Opera acquires e-mail service Fastmail.fm
blog.fastmail.fm
Opera acquires e-mail service Fastmail.fm
1–10 of 27 posts
Re: Opera acquires e-mail service Fastmail.fm
#2I'm not sure whether this is a good thing or not. On the optimistic side, it could mean a more resourceful entity with plenty of goodies coming in like more File Hosting space.
On the other hand, I've been using the paid Fastmail service for over 4 years now and one thing they did head and shoulders above the bigger players was their service and support. Plus they were always pretty geeky, making sure the expert user had lots of configuration options to tweak every possible thing. Their sieve filtering was perhaps the best out there and the old web interface rocks.
What I fear is Opera trying to make FM into a mass consumer product losing the technical edge and going for the more flashy features like online chats rather than putting in better sieve capabilities or something like better Pine/Alpine support. How I wish this doesn't kill FM (I've prepaid for 2 years more). I would hate to make a email service switch since that is my primary communication medium online.
Re: Opera acquires e-mail service Fastmail.fm
#3Fastmail.fm was in my opinion the best free web mail solution available before Gmail came along.
Re: Opera acquires e-mail service Fastmail.fm
#4Is Operamail (http://operamail.com/) coming back? Those 3MB of storage were just awesome.
Re: Opera acquires e-mail service Fastmail.fm
#5I'm not sure whether this is a good thing or not. On the optimistic side, it could mean a more resourceful entity with plenty of goodies coming in like more File Hosting space. On the other hand, I've been using the paid Fastmail service for over 4 years now and one thing they did head and shoulders above the bigger players was their service and support. Plus they were always pretty geeky, making sure the expert user…
I pretty much agree with you. While I can understand their decision to sell to Opera, at the same time, I feel that Opera will probably ruin Fastmail by trying to turn it into just another Hotmail/Yahoo Mail/Gmail competitor.
Then again, who knows? Maybe this will end up being awesome.
Re: Opera acquires e-mail service Fastmail.fm
#6They have a pretty good plan for a startup if you want to go without a mail server for some time.
For mails generated by user interaction, eg. "You have a new answer to your question.", they have the limit of 2000 per hour. Can cover you for the first 2.000 - 3.000 users. And mail from their servers don't trigger spam filters at Google, Hotmail etc.
I hope they keep the Business accounts running. Here's the features and pricing table:
Re: Opera acquires e-mail service Fastmail.fm
#7I'm not sure whether this is a good thing or not. On the optimistic side, it could mean a more resourceful entity with plenty of goodies coming in like more File Hosting space. On the other hand, I've been using the paid Fastmail service for over 4 years now and one thing they did head and shoulders above the bigger players was their service and support. Plus they were always pretty geeky, making sure the expert user…
I don't know if you've used Opera, but it's by far the geekiest/most customizable browser, IMO. Total remapping of all shortcuts, ability to reconstruct the interface however you like from primitive controls, built in support for content (ad) blocking and mouse gestures, user script (Greasemonkey, sorta) support also built in, etc. I've never used Fastmail, but as you describe it, they couldn't have picked a better browser to sell to.
Re: Opera acquires e-mail service Fastmail.fm
#8Sometimes I, a long time Opera user, just don't understand them. From outside it looks like they have hard time keeping focus.
Re: Opera acquires e-mail service Fastmail.fm
#9Sometimes I, a long time Opera user, just don't understand them. From outside it looks like they have hard time keeping focus.
Big companies seem to have to start prototypes and follow various paths, maybe Opera are just bad at not telling too much, too early or at killing the ones that don't stick.
Re: Opera acquires e-mail service Fastmail.fm
#10I'm not sure whether this is a good thing or not. On the optimistic side, it could mean a more resourceful entity with plenty of goodies coming in like more File Hosting space. On the other hand, I've been using the paid Fastmail service for over 4 years now and one thing they did head and shoulders above the bigger players was their service and support. Plus they were always pretty geeky, making sure the expert user…
I don't know if you've used Opera, but it's by far the geekiest/most customizable browser, IMO. Total remapping of all shortcuts, ability to reconstruct the interface however you like from primitive controls, built in support for content (ad) blocking and mouse gestures, user script (Greasemonkey, sorta) support also built in, etc. I've never used Fastmail, but as you describe it, they couldn't have picked a better b…
I do use Opera as my primary browser since I've gotten used to it from the 5.x timeframe. And I do agree that they could not have chosen a better browser to sell to.
However, I'm wondering if it should have been sold at all, specifically to a company that makes browsers. Why not to a hosting company like Rackspace's acquisition of Mailtrust and perhaps more importantly, why sell at all if it was a pretty profitable entity.
Now this may be the founder's big exit and I sincerely congratulate them for it, however my concern lies about the consumer (me). I hope it all turns out for the best of everyone involved, but I do have my reservations till I actually see FM operating as well as, if not better, than the FM of old.