Guest and Member subscriptions being discontinued - Page 27

joe_devore · 25 Jun 2017, 02:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sflorack

You and Bamb0 need to get together and discuss black helicopters and foil hats, because I think you're on to something!

LOL.......

Gsptlsnz · 25 Jun 2017, 06:17 PM

Ha! The biggest threat to privacy is social media.

10 years ago people bragged to their friends about doing illegal things. Now they sit in a chair and share their illegal activities, sometimes with pictures, with 500 million strangers.

Terry · 25 Jun 2017, 07:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sflorack

You and Bamb0 need to get together and discuss black helicopters and foil hats, because I think you're on to something!

Dont for get the AK47...

:

joe_devore · 25 Jun 2017, 09:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gsptlsnz

Ha! The biggest threat to privacy is social media.

10 years ago people bragged to their friends about doing illegal things. Now they sit in a chair and share their illegal activities, sometimes with pictures, with 500 million strangers.

yeah... for me Facebook is indispensable.. I keep i touch with family and friends, sharing mainly truth stuff....

Quote:

Originally Posted by Terry

Don't for get the AK47...

:

AK47? the "kalashnikov 47"??

Terry · 26 Jun 2017, 10:18 AM

Yea they don't make them anymore but you can still get parts....

Gsptlsnz · 28 Jun 2017, 05:46 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Terry

Yea they don't make them anymore but you can still get parts....

At last! Everybody in the world has finally decided that peace and harmony is the only way to go!

samhu · 2 Jul 2017, 02:06 PM

Time to bring this thread back to topic after 10 trite, off-topic entries.

Over 48,000 views of this thread now (more than all but one "sticky") and still no "Representative of Fastmail" person's input except when said representative made the announcement of this unrighteous action to start this thread.

It looks like we can now confirm that the powers-that-be made up their minds a long ago that they were going to proceed unilaterally with the discontinuation of the "Lifetime" membership service, no matter what.

It can now also be confirmed that said representative of Fastmail is obviously intentionally shying away from this thread, because he has recently posted on the Classic Interface forum and elsewhere.

I believe that it was always going to be an uphill task to defend the underhand action with any sincerity. Anyway, it's also my wish that another reason for hiding away is unmitigated shame, which time will not simply wash away.

Gsptlsnz · 2 Jul 2017, 08:16 PM

Losing both the "Classic Interface" and the "Member Accounts" within 30 days is a double whammy and the only option left is to either pay up or switch to another email provider.

samhu · 2 Jul 2017, 08:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gsptlsnz

Losing both the "Classic Interface" and the "Member Accounts" within 30 days is a double whammy and the only option left is to either pay up or switch to another email provider.

Sorry but categorizing the loss of an email address/account, which "Lifetime" Members have had for 8-15 years, in the same boat as the loss of a legacy interface is, in my view, trite.

You don't have to agree.

ioneja · 3 Jul 2017, 12:30 AM

I haven't read the whole thread, but here's my take on losing the guest and member accounts, and why I think FM is frankly one of the last few email providers with a special combination of features, performance, and reliability and worth spending the money on, despite its flaws and occasional issues.

1) The Internet in general has undergone massive changes since the time FM introduced those accounts.

2) The email market has also drastically changed.

3) People's expectations of what services to get on the Internet (from various services like email) have also changed. For the most part, they are very used to getting just about everything "free."

4) The general business model of "free" and "freemium" services has matured and it requires certain big adaptations from a business point of view or the business will not survive.

5) People's expectations about privacy have diminished so much now that even though they like to complain about invasion of privacy from time to time, they are much more comfortable and willing to have a free service where the service provider mines their data and serves ads to them.

6) Almost all the decent email services that offered "free" or "freemium" or "lifetime" services like that have had to make some drastic changes to their business model or they have been sold off to another party or they have simply gone out of business.

7) The few surviving independent decent email services like FM have had to undergo big changes to survive... they have all adapted one way or another, or they've stagnated, or they've sacrificed some important aspect of quality or service, or they're in the middle of struggling right now and honestly can't predict if they'll stay in business much longer.

8) Privacy, spam, email abuse, deliverability, availability/reliability, phishing, security in general, etc., have all put additional pressure (and cost) on all serious email services to stay on top of their game and adapt to the fluid environment to keep up reliable and stable service for their customers... no longer can you simply "roll your own" quickie little email service and expect it won't need a tremendous amount of attention to keep it working reliably. Coming from an IT background in another life, I've tried running email servers, and it honestly sucked.

9) FM can't possibly stay in business without having an income from some revenue stream. It has to come from somewhere!

10) FM owners made the tactical decision to provide good email services without mining your data and serving ads. They could have gone down that other path to try to compete with GMail, etc., but they decided against.

11) FM can't possibly be held to the standard that they will offer a "lifetime" or "free" or "almost free" product indefinitely WITHOUT collecting some sort of revenue for the resources it takes to maintain those customers.

12) Yes, FM made the mistake, IMO, of making those kinds of offers years ago, but there's no way they could have known the future of how the Internet would evolve.

13) Besides all that, FM's user policy does allow them to make changes to their services, just like every other online service, and from time to time they have to make big changes to stay in business.

14) Additionally, as a business, FM has undergone at least two massive business restructurings during this whole evolution of the Internet (and maybe more that I don't know about) -- a) when they were sold off to Opera, and b) when they bought it back from Opera and became employee-owned. For all intents and purposes IMO, the FM of today is in fact NOT the same FM that made those promises and product offerings many, many years ago. They would NOT have survived if they stayed the same.

15) In fact, for example, they honored their member and guest accounts for far longer than any other decent small Internet company I've seen, even after undergoing massive business owner changes... they've honored those kinds of accounts.

16) If FM hadn't made big changes and adapted along the way, here's the alternative: a) FM would be out of business. b) FM would have been absorbed and lost inside some other big company which most likely would have to mine your data and serve ads. c) FM itself would have had to start mining your data and serving ads. d) Any number of other negative alternatives.

17) FM can't be expected to keep the SAME business model over a decade+ of changes without having to make adjustments so they can stay in business IMO.

18) Remarkably, FM has indeed survived when so many other services have had to make other compromises or have been doomed... and along the way they built a solid infrastructure with good privacy compared to most competitors, excellent reliability, superb performance, improved customer support compared to many years ago, and NO data mining and NO ads.

19) All that, and they continue to hang in there and they look like they are going to survive... they look sustainable.

20) And to get those email services from a company that is only interested in selling email services (as opposed to other companies that use email to actually sell OTHER services), someone only has to pay $3 per month or $30 per year for the basic account.

21) How they handled the cancellation of guest and member accounts was fairly reasonable to me by offering plenty of time and credits and discounts to move over to the current paid accounts.

22) Could they have done much better? Not really. Think about it... we don't know what their accountants know... we don't know how much things actually cost them to maintain... but have you seen an Internet business handle this kind of thing much better? In my book, they handled it better than 95% of the Internet services I've used over the years... and I've had services shut down on me... cloud services dissolve... freemium services get littered with ads...hosting services get ruined... "lifetime" services become unusable crapware... etc... In other words, FM handled this pretty dang well in my book.

23) And I'm not saying that FM is perfect. I've had my gripes over the years, but to be completely honest, I'm sitting here in 2017 using FM every day -- day in and day out -- and it's been rock solid for me for years. It is still "FAST" mail for me and it "just works" -- even their mobile app works well for me. Better than the crapware apps I have used from other services.

24) Yes, they shut down the old interface... but seriously guys... they kept it running for many years and had to maintain all that source code and keep it safe and reliable to use. That takes a huge amount of programming and staff resources... Again, the old interface is a separate discussion, but they have to stay in business and they made the calculation that there were not enough people on the old interface to justify the security and server and other related maintenance issues. They gave plenty of time to let people know what they were doing. And I really liked the old interface too. Hopefully, they'll continue to add cool refinements to the new interface, which is built on a much more sustainable platform of libraries and tools.

25) Email service is NOT an appliance, but people like to think of it that way for some reason. It requires constant maintenance and vigilance, tons of resources to keep it working safely, reliably and securely. It's the gateway to so many of our other services... and it's constantly under attack from every vector you can imagine. It's a highly at-risk kind of service and we expect it to perform perfectly and safely every day. That takes MONEY to pay the people to do it. And you have to get the money from somewhere. Instead of mining our data and posting ads, FM just charges us a reasonable fee.

26) If anything, I want companies like FM to survive... or in the end, all our services will be absorbed into giant monoliths and turned into profile data to push products on us. I'd like one last refuge of relative tranquility and pseudo-privacy left in the online world, and places like FM are here to provide that service.

27) And if that isn't enough to convince you that it's reasonable for FM to drop guest and member accounts, may I humbly remind you of the alternatives: what other services out there actually provide what FM provides for a reasonable cost? Nothing is FREE folks, you'll have to pay for email one way or another. Your email provider will get money to pay for your account one way or another. At least FM just asks for money directly from you. It's the most direct and simple kind of transaction.

Maybe you've found something else you like better, but the most die-hard veterans in this forum know there aren't many good choices left. As for me, I pay for various other email services to keep myself covered in case something goes south with one of the providers... but I have to say that very few email providers come close to the exact combination of features, performance, and reliability that FM offers. In my book, FM is actually a rarity on the Internet and for me, is absolutely worth spending money on.

My two bits only! (Or my 27 bits!) :-)

Best, ioneja

joe_devore · 3 Jul 2017, 12:49 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ioneja

My two bits only! (Or my 27 bits!) :-)

lol oomy... GOOD GAWD that wasn't two bits :P that was 27 page essay!
lol

thx anyway!

samhu · 3 Jul 2017, 03:05 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by samhu

And speaking about fractions, it has dawned on me that if the discussion about the ending of the classical interface (which started the same time as this one and which on Page 4 states only 1-2 percent use regularly) can garner over twice the number of replies this thread has, we may well be talking about an even smaller fraction of Fastmail users still on a "one-time payment" legacy account.

Anyway, as we are not privy to how many such legacy accounts there are out there, here's a bit of speculation on my part. Pick a number - 1000? 5000? At the lower number, the sum involved would be USD3k/month, and at the higher end, USD15k/month. And that's with a 100 percent conversion rate from "one-time payment" to "subscriber". If this amount is so critical to Fastmail, maybe we all shouldn’t be so smug about the longevity of any of our Fastmail email addresses (or Fastmail's survival). Just a thought.

Ioneja, it appears you may not be aware that legacy "Lifetime" Member accounts probably make up only a tiny fraction of Fastmail's base . The rather lame reasons that Fastmail nonchalantly provided (and have never further elaborated) for terminating these accounts is available here -

https://www.fastmail.com/help/account/member.html

To many, their reason for the closure of these legacy accounts sounded more like "it's for our convenience", rather than "we need the money for our survival." But then again, they'd be hastening their demise if they were to admit they were running on empty and needed the money.

Gsptlsnz · 3 Jul 2017, 04:44 AM

I don't mind paying $3. - $5. for more storage. I do mind losing the old interface!

But it is what it is...

ioneja · 3 Jul 2017, 04:56 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by samhu

Ioneja, it appears you may not be aware that legacy "Lifetime" Member accounts probably make up only a tiny fraction of Fastmail's base . The rather lame reasons that Fastmail nonchalantly provided (and have never further elaborated) for terminating these accounts is available here -

https://www.fastmail.com/help/account/member.html

To many, their reason for the closure of these legacy accounts sounded more like "it's for our convenience", rather than "we need the money for our survival." But then again, they'd be hastening their demise if they were to admit they were running on empty and needed the money.

Hi samhu,

FM has never been known for their good marketing or PR. They are just a bunch of guys who love email and who are rather good at it. They certainly are not going to win any marketing awards any time soon. The first thing they need to do is make sure they STAY in business, and I'm sure it wasn't an easy decision to close those accounts. Considering that the employees of FM are now the actual owners of FM, I'm sure this discussion came up many times.

Now I totally understand why some people are upset about this, but I try to look at it this way (and I understand if you disagree with me):

FM has a specific per-unit cost for every account. Each one of those accounts costs money to maintain. Real money that they have to get from somewhere. In their recent pricing structure change, BTW, one of the FM employees mentioned that the margins are very tight for the accounts. On some of the older paid accounts, they were already losing money, if I recall. I might be wrong about that, but I'm pretty sure I read one of the FM folks mention that. I believe the old Lite accounts were $10 per year, so if we just use that as a baseline (not factoring in anything else), that's at LEAST $10 of hard costs -- probably more -- associated with EVERY account at FM.

This cost adds up -- and whether or not there are 1000 people or 5000 people or 10000 people getting "basically free" accounts, you have to multiply that out over many years... in the past for what they've already covered, and in the future for as long they decided to keep it running.... So let's just say that we'll only include the last 8 years since that's the last time you could sign up for the member account... that really adds up! And if FM had to continue to offer that service perpetually in the future? That's a lot of money that the OLD FastMail promised for those kinds of accounts.

Now it was NOT a good idea for FM to offer the accounts in the first place... I'm willing to forgive them for making a dumb marketing move back then. They were never great at marketing... And they finally realized that and canceled signups. But then they CONTINUED to honor that account type for another 8 years! That's pretty honorable if you ask me... especially compared to so many other Internet services.

Consider this -- FM discontinued signups for those accounts in 2009... which is when Opera started the buyout process of FM. Opera then acquired FM in 2010 -- and I'll bet you that smarter business people at Opera realized that FM couldn't continue to offer those basically free accounts. But even after FM was acquired by Opera, and underwent a major business change, which could have easily spelled doom for ALL FastMail accounts, FM/Opera still honored those basically free accounts! They get points for that.

Then, in 2013, Opera realized that Opera needed to change its strategy AGAIN and was considering looking for a buyer for FM... yet another opportunity for FM to meet its demise! A lot of people don't realize that FM may not have survived intact once Opera had changed its strategy... that could have been the end of FM!

However, in 2013, the FM team decided to join together and they bought Fastmail from Opera, which is kind of a neat story, and really shows the passion of the FM team IMO. Arguably, they could have had far better job security by jumping ship and getting a higher-paid job at some big Internet company. If anything, their resumes were better due to having Opera experience. Instead of jumping ship, they bought FastMail.

So FM employees are now the owners of FM, and brought along a lot of things they learned from Opera IMO, about running FM like a *real* business to stay in business for the long haul. Part of that process is to look long and hard at all the expenses.

They are arguably still learning how to be a great business, and have a ways to go with customer service, etc... but their very jobs and personal investments are closely tied up with their own company, so from what I can tell, they seem to be running a pretty tight ship, or at least are highly motivated to do so.

And someone smart in FastMail sat down and calculated the costs of keeping those "basically free" accounts open, and guess what they decided back in 2013? Drumroll please... they decided to KEEP them open! They had every reason in the book by reasonable business standards to shut them down and trim the fat years ago. But instead, they kept those accounts open for an additional 5 years. FIVE extra years.

If I compare that to the many cloud services I use that have changed hands on me over the years, I honestly can't think of any that honored such an old commitment for so long. In Internet years.... 8 years after closing signups in 2009 IS "lifetime" in my book. Some people got many more years than that. Heck, I was running Windows XP back then. Windows 7 came out in July 2009. Keep in mind that the first iPad was released in 2010. You can't even install the latest iOS on the first iPad, let alone get "free updates" to some of those early apps and services! How many services or products has even Apple discontinued, or Microsoft, or fill-in-the-blank... during that time period???? It's fair to say that "free" for 8+ years in computer years is pretty dang good.

And in those 8+ years BTW, the email landscape has become increasingly more difficult to compete in -- the costs of security alone have gone way up.

From an IT background, I've seen first hand how hard it is to run a solid, robust, reliable, secure email server. I suggest to anyone to try setting up an email server for a large group of people and then go look at the logfiles. They are terrifying. As I'm sure you know, those servers are being attacked like crazy every second of every day from people all over the world with nothing to lose and everything to gain... and I realized very quickly that there was no way I was personally up to the task. Not to mention the simple little nightmares of preventing my email server from getting put on some blacklist because some other unrelated server in my IP block at my server colocation service abused the network. Heck, I remember even watching some other server right next door to mine at a highly reputable server company, try to hack my server. It was shocking, and I did end up getting him kicked out for abuse and hacking, but it's truly a nightmare and I'll never do something like that again. So I greatly appreciate anyone who loves that stuff and I will trust my email to someone good who is being PAID to do it, and I prefer to PAY that person directly for the service.

Bottom line is that there is nothing on the Internet that is actually free. Everything costs money and could go up in smoke any day. So Fastmail foolishly offered a product many, many years ago (in Internet time), and has undergone massive changes, changed ownership, survived a collapsing niche in the market... but how long do we hold them accountable for a mistake they made that long ago? Some people have been through two or more cars and two or more careers and even two or more spouses since they paid $15 for the service.

And then people are upset because FastMail offers $15 credit (the cost of the original membership), plus 50% discount for a subscription???? That's pretty decent!

And the alternative is that they could have long since been out of business. Or, would you be upset that FastMail would have littered your email with ads and is mining your data? Or would you have liked Yahoo to buy FastMail? Oh, right, Yahoo has been hacked several times and has the worst email on the planet and has now been sold off for chump change to Verizon. So imagine that.

That's why I really think people who are upset about this could consider looking at it slightly differently -- and yes, I get that some people are upset. But industry titans have risen and fallen in this time period... and FastMail is still kicking along fine. In my mind, I'd rather just pay the cost for my FastMail account and keep them in business. Because I'd hate for my FastMail account to turn into a subsidiary of Yahoo, which is a subsidiary of Verizon, which might one day be a subsidiary of Disney. And while I'm a big fan of Disney, I don't want them to run my email company.

I've said my peace on it, and I should definitely get back to enjoying my weekend working on a fun music project. I understand people may not agree with me. It's easy to feel cheated in situations like this, but I honestly think FastMail has more than met their obligation considering the big changes in the Internet in general and increasing costs of security -- which they mention on that page you referenced by the way. And I've come to accept that FastMail is just not good at artful PR and marketing... they could have handled some things better over the years, yes, but to hold them perpetually responsible for a dumb marketing move a decade ago is too much to ask IMO.

Best,
ioneja

PS: If you don't think I'm serious about Disney, just FYI: http://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/18/veriz...st-or-cbs.html

BritTim · 3 Jul 2017, 08:06 AM

ioneja ... I do not think terminating the guest accounts can be criticized.

On the member accounts, it would be interesting to know how many still exist. My guess would be many fewer than guest accounts, probably fewer than 1000. The member accounts have been pretty impractical for serious email usage for a long time. Terminating the member accounts (that people really were promised were lifetime accounts at the time) is something that ought only to be done if it is a business imperative. Sure, they are probably legally on solid ground in making this move. However, the loss in customer goodwill I am nearly sure outweighs the alternative of simply upgrading a few hundred light usage accounts to the lowest still supported account tier. Let's say this costs them US$2000 per year. Wouldn't that be a cost worth bearing to avoid bad publicity and a reduction in customer trust?

2 Jul 2017, 02:06 PM	#397
samhu Member Join Date: Feb 2007 Posts: 50	Shame Time to bring this thread back to topic after 10 trite, off-topic entries. Over 48,000 views of this thread now (more than all but one "sticky") and still no "Representative of Fastmail" person's input except when said representative made the announcement of this unrighteous action to start this thread. It looks like we can now confirm that the powers-that-be made up their minds a long ago that they were going to proceed unilaterally with the discontinuation of the "Lifetime" membership service, no matter what. It can now also be confirmed that said representative of Fastmail is obviously intentionally shying away from this thread, because he has recently posted on the Classic Interface forum and elsewhere. I believe that it was always going to be an uphill task to defend the underhand action with any sincerity. Anyway, it's also my wish that another reason for hiding away is unmitigated shame, which time will not simply wash away.

3 Jul 2017, 12:30 AM	#400
ioneja Cornerstone of the Community Join Date: Jul 2011 Posts: 713	I haven't read the whole thread, but here's my take on losing the guest and member accounts, and why I think FM is frankly one of the last few email providers with a special combination of features, performance, and reliability and worth spending the money on, despite its flaws and occasional issues. 1) The Internet in general has undergone massive changes since the time FM introduced those accounts. 2) The email market has also drastically changed. 3) People's expectations of what services to get on the Internet (from various services like email) have also changed. For the most part, they are very used to getting just about everything "free." 4) The general business model of "free" and "freemium" services has matured and it requires certain big adaptations from a business point of view or the business will not survive. 5) People's expectations about privacy have diminished so much now that even though they like to complain about invasion of privacy from time to time, they are much more comfortable and willing to have a free service where the service provider mines their data and serves ads to them. 6) Almost all the decent email services that offered "free" or "freemium" or "lifetime" services like that have had to make some drastic changes to their business model or they have been sold off to another party or they have simply gone out of business. 7) The few surviving independent decent email services like FM have had to undergo big changes to survive... they have all adapted one way or another, or they've stagnated, or they've sacrificed some important aspect of quality or service, or they're in the middle of struggling right now and honestly can't predict if they'll stay in business much longer. 8) Privacy, spam, email abuse, deliverability, availability/reliability, phishing, security in general, etc., have all put additional pressure (and cost) on all serious email services to stay on top of their game and adapt to the fluid environment to keep up reliable and stable service for their customers... no longer can you simply "roll your own" quickie little email service and expect it won't need a tremendous amount of attention to keep it working reliably. Coming from an IT background in another life, I've tried running email servers, and it honestly sucked. 9) FM can't possibly stay in business without having an income from some revenue stream. It has to come from somewhere! 10) FM owners made the tactical decision to provide good email services without mining your data and serving ads. They could have gone down that other path to try to compete with GMail, etc., but they decided against. 11) FM can't possibly be held to the standard that they will offer a "lifetime" or "free" or "almost free" product indefinitely WITHOUT collecting some sort of revenue for the resources it takes to maintain those customers. 12) Yes, FM made the mistake, IMO, of making those kinds of offers years ago, but there's no way they could have known the future of how the Internet would evolve. 13) Besides all that, FM's user policy does allow them to make changes to their services, just like every other online service, and from time to time they have to make big changes to stay in business. 14) Additionally, as a business, FM has undergone at least two massive business restructurings during this whole evolution of the Internet (and maybe more that I don't know about) -- a) when they were sold off to Opera, and b) when they bought it back from Opera and became employee-owned. For all intents and purposes IMO, the FM of today is in fact NOT the same FM that made those promises and product offerings many, many years ago. They would NOT have survived if they stayed the same. 15) In fact, for example, they honored their member and guest accounts for far longer than any other decent small Internet company I've seen, even after undergoing massive business owner changes... they've honored those kinds of accounts. 16) If FM hadn't made big changes and adapted along the way, here's the alternative: a) FM would be out of business. b) FM would have been absorbed and lost inside some other big company which most likely would have to mine your data and serve ads. c) FM itself would have had to start mining your data and serving ads. d) Any number of other negative alternatives. 17) FM can't be expected to keep the SAME business model over a decade+ of changes without having to make adjustments so they can stay in business IMO. 18) Remarkably, FM has indeed survived when so many other services have had to make other compromises or have been doomed... and along the way they built a solid infrastructure with good privacy compared to most competitors, excellent reliability, superb performance, improved customer support compared to many years ago, and NO data mining and NO ads. 19) All that, and they continue to hang in there and they look like they are going to survive... they look sustainable. 20) And to get those email services from a company that is only interested in selling email services (as opposed to other companies that use email to actually sell OTHER services), someone only has to pay $3 per month or $30 per year for the basic account. 21) How they handled the cancellation of guest and member accounts was fairly reasonable to me by offering plenty of time and credits and discounts to move over to the current paid accounts. 22) Could they have done much better? Not really. Think about it... we don't know what their accountants know... we don't know how much things actually cost them to maintain... but have you seen an Internet business handle this kind of thing much better? In my book, they handled it better than 95% of the Internet services I've used over the years... and I've had services shut down on me... cloud services dissolve... freemium services get littered with ads...hosting services get ruined... "lifetime" services become unusable crapware... etc... In other words, FM handled this pretty dang well in my book. 23) And I'm not saying that FM is perfect. I've had my gripes over the years, but to be completely honest, I'm sitting here in 2017 using FM every day -- day in and day out -- and it's been rock solid for me for years. It is still "FAST" mail for me and it "just works" -- even their mobile app works well for me. Better than the crapware apps I have used from other services. 24) Yes, they shut down the old interface... but seriously guys... they kept it running for many years and had to maintain all that source code and keep it safe and reliable to use. That takes a huge amount of programming and staff resources... Again, the old interface is a separate discussion, but they have to stay in business and they made the calculation that there were not enough people on the old interface to justify the security and server and other related maintenance issues. They gave plenty of time to let people know what they were doing. And I really liked the old interface too. Hopefully, they'll continue to add cool refinements to the new interface, which is built on a much more sustainable platform of libraries and tools. 25) Email service is NOT an appliance, but people like to think of it that way for some reason. It requires constant maintenance and vigilance, tons of resources to keep it working safely, reliably and securely. It's the gateway to so many of our other services... and it's constantly under attack from every vector you can imagine. It's a highly at-risk kind of service and we expect it to perform perfectly and safely every day. That takes MONEY to pay the people to do it. And you have to get the money from somewhere. Instead of mining our data and posting ads, FM just charges us a reasonable fee. 26) If anything, I want companies like FM to survive... or in the end, all our services will be absorbed into giant monoliths and turned into profile data to push products on us. I'd like one last refuge of relative tranquility and pseudo-privacy left in the online world, and places like FM are here to provide that service. 27) And if that isn't enough to convince you that it's reasonable for FM to drop guest and member accounts, may I humbly remind you of the alternatives: what other services out there actually provide what FM provides for a reasonable cost? Nothing is FREE folks, you'll have to pay for email one way or another. Your email provider will get money to pay for your account one way or another. At least FM just asks for money directly from you. It's the most direct and simple kind of transaction. Maybe you've found something else you like better, but the most die-hard veterans in this forum know there aren't many good choices left. As for me, I pay for various other email services to keep myself covered in case something goes south with one of the providers... but I have to say that very few email providers come close to the exact combination of features, performance, and reliability that FM offers. In my book, FM is actually a rarity on the Internet and for me, is absolutely worth spending money on. My two bits only! (Or my 27 bits!) :-) Best, ioneja Last edited by ioneja : 3 Jul 2017 at 12:40 AM.

25 Jun 2017, 06:17 PM	#392
Gsptlsnz Senior Member Join Date: Sep 2011 Location: 5th Dimension Posts: 180	Ha! The biggest threat to privacy is social media. 10 years ago people bragged to their friends about doing illegal things. Now they sit in a chair and share their illegal activities, sometimes with pictures, with 500 million strangers.

26 Jun 2017, 10:18 AM	#395
Terry The "e" in e-mail Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: VK4 Posts: 3,011	Yea they don't make them anymore but you can still get parts....

2 Jul 2017, 08:16 PM	#398
Gsptlsnz Senior Member Join Date: Sep 2011 Location: 5th Dimension Posts: 180	Losing both the "Classic Interface" and the "Member Accounts" within 30 days is a double whammy and the only option left is to either pay up or switch to another email provider.

3 Jul 2017, 04:44 AM	#403
Gsptlsnz Senior Member Join Date: Sep 2011 Location: 5th Dimension Posts: 180	I don't mind paying $3. - $5. for more storage. I do mind losing the old interface! But it is what it is...

3 Jul 2017, 08:06 AM	#405
BritTim The "e" in e-mail Join Date: May 2003 Location: mostly in Thailand Posts: 3,090	ioneja ... I do not think terminating the guest accounts can be criticized. On the member accounts, it would be interesting to know how many still exist. My guess would be many fewer than guest accounts, probably fewer than 1000. The member accounts have been pretty impractical for serious email usage for a long time. Terminating the member accounts (that people really were promised were lifetime accounts at the time) is something that ought only to be done if it is a business imperative. Sure, they are probably legally on solid ground in making this move. However, the loss in customer goodwill I am nearly sure outweighs the alternative of simply upgrading a few hundred light usage accounts to the lowest still supported account tier. Let's say this costs them US$2000 per year. Wouldn't that be a cost worth bearing to avoid bad publicity and a reduction in customer trust?