New FastMail Plans & Pricing II - Page 4

David · 15 Sep 2016, 01:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rbeltz48

I have been using Fastmail for more than 8 years and before it became a paid service. I always liked the classic interface. But it has been changed several times and it drives me crazy every time it changes. I hate the new interface and the "new" classic interface. Why won't they leave well enough alone? Though FM has been very reliable overall, If they eliminate the classic look, I may change to another provider. I have always subscribed to the tried and true philosophy, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". Why oh why is FM always "fixing" it??

Because, you and I are a dying breed, and Fastmail is looking for the new money, I guess...

hadaso · 18 Sep 2016, 10:09 AM

Am I correct that family accounts can continue to renew at the legacy plans but only until one family member needs to upgrade (or an additional account needs to be added to the family) and then everyone has to upgrade to the the highest level needed by any one user?

BritTim · 18 Sep 2016, 10:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hadaso

Am I correct that family accounts can continue to renew at the legacy plans but only until one family member needs to upgrade (or an additional account needs to be added to the family) and then everyone has to upgrade to the the highest level needed by any one user?

I cannot answer this definitively, but my sense is that (for the time being) you can add, remove, upgrade and downgrade users within an existing family plan without restriction.

placebo · 18 Sep 2016, 11:39 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hadaso

Am I correct that family accounts can continue to renew at the legacy plans but only until one family member needs to upgrade (or an additional account needs to be added to the family) and then everyone has to upgrade to the the highest level needed by any one user?

Nope. The legacy family accounts still work the way they always have. I upgraded one of my accounts (within the family plan) with no complications.

paul29 · 11 Oct 2016, 08:47 AM

Oh man, I just noticed the pricing changes and came here to see what was going on.

I sympathize with users annoyed with domain hosting under the family plan going away, but that was an anomaly to begin with. And for those of us who had Standard or higher plans, the increase is not that huge a difference.

The real disaster imho is the elimination of the Lite plan. People who say the current plans are a good deal compared to paid Outlook, Google apps, etc, are missing the point. The Lite plan was competing with FREE gmail, yahoo, etc. I noticed the price change because my sister had some problems with her Yahoo account and I tried to get her to switch to fastmail. She was resistant at $10/year but at $30/year it's hopeless. $30 isn't a fortune but $10 to $30 the difference between a casual expenditure and one you have to think about.

I also don't see vast amounts of storage as having much value, and for business users I'd even consider it unwise. In the US, stored email must be turned over to authorities under administrative subpoena (no search warrant) if it's been on the server longer than 6 months (so it's now "stored" instead of "communications"). So if a business wants to archive its email, it's best off using its own computers for that purpose and letting its own legal department decide how to handle subpoenas, instead of having the email host do it for them. So (even as a dedicated fastmail user) if I was more motivated, I'd set up some scheme to move stored mail off of fastmail sooner than 6 months. In my case that's a few tens of MB of email at most, not counting spam.

People keep saying "inflation" but this is a computer product and its cost should be going downward not upward, like most other computer products, as hardware and bandwidth gets cheaper and internal processes get more automated.

As a fastmail account holder I'm not personally affected much, but I hate using gmail and yahoo (by "using" I include sending email to addresses on those services). So I've had a standing offer to my friends and acquaintances that if they wanted to switch to fastmail, I'd pay the first year ($10 Lite plan) and I've gotten a few takers. Now even if I'm willing to pay $30 (I'd do that for my sister but not for casual acquaintances like before), most people who found yahoo/gmail basically usable and who might have been willing to pay $10/year to get rid of the ads, won't consider paying $30 for a slightly improved version of what they are currently getting for free. Even receiving mail on personal domains is usually free since domain registrars often offer forwarding (to yahoo or whatever).

Fastmail has a better web interface than any of the FOSS web email clients but there's a decent native client for just about everything these days (laptop, mobile, ipad, whatever). So I guess my current plan for my sister is to connect her up with mxroute.com and help her set up native clients on her reading devices.

Sigh.

BritTim · 11 Oct 2016, 02:36 PM

You make some good points.

On business use of email, retention policies are very dependent on the legal jurisdiction they operate under, as well as executive perception of the risks Sometimes, in litigation, it can be very difficult to win if you do not have access to historical correspondence. I have some clients who absolutely do want large amounts of storage.

On elimination of Lite, I am unsure if the difference between $10 and $30 is that important. The big difference is between free and anything. It is a psychological, not practical, obstacle. People cannot see the drawbacks in the free plans, and the need to pay anything for mail service. They will buy a new $700 phone every year, but do not want to pay anything for the services that are the key reason for having the device in the first place.

Overall, though, I agree with you.

paul29 · 12 Oct 2016, 06:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BritTim

I have some clients who absolutely do want large amounts of storage.

Of course, I can understand that. Businesses have good reason to retain email archives. What I'm saying is there's a significant legal incentive (at least here in the US) to keep those archives on computers that are under your own control, rather than on someone else's service. So the logical thing is to use Fastmail for the nice UI, spam filtering, backups, easy search of recent correspondence etc., while periodically downloading archives (older than a few months, say) to a company computer or tape library.

Quote:

Originally Posted by BritTim

I am unsure if the difference between $10 and $30 is that important.

It is, it really is. $10 around here gets you a sandwich and a soft drink. That's an easy expenditure to make if I don't feel like warming something up at home. I do it pretty often. $30 is a sit-down dinner in a restaurant. I hardly ever do that by myself, and even with another person it's not frequent. A $30 spend here or there doesn't affect my long term financial outlook, but it adds up, and so I notice it. $10 is more like loose change and I do it with considerably less thought.

Plus there's also the perception of value received. What does the average gmail user gain by moving to Fastmail besides no ads? Not much as far as I can tell, but for $10, sure, whatever. For $30, they will ask for more justification and it's hard to find.

randian · 12 Oct 2016, 06:56 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by paul29

Plus there's also the perception of value received. What does the average gmail user gain by moving to Fastmail besides no ads? Not much as far as I can tell, but for $10, sure, whatever. For $30, they will ask for more justification and it's hard to find.

Fastmail markets the $30 account as being for "casual emailing". $10 isn't hard to justify for "casual", but $30 is far out of "casual" range.

It's a lot easier to find that justification if your $30 included domain support. $50 minimum for that is a killer.

placebo · 12 Oct 2016, 08:24 AM

I think FastMail is deliberately not trying to compete with free accounts. If someone's happy with Gmail or Yahoo, those companies can keep them. FastMail wants customers who recognize the value of its service and are therefore willing to pay for it.

paul29 · 12 Oct 2016, 09:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by placebo

I think FastMail is deliberately not trying to compete with free accounts.

That would be a change of direction, ISTM. They've long had built-in features for migrating from gmail and yahoo, they had an affordable Lite plan til recently, and they had free plans back in the day.

It also seems like they're killing good features again and again. Alternate logins was something I didn't use often, but when I used it, it was important. Now I have to figure out some workaround for its absence. I have to either be willing to type my password into insecure computers (I'm not willing), or rely on my home internet staying online while I'm travelling (unreliable) or put my login credentials onto an internet server (potential security gap, and anyway I thought I pay Fastmail to run servers so I don't have to). SMS was occasionally useful but they got rid of that. The non-Javascript web interface apparently used to be better, etc.

I have about a half year of service left (enhanced plan) and I'll have to think hard about renewing or figuring something else out (some combination of mxroute, domain registrar email hosting, and self hosting) when it lapses. Besides gmail/yahoo which are funded by ads, I also get a number of ad-free email accounts from my home ISP (funded from the ISP monthly charges) and from domain registrars (funded from domain registration fees). I don't currently use those accounts (I funnel almost everything to Fastmail) but they are there.

Maybe Fastmail will introduce interesting new features soon that make it more attractive and I'm certainly open to that. Otherwise it seems like they're charging more and more for less and less.

north · 4 Nov 2016, 10:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Berenburger

Yes, with more storage.

...but if I do no upgrade I will stay with old "Enhanced" account, right? Is there any information where old accounts for example Enhanced and new Standard are compared? I think about maybe to downgrade but find no info who that works and would i lose aliases then?

jhollington · 5 Nov 2016, 04:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by north

...but if I do no upgrade I will stay with old "Enhanced" account, right? Is there any information where old accounts for example Enhanced and new Standard are compared? I think about maybe to downgrade but find no info who that works and would i lose aliases then?

While there's no direct comparison chart, FastMail still has the Legacy Plans listed here in terms of the features, and of course the new plans are listed here, along with migration instructions.

For now at least FastMail indicates that you can stay on an existing "Enhanced" plan — or any of the other legacy plans — basically indefinitely. Of course, who knows if that will be the case forever, but for now they're clearly not interested in forcing anybody onto the new plans:

Quote:

For existing users on our previous plans there’s no change. Your current plan is unchanged and continues to offer the same features, for the same price as before.

They also note that you won't be allowed to downgrade if you have something setup on your account that wouldn't be available on the new plan, however from what I can tell, it seems that Enhanced and Standard are the same except for additional storage.

**ReuvenNY** · 5 Nov 2016, 04:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jhollington

... it seems that Enhanced and Standard are the same except for additional storage.

And additional cost...

17pm · 5 Nov 2016, 03:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ReuvenNY

And additional cost...

and additional features...

BritTim · 5 Nov 2016, 07:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 17pm

and additional features...

Can you briefly outline what they are. A quick scan did not reveal to me what they currently are, though I would anticipate some new features in the future not being made available to legacy accounts.

18 Sep 2016, 10:09 AM	#47
hadaso The "e" in e-mail Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Holon, Israel. Posts: 4,857	Am I correct that family accounts can continue to renew at the legacy plans but only until one family member needs to upgrade (or an additional account needs to be added to the family) and then everyone has to upgrade to the the highest level needed by any one user?

11 Oct 2016, 08:47 AM	#50
paul29 Senior Member Join Date: Apr 2014 Posts: 166	Oh man, I just noticed the pricing changes and came here to see what was going on. I sympathize with users annoyed with domain hosting under the family plan going away, but that was an anomaly to begin with. And for those of us who had Standard or higher plans, the increase is not that huge a difference. The real disaster imho is the elimination of the Lite plan. People who say the current plans are a good deal compared to paid Outlook, Google apps, etc, are missing the point. The Lite plan was competing with FREE gmail, yahoo, etc. I noticed the price change because my sister had some problems with her Yahoo account and I tried to get her to switch to fastmail. She was resistant at $10/year but at $30/year it's hopeless. $30 isn't a fortune but $10 to $30 the difference between a casual expenditure and one you have to think about. I also don't see vast amounts of storage as having much value, and for business users I'd even consider it unwise. In the US, stored email must be turned over to authorities under administrative subpoena (no search warrant) if it's been on the server longer than 6 months (so it's now "stored" instead of "communications"). So if a business wants to archive its email, it's best off using its own computers for that purpose and letting its own legal department decide how to handle subpoenas, instead of having the email host do it for them. So (even as a dedicated fastmail user) if I was more motivated, I'd set up some scheme to move stored mail off of fastmail sooner than 6 months. In my case that's a few tens of MB of email at most, not counting spam. People keep saying "inflation" but this is a computer product and its cost should be going downward not upward, like most other computer products, as hardware and bandwidth gets cheaper and internal processes get more automated. As a fastmail account holder I'm not personally affected much, but I hate using gmail and yahoo (by "using" I include sending email to addresses on those services). So I've had a standing offer to my friends and acquaintances that if they wanted to switch to fastmail, I'd pay the first year ($10 Lite plan) and I've gotten a few takers. Now even if I'm willing to pay $30 (I'd do that for my sister but not for casual acquaintances like before), most people who found yahoo/gmail basically usable and who might have been willing to pay $10/year to get rid of the ads, won't consider paying $30 for a slightly improved version of what they are currently getting for free. Even receiving mail on personal domains is usually free since domain registrars often offer forwarding (to yahoo or whatever). Fastmail has a better web interface than any of the FOSS web email clients but there's a decent native client for just about everything these days (laptop, mobile, ipad, whatever). So I guess my current plan for my sister is to connect her up with mxroute.com and help her set up native clients on her reading devices. Sigh.

11 Oct 2016, 02:36 PM	#51
BritTim The "e" in e-mail Join Date: May 2003 Location: mostly in Thailand Posts: 3,095	You make some good points. On business use of email, retention policies are very dependent on the legal jurisdiction they operate under, as well as executive perception of the risks Sometimes, in litigation, it can be very difficult to win if you do not have access to historical correspondence. I have some clients who absolutely do want large amounts of storage. On elimination of Lite, I am unsure if the difference between $10 and $30 is that important. The big difference is between free and anything. It is a psychological, not practical, obstacle. People cannot see the drawbacks in the free plans, and the need to pay anything for mail service. They will buy a new $700 phone every year, but do not want to pay anything for the services that are the key reason for having the device in the first place. Overall, though, I agree with you.

12 Oct 2016, 08:24 AM	#54
placebo Cornerstone of the Community Join Date: Jun 2004 Posts: 743	I think FastMail is deliberately not trying to compete with free accounts. If someone's happy with Gmail or Yahoo, those companies can keep them. FastMail wants customers who recognize the value of its service and are therefore willing to pay for it.