php?t=15001

Because of the customisable Sieve filter, I can finely tune what happens to every single email that comes my way. At the moment I am getting spam at the rate of one about every three days. The spam is all from the same source - something about a certain blue pill. I've received about 1000 spams in 7 and a half years. Now that's not bad.

I can block, filter or route ANY mail based on ANY criteria. Bounce with custom messages or drop them silently. Or click a few buttons and let the automatics kick in.

Virus filters, spam filters, website, my own domain, NO ads, backups, priority support. At my usage I'm getting essentially limitless space - I should start worrying sometime in 2245. And so far as I know when they come up with something new, enhanced accounts get it regardless.

With 2Gb of storage AND the facility to send myself 50MB files, I've got a huge amount of remote storage. My storage actually shows up as a folder in Explorer. FTP or Drag and drop. How easy can it get??

Where support is concerned, when I contact them I'm talking to a human. And not only that; they actually answer the very question I asked instead of a different one!!

I renewed another year about half an hour ago, and I live in fear of Yahoo! or Google coming knocking.

So, your two solutions.

i) Upgrade to a Full account
-Clearly the "right thing to do".......... Hell yeh!
-600MB should be plenty.......... Hell yeh!
-$20 p/a is a god price - is fair and provides value.......... Hell yeh!
ii) Defect to Google
-"Unlimited Storage"... Couple of hundred years worth with Fastmail.
Think you might need more?
-Strong Interface... Really? You think?
-No direct fees/costs... Actually with Fastmail you really do get what you pay for.
-I am using the calender... Is it that good? I honestly don't know.
-Isn't it just inevitable that we'll all just end up there anyway???? ;-) ... How dare you??


Here's your real choice:
i) Pay for all the above and then some. Made by people for people. (That's you)
ii) Get mass produced virtual plastic for free. Made by advertisers for advertisers. (That's not you)



Have fun!
That's the difference.

[David]

If you were looking for an unbiased opinion sadams, you would have done better to post this to a forum other than Fastmail.

That said, I used Fastmail myself (for many years) until just a few months ago (when I switched over to Gmail) Not because Gmail is better; it's not (IMO) I switched over because the amount of mail I get these days is miniscule (compared to what it was) - to the point where I am now reluctant to use a paid service.

Fastmail's web interface is awesome (and featurefull) - it beats Gmail all to &*^%$ (again IMO)

I use POP with my ISP these days, and store my old mail on Gmail, as I might need immediate access to it.

Cheers

David

[rabarberski]

I think that there is one thing that shouldn't keep you from deciding, and that is the price. 20$ / year is not even 2$ / month, which is basically free...
Especially given that you - as you said yourself - are quite happy with Fastmail already.

A lot of people spend less time deciding about buying much more costly stuff (1000$ PC/Mac/...), while pondering months over 20$ a year. (= the price of going out for some dinner). It is just not worth all the thinking

[David]

Originally Posted by rabarberski

I think that there is one thing that shouldn't keep you from deciding, and that is the price. 20$ / year is not even 2$ / month, which is basically free...
Especially given that you - as you said yourself - are quite happy with Fastmail already.

A lot of people spend less time deciding about buying much more costly stuff (1000$ PC/Mac/...), while pondering months over 20$ a year. (= the price of going out for some dinner). It is just not worth all the thinking

Yes rabarberski, I wonder why we (or I) do it - I spent more than twice as much today - as an annual 'Full' Fastmail account costs, on gas.

Note: I made a new years resolution, that 'if' gas ever gets to cost more than $1.50 a liter (Canadian) I will stop driving.

Note2: I am getting worried (it's getting close)

[squabsy]

Originally Posted by David

Yes rabarberski, I wonder why we (or I) do it - I spent more than twice as much today - as an annual 'Full' Fastmail account costs, on gas.

Note: I made a new years resolution, that 'if' gas ever gets to cost more than $1.50 a liter (Canadian) I will stop driving.

Note2: I am getting worried (it's getting close)

Consider Yourself Lucky currently ranges between £1.30 and £2.00 per Litre in the UK
Costs me nearly £80 to fill up my car
just checked the exchange rate and thats $2.60 to $4.00 canadian

[ankupan]

Hi,

Personally I prefer FM for my personal domain. FM has a lot of feature, which are not in Gmail.

Just go for FM and enjoy powerful email hosting.

FM support is better than Gmail too.

[janusz]

Originally Posted by ankupan

FM has a lot of feature, which are not in Gmail

Unfortunately, meaningful tagging and multi-folder searching are not included in FM's features

[Prognathous]

This comparison can help, but some things need to be updated (it makes gmail look better than it really is).

Prog.