ActiveSync (EAS) support

[sunbeam60]

Hi all,

Moved family's mail to fastmail.fm yesterday - the UI was fantastic and it was a reasonable price for the slew of features it offers.

Now this may already have been discussed to death - I searched all forums, however, and couldn't find any substantial references to this.

With calendar in beta, fastmail is approaching the holy 4-union of mail, contacts, notes, calendar. It is, in other words, starting to be a proper solution for companies and organisations/families who live in the 21st century.

Has fastmail discussed plans to implement ActiveSync (EAS) on top of this? - I love the standards push and wish it to continue, but the weird combination of mobile devices in our family (Windows Phone, iOS & Android devices) means EAS really is the only protocol that's supported across the board for sharing calendars, mail, contacts etc.

It seems an obvious next large feature to work on, once calendars are out of beta.

Any thoughts?

[cptlo306]

There are other threads where Fastmail has said ActiveSync isn't in the works. NuevaSync works great for email and maybe they will support Fastmail calendar and contacts when caldav and carddav are complete.

[eliodeo]

Originally Posted by cptlo306

There are other threads where Fastmail has said ActiveSync isn't in the works. NuevaSync works great for email and maybe they will support Fastmail calendar and contacts when caldav and carddav are complete.

adding 30USD to bill is not gonna work for most of the common people... while other providers are offering EAS or EWS for free...

[randian]

Would Fastmail Enhanced @ $50/year with EAS be worth it? Probably. They're dead set against it though. EuMX, Polarismail, and Zoho all offer EAS at substantial savings over Fastmail, though they lack some of FM's features (I'm a big fan of the alias and subdomain addressing functionality) and slick/fast webmail.

I can't really tell how good their EAS offerings are because the Android 4.4.2 email client is a piece of junk that disappears emails all the time. It doesn't delete them from the server, but all the emails in a folder spontaneously stop showing up, and the only recourse is to reset the EAS account.

[sunbeam60]

The thing I feel fastmail really stands to gain is to be GREAT on all fronts. No other mail/contacts/calendar provide this and it's a huge USP:

• Google is going to proprietary APIs to shuts out Microsoft and Apple.
• Microsoft is offering great EAS (they own the protocol, of course) but refuse to offer anything but POP as an alternative.
• Hosted Exchange providers (Rackspace and the like) offer really poor web experiences, because they'd love to re-sell you an Outlook license - and the great web experience isn't in their DNA anyway.

I would happily pay twice of what I currently pay for awesome EAS on top of the fantastic standards based approach fastmail offer. That means whatever client I use, whatever device, wherever I am, fastmail can be available and great.

What other provider could do that? Only fastmail, because of their independence and the audacious (to others) move to actually charge for great features.

[sunbeam60]

Originally Posted by eliodeo

adding 30USD to bill is not gonna work for most of the common people... while other providers are offering EAS or EWS for free...

Also, it's another provider I have to trust not to inspect, provide access to, copy & bungle up my communication. Part of what I love about fastmail is their transparency about their privacy policy.

[cptlo306]

Originally Posted by eliodeo

adding 30USD to bill is not gonna work for most of the common people... while other providers are offering EAS or EWS for free...

Then if EAS is a requirement, you are more than welcome to use the other providers.

Originally Posted by sunbeam60

The thing I feel fastmail really stands to gain is to be GREAT on all fronts. No other mail/contacts/calendar provide this and it's a huge USP:

• Google is going to proprietary APIs to shuts out Microsoft and Apple.
  
• Microsoft is offering great EAS (they own the protocol, of course) but refuse to offer anything but POP as an alternative.
• Hosted Exchange providers (Rackspace and the like) offer really poor web experiences, because they'd love to re-sell you an Outlook license - and the great web experience isn't in their DNA anyway.
  

I would happily pay twice of what I currently pay for awesome EAS on top of the fantastic standards based approach fastmail offer. That means whatever client I use, whatever device, wherever I am, fastmail can be available and great.

What other provider could do that? Only fastmail, because of their independence and the audacious (to others) move to actually charge for great features.

Microsoft offers IMAP with Outlook.com now.
I disagree with your opinion of hosted Exchange (Outlook Web). In fact, I think it's pretty powerful and easy to use.

[eliodeo]

Originally Posted by cptlo306

Then if EAS is a requirement, you are more than welcome to use the other providers.

...and just a reminder that this is a forum for discussions

[cptlo306]

Originally Posted by cptlo306

There are other threads where Fastmail has said ActiveSync isn't in the works. NuevaSync works great for email and maybe they will support Fastmail calendar and contacts when caldav and carddav are complete.

I emailed NuevaSync asking if they plan to add support for Fastmail caldav and carddav. They responded that they want to do it as a part of a future business relationship with Fastmail and suggested that if enough people want ActiveSync then hopefully Fastmail will work with them to provide this in the future.

Based on their response, unless many of us push Fastmail to work with NuevaSync, it doesn't look like they will be adding support.

[Berenburger]

I successfully synced my Windows Phone via Memotoo.

[the bishop]

Originally Posted by Berenburger

I successfully synced my Windows Phone via Memotoo.

So how do you like it so far? If I'm tracking this goes out to all of your sites and pulls it all into a place that your phone can access as one place, right? IE you just add memotoo to your phone in one place and you then have email, contacts, calendar, etc etc?

[me0000]

With their head in the sand like an ostrich will it be long before fastmail become an irrelevant for email use?

[the bishop]

Originally Posted by me0000

With their head in the sand like an ostrich will it be long before fastmail become an irrelevant for email use?

I would say no because a lot of us vote with our money to keep on trucking. I myself have another provider if you search my post history that I use for those things that FM doesn't currently support.

[randian]

I don't see a lot of need for real-time contact and calendar sync. How often do you change stuff on your phone and ten seconds later access it on your desktop, or vice versa? A quick manual sync if you need instant access, otherwise just wait a few minutes for the contacts to be updated. It's not like email where instant access is most desirable.

ActiveSync severely limits how many of each type of attribute (email addresses, phone numbers, etc) a contact can have. CardDAV doesn't. So long as FM's CardDAV implementation properly supports all the vCard attributes (FM doesn't right now, you can't have a Work Cell for example), preferably with a side of vCard 4.0, it will be better than EAS.

What you really want EAS for is email sync. That's only a problem for iOS, Android allows IMAP IDLE clients which makes EAS for email unnecessary. Perhaps EAS is too hard to integrate into Cyrus, or FM could just be constitutionally opposed to EAS. If I recall correctly both Polarismail and EuMX, which have EAS, use Dovecot.

As EAS providers both have issues IMO. Polarismail only allows two weeks of email to sync to your EAS client, and EuMX's Horde interface (the only one that works with EAS) only allows one email address per contact.

I wonder if Apple's push implementation (the one used by iCloud) is usable royalty free. Unlike IMAP IDLE, iOS allows iCloud push clients.

[cptlo306]

Originally Posted by randian

I don't see a lot of need for real-time contact and calendar sync. How often do you change stuff on your phone and ten seconds later access it on your desktop, or vice versa? A quick manual sync if you need instant access, otherwise just wait a few minutes for the contacts to be updated. It's not like email where instant access is most desirable.

ActiveSync severely limits how many of each type of attribute (email addresses, phone numbers, etc) a contact can have. CardDAV doesn't. So long as FM's CardDAV implementation properly supports all the vCard attributes (FM doesn't right now, you can't have a Work Cell for example), preferably with a side of vCard 4.0, it will be better than EAS.

What you really want EAS for is email sync. That's only a problem for iOS, Android allows IMAP IDLE clients which makes EAS for email unnecessary. Perhaps EAS is too hard to integrate into Cyrus, or FM could just be constitutionally opposed to EAS. If I recall correctly both Polarismail and EuMX, which have EAS, use Dovecot.

As EAS providers both have issues IMO. Polarismail only allows two weeks of email to sync to your EAS client, and EuMX's Horde interface (the only one that works with EAS) only allows one email address per contact.

I wonder if Apple's push implementation (the one used by iCloud) is usable royalty free. Unlike IMAP IDLE, iOS allows iCloud push clients.

I agree to a point but I also have a Windows phone which doesn't support IMAP IDLE or CardDav/CalDav (it supports these for Google only). ActiveSync is also much easier to configure...one email address and password and you're done. It also can sync tasks.