[jhollington]

Originally Posted by redge

I've yet to see a reason why Apple + FastMail (plus Dropbox, which has become ubiquitous regardless of ecosystem) is inferior to Microsoft or Google for e-mail communication.

I'd agree with that sentiment, and in fact take it even a step further.... FastMail is probably one of the very best providers for the Apple ecosystem, and I'd say it handily beats out iCloud e-mail for all but the most casual users.

I'm firmly entrenched in the Apple world as well, both for business and personal use, and that's the exact reason why I use FastMail — it not only provides support for custom domains, but it actually does iOS push notifications better than Apple's own iCloud does (and even Apple's macOS Server platform).

As for productivity tools, if one is used to the Apple ecosystem and its tools (Pages, Numbers, Notes, Keynote, Calendar, Contacts), bringing in Microsoft or Google tools introduces a new learning curve, and probable fragmentation, for no apparent reason.

Honestly, I don't think that's a zero-sum game where Microsoft's Office suite is concerned. Word and Excel are the 800-lb gorillas in the office productivity space, but they play so nicely with macOS and iOS that the advantage to using Pages or Numbers is relatively minor — in fact I'd say the only significant advantage is that you can get real-time collaboration with iCloud, whereas with Microsoft Office you'll have to use either OneDrive, Dropbox, or Google Drive.

I also think that there is a deeper issue, which is whether a technical issue like e-mail should be driving ecosystem decisions.

I would agree with your conclusion that it should not drive those kinds of business decisions, but I can see how it does for many people and businesses who are moving primarily to a cloud-based world. TenFour's comments about G Suite being a nice, harmonious ecosystem are valid if you want to live primarily on the web, but honestly G Suite falls down pretty badly in environments where traditional client-side apps are still preferred.

I've lived in all of these worlds at one time or another, and I'll honestly say that there are things to like about G Suite, but the fact is that it's optimally designed for somebody whose entire existence is within the browser (and that browser preferably being Chrome), and whose mobile devices are primarily Android-based. Start mixing and matching desktop clients and iOS devices, and you're really no longer "in the G Suite ecosystem" and it will start to feel disjointed pretty quickly.

On the flip side, if you live within the macOS and iOS world, the choice of e-mail provider becomes primarily a back-end service that feeds data into Apple's Mail apps. At that point, it doesn't particularly matter what IMAP-based e-mail provider you're using as your back-end, although some offer advantages that others don't, and this is where FastMail nudges out many of the rest for features like iOS push notification and solid "standard" IMAP support, and Gmail comes in last due to its slightly off-kilter IMAP implementations and its awkward mapping of labels to folders.