Is fastmail too cheap?

[adthomas]

Its about time for me to renew my Full account for another year and being in the UK the exchange rate is such that I am looking at 10.60 GBP. Surely this is too cheap for a year of the great service I am receiving. Sure I could go for an enhanced account (and I may well do that if we reach 2 Pounds to the Dollar) but is just my extra 10 pounds going to make much difference overall? Why not have an increase for everyone? I checked back and the price does not appear to have changed much in quite a while - are we due an increase?

It gets worse when you consider what has happened with the Australian dollar which is where I understand fastmail is based. When I renewed in Feb 2002 my statement shows I paid 37.84 Australian dollars (then 14 GBP) now with the exchange rate where it is my 10.60 pounds (19.95 USD) is 25.33 Australian Dollars. How can they cope with a one third drop in income per user? I realise a high proportion of the costs must be the servers/bandwidth in the US but I sure would hate to see them ditch fastmail because of the exchange rate.

If the consensus is I should mind my own business and keep quiet I will but I would pay more for what fastmail provide and sure would hate to lose it.

Andrew - Who doesn't want to try a poll on his first post

[SusanUKF]

Go for it Andrew!! Susan.

[Gankaku]

Hi Andrew,

I thought an Enhanced account was quite expensive. It took me awhile and a lot of justifying before I could bring myself to upgrade.

I think the Full account is a great price. Not too high, not too low.

By the way Welcome to the forum, and do a poll! It's interesting to see the results.

Lisa

[gdg]

Originally posted by Gankaku
Hi Andrew,

I thought an Enhanced account was quite expensive. It took me awhile and a lot of justifying before I could bring myself to upgrade.

I think the Full account is a great price. Not too high, not too low.

By the way Welcome to the forum, and do a poll! It's interesting to see the results.

Lisa

I would have to agree with this statement, personally, though keep in mind, I'm never one to request a higher price for anything!

[ewal]

adthomas

Your post made me think about my renewal as well. Also I live in the UK so, for now, benefit from a strong pound.

So I just renewed my enhanced account for 5 years to take advantage of the fastmail discount. What with credits available to my official renew date later this year, referral credits and discounts for paying for 5 years my bill came to US$142.24 - which in sterling terms is only about £75. A bargain considering I get tons of email space, bandwidth and now file space. And I now don't have to renew until Feb 2009 - hopefully both Fastmail and I will still be around by then.

I agree with you - I also hope that fastmail are making enough profits. From what the fastmail staff have said to date I get the impression that not only are they pretty clued on programmers but also pretty clued up business people.

I sure hope that fastmail give preferential offers to their users if and when they do their IPO (initial public offering).

Edward

[lordsirpeter]

I use email more than I use any other communication service. I rely on it in many ways. If someone was to offer me say, a phone deal with 'more calls to anywhere in the world than you'll ever need' for around £10 per year, I'd be absolutely stunned.

If services were priced by their usefulness, FastMail (and some other good mail providers) really would be far too cheap as it is.

But it's a world driven by market forces, where you can very easily get email accounts for free (admittedly, often of poor quality), and as long as that situation exists I think any email company selling email to the public will find it hard to charge all but the smallest of prices. Power users will always pay, but what percentage of the world's personal email users are power users?

As far I am personally concerned - I would have no ojections to paying more, even double or more for a good solid email account, especially if low prices are putting the business at risk. Currently, it's less than a pound a month! I spend more than that on crisps, and I value my email a lot more than a bag of Walkers...(a brand of chips for US people, don't know what other countries call them...)

So yes, for what you get, the prices are extremely low, but I think any but the smallest increase would make it even harder to convince free users to part with a few pennies.

[gdg]

Ultimately, you do have to see what else is out there to determine price, and unfortunately there are other services that offer good email for about the same price range as Fastmail, sometimes less...and for someone really looking, Fastmail does not look that attractive at the outset...it takes some digging in the options, and really using it for a while to understand the benefits of it.

[andyb]

I have to agree that the cost of the service is driven by the market. Fastmail is a great service but is constrained by competition from free email providers and also the free email accounts offered by many ISPs with a dial-up or broadband account. My own ISP in Australia is starting to offer somewhat similar service (spam and virus filtering, seceure web access, IMAP on the way etc), although they're yet to compete adequately with Fastmail.

So, great work Rob and Jeremy, and I hope you can continue to offer this service for the price.

AndyB

[JeffK]

andyb, to whom do you refer?

Jeff (from Aus. too)

[XB77]

All that I can guess is that there isn't much competition in the UK. My own experience in the US is that FM is right in the mix--no not screamingly cheap except possibly the Member lifetime account, but even that will expire if you don't access it in any 120-day period. There are many very good free accounts. It is amazing what one gets if one is willing to pay the cost of ignoring some banner ads and a few self-promotional e-mails (some spam directly from the providers). If I didn't like my address a bit better and the POP Link feature, I would seriously look at free Yahoo as a main account. So for the priviledge of a "cooler" address and POP link (and a number of other features that I don't really use), I pay FM $20/year. Even Hotmail is quite decent for a limited storage service now that they have cleaned up their spam problems. The real competition is from companys like MailSnare, Runbox, etc. My own guess is that prices are coming down due to competition. Many people are only recently paying for e-mail. I don't see them going for $30, $40, $50 year accounts. There will be plenty of competion for them and due to that and the free accounts, pricing will trend lower. The question is: At current or lower trending prices, who will be able to offer the most enticing package?

BTW I would be willing to pay more for certain features, but FM doesn't know or seem to care. J&R have their own agenda which I hope keeps me around. They have me for another year anyway.

[s a]

I think Fastmail is priced just right. There are two things to take into consideration here;

a. brand names command higher prices. MSN or Yahoo could charge much higher annual rates if they offered what FM does.

b. FM's true beauty lies in its attention to detail. This means that existing users ( like us ) love it but new users have a hard time understanding why we love it. If newcomers see a much cheaper deal elsewhere they will take it. So FM needs to price their accounts at rates that are comparable to other providers (which is the way it is right now).

I think FM has earned a solid loyal user base but needs to double or triple it before considering price hikes.

[snsh]

the dollar is too cheap.

FM's storage/bandwidth is cheap too.

[aussieboykie]

Originally posted by s a
I think FM has earned a solid loyal user base but needs to double or triple it before considering price hikes.

A big increase in user base should not trigger a price hike. In fact economy of scale might even allow for a price cut or the addition of function/features at no extra charge. Competition determines what the market will bear. Loyal FM users will pay a premium, up to a point, for what they know and love but new users will only sign up if the package on offer is sufficiently compelling.

The real question is the extent to which the market for professional mail services will continue to mature. My guess is that 95%++ of current email users won't pay a cent until there is no alternative. If I'm right, that limits FM to a niche market of at best 5%. Competition is already fierce and growing but the FM team have a good product and appear to have a viable business model. As the niche grows, the FM team will either grow the business accordingly or sell. Many successful entrepreneurs lose motivation when their business gets to the point where middle management is required. For every Bill Gates who stays the course there must be a hundred thousand others who sell and move on to something else.

So let's enjoy what we have while we have it!

Cheers, AB

* edited to fix typos *

[SusanUKF]

Originally posted by s a
I think Fastmail is priced just right.
I think FM has earned a solid loyal user base but needs to double or triple it before considering price hikes.

Will the member one-time fee accounts remain as is when prices go up...can they change this?? I was just wondering...I would think now is the perfect time for everyone to buy in,before they double and triple in size and it will help them grow at the same time. Susan.

[room222]

Originally posted by adthomas
Its about time for me to renew my Full account for another year and being in the UK the exchange rate is such that I am looking at 10.60 GBP. Surely this is too cheap for a year of the great service I am receiving.

look if you find the service too cheap simply ask for your money back...