> everyone rave about FastMail in the other thread

There's a lack of critical commentary about FastMail in general. In my case, it's because I don't want to come off as being overly negative/contrarian, and I'm pretty terrible about leaving reviews for products and services, despite the fact that I rely heavily on reviews and making purchasing decisions.

I was a subscriber to FastMail for years and recently (last month) switched away. One of the main selling points you hear about FastMail is that, unlike the stories you hear about people getting locked out of Gmail and other Google services with no support line, then ostensibly support is part of the package you get from FastMail since you're actually a paying customer. Over ~4 years with FastMail, I filed two tickets, and I walked away both times feeling gross after nasty encounters with FastMail employees. (Honestly, quietly closing the tickets would have been better than the responses they left.) So I made a decision to walk away permanently by not renewing.

FastMail comes off as really well regarded in HN-like communities, but I can only help feeling like it's from those who set up an account years ago, had no problem sending and receiving mail, and have only ever coasted like that since, without ever interacting with the support that everyone feels warm and fuzzy about paying for but never using. The other thing is that there's a dearth of competition for FastMail, especially in the age of webmail, so they don't have to be good, all they have to do is exist.

I'm on Runbox now, which has a less sexy interface if you're using webmail rather than IMAP, but it turns out to be slightly cheaper for my use case, and I can attest that, based on my experience during migration from FastMail, at least the Runbox staff don't come off as jerks.

>at least the Runbox staff don't come off as jerks.

Yeah, that's my main actual service negative. The FM support staff are condescending, because they're the experts in email and you're just an ignorant customer.

Have you considered that maybe it's your attitude that's the problem, not FastMail? I've contacted FastMail support a number of times for various issues and not once have they ever been condescending.

My experience as well. They have the initial assumption that you're inexperienced (as is common in level 1 support and as I'm pretty sure they do for a good reason), but they are great at escalating, you don't have to ask them. And when an issue is escalated to engineers, you often get to talk to the founders and they are always happy to investigate in depth or explain, in detail, why things are they way they are or how they plan to address it.

I actually appreciate that they always give honest, straight, no BS answers and while FM is certainly not perfect, the support I got through the years is a large part of why I recently moved off my grandfathered plan to multiple (business/personal separation) more expensive plans.

I am a relatively happy FastMail customer, but I have two main complaints:

- Their spam filtering is atrocious.

- In the next 5 years I expect my family to expand and part of what drove me to FastMail was their family plan. That no longer exists.

I have never heard of Runbox before your post and after a quick glance at their website, I am intrigued. What other services did you consider?

I'm a new customer as of a few months ago. I created a support ticket when I ran into a glitch of some sort (manually entered a dozen contacts, they showed up in the address book, but when I refreshed the webpage, the contacts disappeared).

There wasn't much the support people could do, and I could see why someone might think I was just someone who didn't know what they were doing, but they didn't come off as unprofessional or anything to me.

That sucks you had that experience, but it does not seem to be the norm.

I'm using it for over 3 years and filed multiple tickets – the support always was very welcoming and fast.

I've been a paying member for years. For me, it's been good: service has been reliable; email gets delivered; when I did use them for hosting, pages were served; I've filed 2-3 tickets over that time and each was handled quickly and to my satisfaction. Certainly, I can't speak for everyone else's experience, but I've been happy with mine and will continue to use them in the immediate future.

I have Gmail for domains from the time when it was free for 5 users. Surprisingly Google keeps that working even if I have not paid them anything.

It used to be free for more than 5 users, I believe the limit was decreased gradually. I have one account with 20 free users and I vaguely recollect hearing about it being free for 50 users, possibly even 100's.

As recently as 3 years ago you could still sign up for 1 user. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4885538

> If you create a new Apps account going through the App Engine Admin Console you'll still be able to create a Standard Apps account for free but you'll only be able to get 1 user per account rather than the 10 you get today.

But per the referenced Google Groups discussion that has been shutdown sometime before January 2015.

> You'll now have to pay for a Google Apps account, there's no more freebie "1 user per account" provision.

I have one of those too, and I switched to Fastmail, which is much better. At the $4/mo I pay for it, it's a much better value than the free Gmail.

Same here. I signed up for Google Apps for Domains, and it keeps on chugging, even though that program is no longer.

As the submitter, their general service is good enough. Sometimes their server seems slow from here in Japan. Also, their support staff sometime seem complacent due to lack of competition. But it will probably work out for you if you go for it.

I am pissed off that they want to renege on our agreement.

One concrete negative point for me: the current plans have a fixed price per user and are not very flexible if the users have very different use levels. (My father is a very light user, whereas I am heavy user.) Some of the legacy plans - family and business were more flexible in his regard, but they are not offered to new signups.

I switched to Fastmail from GMail a month ago and I have no reason to complain. Spam filtering is indeed not as good as at GM but good enough.

It receives mail and sends mail.

There is anyway absolutely no other competitor in the game b/c FM and GM are the only web mail services offering a reasonable 2FA solution. I checked 'em all and would have preferred a different provider as their servers are located in NYC.

My motivation was to avoid having too much of my stuff depending on and catering to the Google Datenkrake.

I've been a paying member for a few years and FastMail has been nothing but fantastic. Excellent service, and every support ticket I've filed has been handled quickly and professionally. This lifetime account thing is the first time I've actually seen evidence of FastMail doing something wrong, and to be honest I'm finding it hard to actually care all that much about someone who got 15 years of email service for $15.

After being on FM for the past year or so, I am now moving back to Gsuite. I have been on FM on and off pretty much since they started, but their service is slow, and the spam filtering is poor.

It is pretty fast from here, what is slow for you?

The webclient and android app both.

FastMail is faster than Gmail for me. Where are you located?

Spain, on the end of a 300MB synchronous FTTH connection.

"if this is how they treat paying customers."

It looks to me like it's how they treat non-paying customers. Paying customers are their revenue source. I've heard good things from all of them that show up here.

Try ProtonMail instead. At least it offers end-to-end encryption.

What exactly does this mean? Is this just gpg encryption?

I don't know the full details but I believe that the data are sent encrypted to your browser and you decrypt them locally with a separate key.

This is how ssl works, no?

The point is, that they are supposed to be encrypted on the server. So, the only place where they get decrypted is inside of your browser.

For anyone evaluating services, before you invest too much time, know that Protonmail offers webmail only, if that's an important detail for you.

That is incorrect. ProtonMail has iOS, Android and Webmail.

It allows integration with IMAP-enabled third-party email clients (like Apple Mail, Thunderbird, Outlook) through an application now in closed beta only for paying ProtonMail users. You can learn more about it here: https://protonmail.com/bridge/

cheers