You can also get your own domain, and have FastMail host your e-mail with that. It has the benefit of not tying your e-mail address to any single e-mail hoster: you own the domain for it.

FastMail has excellent documentation to get this set up. Migrating there from GMail (were I already used my own domain) was a breeze.

I'll second this. Moved from Gmail as well.

Just note that fastmail‘s search is basically useless if you expect Gmail-like search (unless I am missing some sort of trick to get it working). The rest of Fastmail is excellent though.

I use thunderbird IMAP and honestly, the search is not great either. If I have trouble finding something, recoll normally does the job. It indexes thunderbird too. And should you have a ZIP attachement in thunderbird, it will index the content too. :-)

https://www.lesbonscomptes.com/recoll/pages/index-recoll.htm...

(I work for Fastmail). Our search is comparable and in some ways more powerful than Gmail's search. If you're having problems, please create a support ticket (or just email [email protected]) and we'd love to look into that for you. Thanks!

Tell me more. I use Gmail at work and Fastmail at home, and I usually access all my emails via search. I much prefer Fastmail overall.

Why would someone expect a Gmail-like search when using not-Gmail?

Can’t say I’ve had many issues with Fastmail search at all. Google is known for search so they would naturally prevail for some searches, but Fastmail does just fine.

Gandi mailboxes are not free anymore (discussed e.g. here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35080777).

C&P from the other thread:

"So, further to recent changes at Gandi, I've just got some more info from support which I've included below. I've purchased domains from Gandi, pre-paying for multiple years of service such that some domains I have don't need renewing until 2027. When I purchased that service the offer was inclusive of 2 mailboxes for the duration of the contract, and now they're planning to remove those inclusive mailboxes and start charging me extra for them from next month.

To me, this sounds like a planned and fully intentional breach of contract."

Sorry, I was not aware that they changed. Currently I don't hold a domain with them. They were always a decent provider. This behavior seems very unfortunate.

I recently started using fastmail and am generally please with it. The only downside is that it's based in Australia, a country who's hatred of privacy would make even the NSA blush.

An FYI: Fastmail’s mail servers are located in the U.S.

Australian jurisdiction that can forcefully dictate any kind of spying and US where data stream tapping is the easiest, so it's double bad then