Moving 12 years of email from GMail to FastMail • Hacker News Board

Re: Moving 12 years of email from GMail to FastMail

#61

Post by Illniyar » Mon, Aug 08, 2016, 2:10 PM UTC

ynak wrote: post #50

FastMail is great and their web interface is really light and fast, but the pricing[0] doesn't fit me. I want to use my custom domain as an email address, so I have to choose the `Enhanced` plan ($40 USD per 1 year). That also provides 100 domains and 500 domain aliases, it is a bit overwhelming for personal use. I hope they would make a new middle-class plan between `Full` and `Enhanced` with Cal/Card DAV features.…

What about the family or business plans? They seem to have custom domain even at the lite option.

https://www.fastmail.com/signup/family.html

Re: Moving 12 years of email from GMail to FastMail

#62

Post by 0xmohit » Mon, Aug 08, 2016, 2:12 PM UTC

Has anybody used HushMail [0] or ProtonMail [1]? How does it stand against both free services like GMail/Yahoo or paid ones like FastMail?

[0] https://www.hushmail.com/

[1] https://protonmail.com/

Re: Moving 12 years of email from GMail to FastMail

#63

Post by Theizestooke » Mon, Aug 08, 2016, 2:13 PM UTC

I've recently came across the same problem, and decided to go with runbox.com. Servers are located in Norway, and I think they have reasonable pricing.

Re: Moving 12 years of email from GMail to FastMail

#64

Post by bluGill » Mon, Aug 08, 2016, 2:13 PM UTC

ultramancool wrote: post #27

Why would you use FastMail when hosting your own mail server has a much higher privacy level? It seems no better than gmail in this respect.

Because I have interests other than running my own email server. I am capable of running my own email server. I'm also capable of taking my own garbage to the dump every week. I'm capable of removing my own appendix if that is required (under self administered local anesthesia). I hire those things done because I have better things to do with my time. I got tired of keeping up with the latest anti-spam best practices. I can pay someone $15/month to make the weekly trip to the local dump saving me an hour every week (I believe the dump charges a dumping fee as well which makes the math more in my favor). I can pay someone else to go to medical school thus saving me the time it takes. I would rather play with my kids, and if I can ever get them to sleep I have plenty of other things I enjoy doing.

FastMail is a cheap and easy option to email. They provide some services that I value over what free accounts have. It is a compromise, but everything is. I freely admit that I was failing at administering my own email servers: I never did get some anti-spam thing in place so a few domains rejected everything I sent. I got about 100 spam messages in my inbox every day (my filters caught 3 for each they let through). With Fastmail everyone accepts my email, and I get about one spam message a week which I can handle.

Re: Moving 12 years of email from GMail to FastMail

#65

Post by rfrey » Mon, Aug 08, 2016, 2:13 PM UTC

My business uses Fastmail, and I'm mostly happy with it. The one thing I notice every day though, is the spam detection. I start each day by marking 10-15 messages as spam. That's been the case for three years, and I don't seem to be making headway on training their spam filter.

It's a small thing, takes me all of 10 seconds, but I do notice it, every morning.

Re: Moving 12 years of email from GMail to FastMail

#66

Post by josephg » Mon, Aug 08, 2016, 2:14 PM UTC

unicornporn wrote: post #18

Lately I've been looking at some paid email options as I'm not happy with the offering over at Yahoo, Google, Microsoft or AOL. I wonder why they're all quite expensive. Fastmail is $40 a year, and that's for 15 GB. I would need at least 20 GB (which means I'm looking at $120 a year). 15 GB is free over at Google. Does that mean my data is really worth $40 a year to them. I do realize this is oversimplifying things..…

I have about 20gb of messages in gmail that I'm considering moving too. But really, I can't think of a single time I've needed to look at a message that was more than a couple of years old. Running your own email server, getting around spam blockers and blocking incoming spam all sounds like a pain.

My plan is to move to fastmail but and only migrate across the last year or so of messages. Google's data liberation front[1] lets you download the complete data set as an archive. Then I'll just import the most recent year into fastmail (or one of the competitors) and ask google to delete its copy of my mail archive.

[1] https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout

Re: Moving 12 years of email from GMail to FastMail

#67

Post by pmyjavec » Mon, Aug 08, 2016, 2:14 PM UTC

jhwhite wrote: post #31

How does this work with Google Docs? I have a Google Apps account and I don't want to lose all my documents. Is it possible to have my email usage through FastMail but keep my email address to log in to google so I can still access all my docs? Or do I need to create a gmail address and move my docs over, then move my email over?

Yes, all you need to do when moving to Fastmail is update the DNS MX records for your domain so that email is routed to your Fastmail Inbox.

Then all you need to do is, visit to docs.google.com and login using your Google accounts credentials.

Re: Moving 12 years of email from GMail to FastMail

#68

Post by hueving » Mon, Aug 08, 2016, 2:15 PM UTC

ultramancool wrote: post #27

Why would you use FastMail when hosting your own mail server has a much higher privacy level? It seems no better than gmail in this respect.

The author mentioned in the beginning that maintaining a server and fighting to keep it off of spam lists was too painful.

Re: Moving 12 years of email from GMail to FastMail

#69

Post by pmyjavec » Mon, Aug 08, 2016, 2:16 PM UTC

voltagex_ wrote: post #52

Unfortunately I can migrate my email to FastMail, but years worth of paid Android apps will be lost if I migrate away from my Google Apps for Work account.

You can use Fastmail for email and still keep your Google Apps account, that's what I've done it seems fine.

Re: Moving 12 years of email from GMail to FastMail

#70

Post by dave_atx » Mon, Aug 08, 2016, 2:16 PM UTC

I went the opposite direction -- FastMail to Google Apps -- several years ago when FM had ~3 solid days of downtime. Really long time ago, but still a bit of a sore spot for me as I missed at least a day and a half of incoming email that wasn't deliverable during that time. My sense is that they're a much more mature company now though.

That said, I'm not sure why more people don't consider upgrading to Google Apps from free GMail. $50 a year gets you an SLA, support, and no ads. It's been extremely reliable for me and I've not had any downtime (that I've noticed) for 5+ years. No performance problems either that I hear folks complain about with free GMail either.