1. No Send and Archive
2. Sending is slooow. E.g. compose email, hit Send, wait several seconds, go back to Inbox. Gmail is instantaneous.
3. Hitting Reply is SLOOOOW to bring up the Reply pane. Fastmail does a POST that takes from 500ms to 5000ms (usually on the lower end but even that is noticeable. On the rare occasion it's longer it's incredibly frustrating).
4. Replying to a message in a thread requires the mouse. In Gmail, the keyboard shortcuts will act on the highlighted message in-thread. In Fastmail the keyboard shortcuts only act on the most recent message in the thread.
5. When viewing an email that is a response to another email, Gmail collapses the initial email and lets you expand it with an ellipsis. Fastmail does no such thing, which means you need to scroll (and scroll and scroll...) when looking up through long threads
6. Search is just OK vs. Gmail, but that's not a huge surprise.
In general Fastmail hasn't impressed me with the pace of development on the web app at all - the issues I had with it a year ago are still exactly the same issue I have today. I don't know how anybody who works on it and dogfoods it can't notice the speed issues every time they send an email.
But it's still nice to not be the product.
O.require(['mail', 'compose'], function () {
const composeController = FastMail.mail.screens.compose;
const mailActions = FastMail.mail.actions;
const mailToolbar = FastMail.views.mailToolbar;
mailToolbar.registerView('sendArchive', new O.ButtonView({
type: 's-send',
icon: 'icon-paper-plane',
_isSending: O.bind(composeController, 'instance.isSending'),
_mayMove: O.bind(mailActions, 'mayMove'),
isDisabled: function () {
return this.get('_isSending') || !this.get('_mayMove');
}.property('_isSending', '_mayMove'),
label: O.loc('Send & Archive'),
target: {
doIt: function () {
composeController.fire('send');
mailActions.archive();
}
},
method: 'doIt',
shortcut: 'cmd-shift-enter', // (Fairly arbitrarily chosen.)
}));
const config = O.clone(mailToolbar._configs.compose);
config.left.splice(config.left.indexOf('send'), 0, 'sendArchive', '-');
mailToolbar.registerConfig('compose', config);
});
I will say that Gmail handles threading better, as you said. Fastmail goes for a more traditional native-client-like approach; it didn't take long for me to switch back to that paradigm, but someone who has only ever known Gmail would definitely see it as a pain point.
Re threading I’ve had email for 25 years now and def. feel Gmail’s approach is superior, if only because you don’t have to scroll so freaking much!
Gmail is optimistic about it, while we’re actually sending the message before confirming to you that it’s been sent. (There are sound technical/historical reasons why it’s done the way it is; it’s not trivial to change.)
Once the JMAP spec stabilises (hopefully by the next IETF meeting in March), our web UI will switch to using JMAP, and then I think that sending messages will be done in the background. Not certain, I’m not the one that’s been doing the JMAPification of the FastMail web UI.
> 3. Hitting Reply is SLOOOOW to bring up the Reply pane. Fastmail does a POST that takes from 500ms to 5000ms (usually on the lower end but even that is noticeable. On the rare occasion it's longer it's incredibly frustrating).
This is definitely fixed with JMAP. In a JMAP world the client takes care of creating drafts, parsing MIME messages, defanging potentially malicious HTML, &c. rather than the server as our current implementation does.
> 4. […] In Fastmail the keyboard shortcuts only act on the most recent message in the thread.
Not true: use n/p to focus the appropriate message (same as in Gmail), then r et al. will apply to that particular message.
> 5. When viewing an email that is a response to another email, Gmail collapses the initial email and lets you expand it with an ellipsis. Fastmail does no such thing, which means you need to scroll (and scroll and scroll...) when looking up through long threads
FastMail does collapse the messages that have been read. You can expand individual messages by clicking on them or pressing e (provided you’re using n/p to switch between them), or Shift+e to expand all (Alt+Shift+e collapses all). In consequence of these things, I’m not sure what the issue you’re pointing out is; if you can provide more info we can look into improving it.
You may find it helpful to look at https://www.fastmail.com/help/receive/kbshortcuts.html.
---
For web UI work, we’ve been focusing on Topicbox and JMAP this year rather than FastMail; Topicbox has been a simpler staging ground for various improvements that we intend to bring to FastMail (mostly internal tooling stuff—I’ll be writing a bit about it later in our Advent series), and JMAP will enable various long-desired features (e.g. snooze, delayed/undo send). Next year will see more effort put into the FastMail web UI; my favourite item that we have planned (and I called dibs on implementing most of it!) is service workers for offline support and substantially improved performance (building on top of JMAP’s improvements).
(BTW, the Android app is in the process of being revamped to use the now-sufficiently-capable WebView, which will fix certain issues like the keyboard problems you mention. Not sure what progress is on that.)
FastMail’s web interface is already practically a PWA (from a few years before that term was invented), lacking only the ability to start offline (it copes with transient network connections pretty well), and use of the Web Notifications API (which we’ll probably support at some point, but not use in the app because it provides only a subset of the native functionality we currently use).
(That feature, your use of Source San Pro, and the fact that the calendar always starts with the current week was what sold me on your service.)
Thanks for the info on the future WebView version.
Same, in fact I just got my renewal notice over the weekend, which means either yesterday or today was the day I turned Gmail off for good.
> "I couldn't be happier. I mostly use native clients, but the Web client is a joy to use, and everything I've observed about Fastmail gives me confidence in their service."
I vastly prefer Fastmail's web client to any modern native client, though Claws mail comes close if only for its abundantly configurable interface. I really enjoy the extras with Fastmail too; the Notes and Files apps are perfect for quick access from any device. The fact that their iPhone app is a near perfect mirror of the desktop web client helps too.
> "I never used the Gmail-exclusive features like labels, so switching was pretty easy. I highly recommend it to anyone considering it."
Coming from over a decade of IMAP folders, I hated Gmail labels and found them awkward. Fastmail uses folders and I'm in my happy place with them.
I never thought I'd pay for email service beyond hosting my own, but Fastmail is definitely worth it to me.
Thanks for this heads-up! I've been looking for a super-simple notes taking method that would span work, home, and mobile. I never realized FastMail has one just under my nose!
Their web client is the only one I've ever been able to use without wanting to quit email.
This is partly possible with Gmail, as you can use addresses like <[email protected]>, but not all sites support emails with a + in them.
What differences have you noticed in your year since switching? I'm especially interested in any downsides. My biggest worry about Gmail is the lack of privacy from Google.
To me the only downside is the mobile app isn't quite as polished as Gmail. It doesn't work offline, and I notice occasional bugs or awkwardnesses. But it's still very usable, and I much prefer the Fastmail web interface to Gmail.
Edit: Also, the Fastmail importer didn't work very well on my large number of Gmail messages. It failed a few times and restarting it resulted in duplicate messags.
But FastMail supports other clients, right? I don't want to be forced to use their web interface or their app; I'm happy with the Apple-written Mail apps.
It does, but at least for me the problem is using my separate forwarding-only e-mail address instead of fastmail.com as the sender. As far as I see, I need the native app for this.
I have one issue with FastMail that I didn't have with Gmail. Every few days/weeks I'll get a wave of backspatter from someone spoofing my domain to spam. I've researched and it doesn't look like there's anything I can do about this. Most of the backspatter ends up in my spam folder, but not all of it does. I don't know if Gmail automatically removed backspatter -- not even sending it to my spam folder -- or if this only started after I transferred my domain.
It works like this: the spammer forges their headers to make it look like the from address is under my domain. My domain has DKIM/SPF set up, so a good recipient will compare the email to the authentication records, see they don't match, and then trash the email. But there are still a lot of mail servers out there that don't have that set up, so they accept the email as valid, process it, then return it to me when the account doesn't exist on their server. Like I said, annoying, but not a lot I can do other than set up rules to trash messages with a subject of "Undelivered Mail Returned to Sender."
I've been doing this for over 15 years, but with a much simpler setup: I just forward it to another account, which for the last 10-ish years has been an @gmail address. The mails show up in my Gmail inbox as From: the original sender and To: the custom domain.
As a caution: don't forward a top-level domain. You'll get all kinds of dictionary-style spam attacks and it becomes flooded with noise. Instead, use a sub-domain, so you get for example <*@something.mydomain.tld>.
Nice tip, I'll implement that for my setup. I had to stop a catchall on a TLD for the reason you mention and it'll be trivial to switch to a sub-domain. Thanks.
I don't disagree it's better if fastmail (or whatever) can receive directly as it saves another MX server in the middle, but it's still doable without the end provider explicitly supporting it.
You're probably considering switching based on your mail needs, so this might not apply to you, however:
In addition to mail, Fastmail also advertises[1] their plans come with their FastMail Files feature. It can be used for one-off file sharing (akin to Google Drive) and even static site hosting (explained in their support docs[2]). However, I learned from the CEO's comments in my support ticket that they're apparently overprovisioned and don't expect everyone to actually use the storage included with their plans.
I just took a cursory look at their landing and pricing pages and see they aren't touting Files loudly right now. (My initial thought is a hope that they took my remarks to heart from the thread that led to my decision to leave, when I said they should "go tone down the hosted storage aspect of your marketing". However, given that the promotional blog post from [1] occurred within the month that followed my comment, I suspect not.) The blog posts and Fastmail documentation[3] about the Files feature are still available, of course, whether or not it's still on the landing page.
This itself would have been only slightly disappointing, but the bad taste came from the passive aggressive responses in the support thread, that this was the same sort of attitude adopted in a previous (unrelated) support thread from a couple years ago, and that in this most recent incident, they decided to go on the offensive and compare using the 25GB storage space for making backups to abuse. (Their choice example being someone trying to abuse an ISP's lax limits on DNS to tunnel IP over it.) I half expect someone to show up here to try and apply a layer of spin in exactly the same way. Bonus points if they ignore my actual use case, try to make it out as if I was trying to do something I wasn't, and then call me the "disingenuous" one again.
1. https://blog.fastmail.com/2017/03/29/faster-files/
Isn't that true for every file hosting service everywhere? Most people only use a fraction of their available storage, so there's no need to actually provision enough space for everyone to use 100% of their quota. Doing so would be a waste of space.
I did use inbox before (and I still get some email to my gmail account) and it does have nice features like snooze that I miss. But on the whole I am happy with my choice to use fast mail.
I should also add that I seem to get slightly more junk mail than I did before, but it is close and hard to tell, I have not had a real email marked as spam yet, which did happen from time to time with gmail, so this isn't a complaint, just an observation.
In Gmail (with G Suite) one has to manually add every identity they may wish to reply from - there’s no <star>@ option. Additionally, it’s impossible to hide your real email address/Google Account address. It’ll always be disclosed in the email headers unlike FastMail.
I’d love if G Suite would make such a workflow easier..
[0] escape characters don’t seem to work here, <star> refers to what’d you think it does
I didn't know that, but it's fantastic news! I was doing things the awkward "gmail" way.
Edit: Simply throwing this out there in case Fastmail doesn't and you're looking for alternatives. Not shilling for Zoho.
Personally, I'm only interested in email. But thanks for letting me know about other options!
I ask because that is what I want. I want my account to autodestruct if compromised and when recovered I want to be assured that all my personal data has been safeguarded by effectively throwing away the key into the depths of Mordor.
- plays nice with mbsync
- sane system: real folders, not labels
- customer service with an IRL person
- identities feature
To me I always found labels to be the exact same as a folder, but not bound to a single instance. Ie, it is everything a folder has, and more. What am I missing?
I did switch to AquaMail and configured it to use FastMail through IMAP but there is no fast search. A good and fast search for mail is super critical.
Because of the lacking mobile app I'm unfortunately considering the move back to Google Apps.
says chrismorgan at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15856942
The email side is fantastic.
https://blog.fastmail.com/2017/11/04/shared-calendar-improve...
[0] Actually Windows 10 has a strange quirk of CalDAV/CardDAV support: It's only supported as part of iCloud account support. The solution is to create a fake iCloud account, and then change the advanced server settings to your CalDAV and CardDAV URLs instead of Apple's URLs. And then put in the correct credentials. This is true of desktop and phone Windows 10 alike.
I wager I get one, maybe two spam messages in my inbox per month (out of hundreds captured), and maybe one or two false positives in my entire couple years of having mail there.
In any case, that's a better record than Gmail - they've got a huge issue with directing legitimate mail into the spam can.
I don't recall the opposite (false positives) ever happening.
I would say the numbers are generally small enough that it does not bother me.
On occasion, I've had one or two legitimate emails end up in the Junk folder, but it's extremely rare.
I couldn't be happier. I mostly use native clients, but the Web client is a joy to use, and everything I've observed about Fastmail gives me confidence in their service.
I never used the Gmail-exclusive features like labels, so switching was pretty easy. I highly recommend it to anyone considering it.
Keep up the good work, guys.