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Old 27 Jan 2022, 05:27 AM   #16
hadaso
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Quote:
Originally Posted by smtper View Post
... carries the risk of Fastmail changing the backend on you.
...
FastMail's backend is JMAP which is a standards track internet protocol. That's the protocol their web client and phone app use to communicate with their servers. It seems unlikely that after developing the protocol and going through the process of having it accepted by the IETF and published as a standards track RFC they would abandon it. And they always (as in the past 22 years) have supported IMAP.
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Old 27 Jan 2022, 10:41 AM   #17
smtper
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Originally Posted by hadaso View Post
FastMail's backend is JMAP which is a standards track internet protocol. That's the protocol their web client and phone app use to communicate with their servers. It seems unlikely that after developing the protocol and going through the process of having it accepted by the IETF and published as a standards track RFC they would abandon it. And they always (as in the past 22 years) have supported IMAP.
Very interesting. That's certainly a stronger API guaranttee. Still, there doesn't seem to be many other JMAP clients or servers, none of which is seeing serious use. This is mostly as a validation of Fastmail's implementation against their own spec.

This raises the question of why a copy of the old web client isn't just kept around somewhere, if they don't intend to change the protocol.

I get weird results with IMAP, depending on the client. For example, archived e-mails show up, likely because the concept of archiving isn't built into IMAP.
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Old 27 Jan 2022, 11:28 AM   #18
smtper
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I can't login though the JMAP demo client. This is not a great start.

https://jmap.io/jmap-demo-webmail/

Same if I try to go to the page directly.

https://jmap.fastmail.com/.well-known/jmap

Tried this with a created app and regular login.
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Old 27 Jan 2022, 12:56 PM   #19
NumberSix
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I'm not going to be one of those people who tries to convince you to stay, but my personal feeling is that you're blowing some small things out of proportion. I haven't notice an outage of any significance for years. Well... you have your experience.

In truth, FM could be pretty bad in the early days... say up to about 2010. Some of us stuck it out for years because we liked a lot of features that couldn't be found elsewhere. This is still true.

But also true: I have found the service to be extremely robust and stable for 10+ years now. Now I've got the features that I love and a mature company and team providing it. I was SOOO thankful when they separated from Opera. Nothing not to love now except the occasional minor irritation of minor UI features changed without my approval

I'm not a super heavy user - just (I think) a normal casual user who spends an hour at most on email per day. Maybe that makes the difference in our divergent experiences?
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Old 27 Jan 2022, 07:25 PM   #20
Terry
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Quote:
Originally Posted by smtper View Post
I can't login though the JMAP demo client. This is not a great start.

https://jmap.io/jmap-demo-webmail/

Same if I try to go to the page directly.

https://jmap.fastmail.com/.well-known/jmap

Tried this with a created app and regular login.
You may need a Fastmail app password not your normal password
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Old 27 Jan 2022, 07:51 PM   #21
FredOnline
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Originally Posted by NumberSix View Post
I'm not going to be one of those people who tries to convince you to stay, but my personal feeling is that you're blowing some small things out of proportion.
Agreed. For an e-mail service that you're only paying literally pennies a day for, that is excellent value.
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Old 27 Jan 2022, 08:33 PM   #22
smtper
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Originally Posted by Terry View Post
You may need a Fastmail app password not your normal password
Yup, that's what I meant by "Tried this with a created app". Its the first thing I usually do and don't normally try to enter my Fastmail password.

You can try it with an app on that page too.
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Old 27 Jan 2022, 10:12 PM   #23
BritTim
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Originally Posted by smtper View Post
Yup, that's what I meant by "Tried this with a created app". Its the first thing I usually do and don't normally try to enter my Fastmail password.

You can try it with an app on that page too.
I created an App password (with rights JMAP Mail) and the session sign in worked fine.
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Old 28 Jan 2022, 08:33 AM   #24
audelair
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Which settings reverted on their own? Just curious as I am considering moving to Fastmail from Google Workspace, primarily due to customer service disappointment on Google's side.
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Old 28 Jan 2022, 04:14 PM   #25
BritTim
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Which settings reverted on their own? Just curious as I am considering moving to Fastmail from Google Workspace, primarily due to customer service disappointment on Google's side.
I have personally never experienced that. What can happen (with Google even more than Fastmail) is that certain Settings screens require an explicit save before the new Settings take effect. Sometimes, users assume a reset has occurred when this is not the reality. I have certainly seen no evidence that randomly changing settings is a common occurrence in Fastmail.
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Old 29 Jan 2022, 08:52 PM   #26
smtper
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I created an App password (with rights JMAP Mail) and the session sign in worked fine.
Ah, I gave it the wrong permissions before. Thanks.
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Old 29 Jan 2022, 09:00 PM   #27
smtper
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Which settings reverted on their own? Just curious as I am considering moving to Fastmail from Google Workspace, primarily due to customer service disappointment on Google's side.
It was the "don't automatically add calendar events from received e-mails" setting. I'm on a bunch of mailing list.

Another was a DNS entry added that took down a page. (I'm pretty sure I checked the page was up and correct when I first moved the domain since it a slightly involved setup and all the other entries were there.)
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Old 29 Jan 2022, 09:33 PM   #28
BritTim
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Another was a DNS entry added that took down a page. (I'm pretty sure I checked the page was up and correct when I first moved the domain since it a slightly involved setup and all the other entries were there.)
You seem experienced, and you would surely have considered this, but is it possible that you checked just after moving the domain's DNS, and some settings that had not yet timed out and had been retrieved from the old DNS server continued to be used?
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Old 30 Jan 2022, 01:30 AM   #29
smtper
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You seem experienced, and you would surely have considered this, but is it possible that you checked just after moving the domain's DNS, and some settings that had not yet timed out and had been retrieved from the old DNS server continued to be used?
My notes aren't detailed enough rule out DNS caching problems entirely.

I remember switching over to Fastmail, the page going down, adding settings and eventually it was back up. I might have temporarily pointed to Fastmail's DNS servers to resolve so I could see the results faster. I didn't come back the next day to check.

But because it was down first, I think its less likely DNS caching.
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Old 6 Feb 2022, 02:07 AM   #30
smtper
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Originally Posted by NumberSix View Post
I'm not going to be one of those people who tries to convince you to stay, but my personal feeling is that you're blowing some small things out of proportion. I haven't notice an outage of any significance for years. Well... you have your experience.

In truth, FM could be pretty bad in the early days... say up to about 2010. Some of us stuck it out for years because we liked a lot of features that couldn't be found elsewhere. This is still true.

But also true: I have found the service to be extremely robust and stable for 10+ years now. Now I've got the features that I love and a mature company and team providing it. I was SOOO thankful when they separated from Opera. Nothing not to love now except the occasional minor irritation of minor UI features changed without my approval

I'm not a super heavy user - just (I think) a normal casual user who spends an hour at most on email per day. Maybe that makes the difference in our divergent experiences?
Thanks. Its certainly interesting to read about Fastmail's history. Aside from being very problematic for me and I had to scramble for a solution on a Monday morning, the sundden unavailability of the old UI is a sign of instability. Who knows what else will be unavailable tomorrow (or change in such a way as to effectively render it useless)?

I'm extrapolating here but I feel like Fastmail is different from Google only in that they do not yet have the market share that Google does. And if/when they do have more users, it will actually be much worse than Google.
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