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Old 12 May 2019, 10:47 PM   #1
alistair234
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Join Date: Jul 2005
Location: Greenock in Scotland, UK
Posts: 182
wondering if to continue my fastmail service

hi, I'm wondering if I should continue my fast mail service, I've been a fastmail paid subscriber for many years(enhanced package before they changed It to standard package) a few years ago. but lately I've been wondering if to continue the service. I'm paid up until Monday, 30 December 2019. in the last couple of years it seems to me as if the service has gone backward rather than forward. I mean I can't see any changes in the website UI in the last few months/years, we used to get newsletter every month or every couple of months detailing all the changes they are making but can't tell you the last time I had any newsletter emails. we used to get a page detailing all the features what every package has, but can't find that anywhere.

on my my off365 outlook account I can send attachment upto 150MB but on fastmail I can only send upto 50MB

what do other people think?


thanks
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Old 13 May 2019, 12:44 AM   #2
BritTim
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My own view is that FastMail has improved in certain respects and regressed in others over the last few years.

On the plus side, the service is now very robust. With the exception of occasional issues with spam filtering (that I think all mail services suffer) FastMail is very reliable. FastMail remains fast.

On functionality, there is no longer a focus on power users, but there have been changes in areas like calendars that are apparently much appreciated by many regular users. I think FastMail has now decided (rightly from their point of view) that changes to the user interface, except where the benefits are extremely evident, are a bad idea. Many users detest change, and will never see the benefit of incremental improvements.

FastMail support remains patchy. Routine support requests are usually handled quickly, but any issue that must be escalated is liable to fester for days, weeks or months.

What I most regret is that FastMail no longer sees any value in maintaining a dialogue with its users. Since this inevitably means needing to listen to criticism, they find it uncomfortable and avoid it. This has always been somewhat the norm with IT services, but FastMail at one time bucked that trend and was one of the reasons I became a customer.

I see no pressing reasons to move away from FastMail at the current time, but there are alternative services which would meet the needs of most customers if they fancy a change.
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Old 13 May 2019, 08:40 AM   #3
goob
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Join Date: Sep 2012
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Whenever I decide whether to keep a service I figure out what I value the most and whether I can get that from the service I'm using, and whether I'll lose that if I cancel. With fastmail I value the reliability, the clean and easy-to-navigate interface, aliases, identities, and great spam control. I continue getting all of those so I continue paying.

It doesn't matter to me if the UI is never updated again since I like it just the way it is. If the FM staff never communicates with me via newsletter or something similar, I won't care. I can't remember the last time I had to contact them for support so that's not an issue for me either.

I continue getting the features I want, so I continue paying. What you value the most likely won't be the same as what I value the most, so you have to decide for yourself whether you think the service is worth your money.
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Old 13 May 2019, 11:59 AM   #4
Terry
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Quote:
Originally Posted by alistair234 View Post
hi, I'm wondering if I should continue my fast mail service, in the last couple of years it seems to me as if the service has gone backward rather than forward. I mean I can't see any changes in the website UI in the last few months/years.
what do other people think?
thanks
That is a difficult question.

Just recently I have been trying new browsers and email services but most lack the fastmail features.
I use Thunderbird sometimes have you tried that, it replaces a few missing fastmail features that we like and use.
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Old 13 May 2019, 02:22 PM   #5
xyzzy
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<oops - posted to the wrong thread>

Last edited by xyzzy : 13 May 2019 at 03:28 PM.
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Old 13 May 2019, 02:45 PM   #6
Terry
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? wrong forum section...
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Old 14 May 2019, 01:10 PM   #7
emoore
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Quote:
Originally Posted by alistair234 View Post
on my my off365 outlook account I can send attachment upto 150MB but on fastmail I can only send upto 50MB
Gmail and Yahoo (used by many ISPs) only support an attachment of up to 25MB, making the ability to send larger attachments of limited use. If I wanted to send a really large file I'd probably either use a free service such as WeTransfer to send it or include a link from something like Firefox Send or Dropbox in the message.

Quote:
Originally Posted by alistair234 View Post
I mean I can't see any changes in the website UI in the last few months/years, we used to get newsletter every month or every couple of months detailing all the changes they are making but can't tell you the last time I had any newsletter emails
I've been getting newsletters periodically.

In April they asked for volunteers via Twitter to do a 10-15 minute user test via email of some changes they were making. I heard about that in this forum and signed up. It was minor improvements to the webmail user interface but nothing to do with message composition.

Personally, I stick with Fastmail mainly because they're reliable, I typically go over a year without any spam in my inbox, and there isn't anything really driving me to switch. I use Thunderbird rather than webmail, so I don't care how fast they change webmail.
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Old 15 May 2019, 12:09 PM   #8
n5bb
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Fastmail attachment limit is about 50 MB, compared to outlook.com 34 MB

As already noted, very few services will accept 150 MB attachments! As far as I can see, the only way to increase the outlook.com attachment size to that 150 MB maximum limit is if you have an Exchange account where you are the Administrator. For “normal” outlook.com accounts (such as my Office 365 account) the limit is shown at this site:
https://support.office.com/en-us/art...e-c5fcc92ba9ab
The limit is a 34 MB file, which implies a 50 MB maximum email transport size for Outlook,com.

The Fastmail limit is shown here:
https://www.fastmail.com/help/account/limits.html
Note that the Fastmail limit is larger than Outlook.com — you can attach a 50 MB file, which fits within the 70 MB maximum email transport size for Fastmail.

If you think that Fastmail hasn’t made improvements recently, you need to try these actions:
  • Perform an email search on a large account. A couple of years ago this would often time out if all folders were searched. It’s now very fast, even when the whole account is searched. I think that Fastmail had a background process they added which caused a much better search index to be created for accounts.
  • You can now perform a very fast search forward or backward in your Fastmail calendar. The current calendar search is a major improvement and appears to me to be much better than any other email service I have tried. In addition to a simple text search, you can perform advanced calendar search operations. See:
    https://www.fastmail.com/help/calend...darsearch.html
    So if I search for “where:library” in either the Fastmail iOS app or on the web, I find all calendar events in which the Where field (location) contain the string “library”. A search for “where:lib” will also find these.
  • The calendar in general is also much better than a few months ago. It has too many features for me to quickly list, and it works great on the web, my iPad, and my iPhone.
  • The Files feature has also been greatly improved over the past few months and works great on my iPad and iPhone.
Bill
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Old 29 May 2019, 09:12 AM   #9
Gankaku
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I think this all depends on what you use the service for. If it's just for email and you're not so concerned about security, I guess you can use any email. But for me some of the features I use I cannot find on services like gmail. So you could make a list of why you have been using it and chose to pay for Fastmail, and see if it still fits your needs. You could also look further into the other services Fastmail has, like spam filtering and file storage and webdav and aliases...if you're not using those, could they be useful to you?
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Old 29 May 2019, 05:05 PM   #10
janusz
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Gankaku View Post
You could also look further into the other services Fastmail has, like spam filtering and file storage and webdav and aliases..
These services are not unique to Fastmail.
I bet there is no email provider which doesn't do spam filtering....
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Old 29 May 2019, 06:31 PM   #11
BritTim
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Quote:
Originally Posted by janusz View Post
These services are not unique to Fastmail.
I bet there is no email provider which doesn't do spam filtering....
That is true, but FastMail allows greater control over how spam filtering is applied than most other services. On the other hand, it takes a fair bit of effort and some knowledge to use all the controls FastMail provides to best effect.
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Old 2 Jun 2019, 06:33 AM   #12
Gankaku
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BritTim View Post
That is true, but FastMail allows greater control over how spam filtering is applied than most other services. On the other hand, it takes a fair bit of effort and some knowledge to use all the controls FastMail provides to best effect.
Right. This is what I meant. Even though I didn't say it. You're supposed to have ESP and read my mind to know what I meant.

But that's why I said look into it. All the email services have spam filtering but Fastmail has some really advanced stuff and you can personalize it. Basically look around at all the other services inside and truly look at them and see if you can use them. Like webdav. I never needed it until last year. Then I had a purpose for it. I keep some files up there and sync to them from my Android and from my PC. I feel confident the files are safe and secure. Once I had my main gmail locked because my account was marked as a spamming account. I love some features of gmail, but sometimes I'm kind of wary of what I put on that account because what if something happened to it? But now that they have 2FA I feel a little better about keeping things there I won't want to lose.
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Old 3 Jun 2019, 05:08 AM   #13
janusz
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Gankaku View Post
Once I had my main gmail locked because my account was marked as a spamming account. I love some features of gmail, but sometimes I'm kind of wary of what I put on that account because what if something happened to it? But now that they have 2FA I feel a little better about keeping things there I won't want to lose.
Comments from an ESP-less member:
"something happening to my account" may mean at least two things:
1) you are locked out because e.g. the email provider decides you are a spammer, or you make a mistake entering the password too many times
2) something horrible happens to the provider's hardware/software/company (fire, earthquake, hacker attack, bankruptcy).
As to (2), I strongly believe that the Really Big Players (Gmail, Yahoo, Microsoft's Hotmail/Outlook) are much, much more likely to survive than all sorts of small fry including Fastmail.
As to (1) this may happen with any provider. Of course with a paid account you have a chance to get personal support leading to access restoration, which is usually missing from any free email.

And of course 2FA is available for Fastmail and Gmail. The latter is more proactive/intrusive by e.g requesting a login confirmation when accessing from an unusual location (read: IP address).
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Old 3 Jun 2019, 12:31 PM   #14
emoore
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Quote:
Originally Posted by janusz View Post
And of course 2FA is available for Fastmail and Gmail. The latter is more proactive/intrusive by e.g requesting a login confirmation when accessing from an unusual location (read: IP address).
That's an understatement. If you use a email client such as Thunderbird with a VPN its not practical to have a Outlook or Gmail account because they keep throwing a hissy fit. Setting a security exception etc. only works temporarily. I had no problem with Fastmail, Yahoo, Comcast or Zoho since they don't care if your IP address is on the other side of the country from where you are.
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Old 4 Jun 2019, 03:34 AM   #15
SideshowBob
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Quote:
Originally Posted by emoore View Post
That's an understatement. If you use a email client such as Thunderbird with a VPN its not practical to have a Outlook or Gmail account because they keep throwing a hissy fit. Setting a security exception etc. only works temporarily.
It depends on what you want from the VPN, but what I do is have gmail traffic bypass the VPN. I created entries in the hosts file so the exception is just for two ports on a single IP address.
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