Fastmail Restructuring

[Avion]

Originally Posted by north

thank god i left the sinking ship fastmail

I once heard a sea captain say that the only way one should leave a sinking ship, is if you have to leave going upwards. Otherwise, the ship may probably be a better bet than a life raft.

Many companies change over the years - they evolve - and some people leave, new people join, and the company either prospers or fails.

Personally, I cannot see Fastmail failing, but I concede that the times they are a-changing.

[TenFour]

Many companies change over the years - they evolve - and some people leave, new people join, and the company either prospers or fails.

Personally, I cannot see Fastmail failing, but I concede that the times they are a-changing.

I'm sure that FM management is making changes they believe will strengthen their service and make it more desirable, but your needs and wants may differ. Luckily, there are many highly different email services to choose from and it is relatively easy to switch, especially when you use email addresses at your own domain. But, it is difficult if you have used an address tied to the provider. I find that sometimes out of the blue I receive an email to an old Gmail address from someone I haven't heard from in decades or longer.

[JeremyNicoll]

Originally Posted by TenFour

... it is relatively easy to switch, especially when you use email addresses at your own domain.

If you move hosting of email for a domain to some other provider, how exactly do you do that so no incoming mail is lost?

Even if you can backup or export everything held at the old provider, up to a certain point in time, I wonder if "old providers" will still let you log into your account there once they no longer host the domain for you (& possibly worse, if they no longer host DNS for that domain for you).

Maybe this is one of those things for which one would hope to have an (old) provider whose tech support staff are competent and reachable ... but if one /has to/ move a domain elsewhere that suggests the chance of their tech support being excellent ... might be poor.

I did, a while ago, contemplate such a move, and had a test domain set up at the old host, planning to attempt its migration to my planned new provider. But "real life" issues got in the way and I never did it. Meantime (IIRC) around then the old host installed a newer version of their webmail system (Roundcube) and installed it on a more powerful server, and my reasons to move evaporated, not least because they kept me informed, and allowed me access to their test version of the new webmail system while they did so.

[TenFour]

Q

If you move hosting of email for a domain to some other provider, how exactly do you do that so no incoming mail is lost?

My domain host provides free email forwarding so I first switch the domain to forward to some other address.

[trikotret]

Originally Posted by TenFour

Q
My domain host provides free email forwarding so I first switch the domain to forward to some other address.

My domain is with cloudflare and I used always switch around between providers. Cloudflare DNS with update in minutes.