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An update on leaving Gmail for Fastmail

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Re: An update on leaving Gmail for Fastmail

#61

Post by Marsymars »

kiwijamo wrote: post #56
paxys wrote: post #42

> Going and updating my accounts with a new address was easier than I was expecting Is this really true? Out of the probably many hundreds of online accounts I use I can think of very few that actually let you change the underlying email (which in almost ever case is the username) without having to create a brand new account.

Can you cite an example of a big, well-known, etc service that enforces a 'you can't change your email address' rule? I haven't really seen this sort of thing in the wild to be honest. Maybe one or two over 20+ years? I think the norm is using a username or an internal identification number (such as an UUID). It is rare the email address is actually used as the primary key to identify an account.

> Can you cite an example of a big, well-known, etc service that enforces a 'you can't change your email address' rule?

Philips Hue.

I've run into others, but that one sticks out because it's the only account I still have using my old email, since creating a new account would also involve re-pairing all of my Hue products.

Re: An update on leaving Gmail for Fastmail

#62

Post by disposedtrolley »

AustinDev wrote: post #46
dbgobrrr wrote: post #44

Good move! I was there before, and the worst part was... I was using a @gmail.com address. Bad mistake on my part. So actually tracking what I used the address with, that was my real pain. Now everything is on my custom domain, so if I need to move on from my current provider, it will be painless. In the process I did manage to delete a whole bunch of accounts I didn't use anymore. Incidentally, I also moved to fastm…

>I was using a @gmail.com address. Bad mistake on my part. So actually tracking what I used the address with, that was my real pain. This is thankfully mostly solved now by AI. I recently had a do a migration that I had been putting off for years and it was relatively painless.

> This is thankfully mostly solved now by AI.

How did you solve this with AI?

Re: An update on leaving Gmail for Fastmail

#63

Post by jkestner »

disposedtrolley wrote: post #62
AustinDev wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I was using a @gmail.com address. Bad mistake on my part. So actually tracking what I used the address with, that was my real pain. This is thankfully mostly solved now by AI. I recently had a do a migration that I had been putting off for years and it was relatively painless.

> This is thankfully mostly solved now by AI. How did you solve this with AI?

They said “mostly”. AI solves 90% and then you solve the other 90%.

Re: An update on leaving Gmail for Fastmail

#64

Post by bix6 »

rationalist wrote: post #55
bix6 wrote: post #17

Anyone have thoughts on proton vs fastmail?

Running a relatively-small opt-in email list, I've had problems with deliverability to Proton.

Do you know if it’s @proton domains specifically? Eg are custom domains similarly affected?

Re: An update on leaving Gmail for Fastmail

#65

Post by bix6 »

tamimio wrote: post #41
bix6 wrote: post #17

Anyone have thoughts on proton vs fastmail?

I have proton email since they had the .ch domain and two passwords to open your inbox, never used it for anything serious. Fastmail works well because you should never think of emails as private or anonymous, the protocol itself wasn’t designed with that in mind, I won’t even mind to have my whole email publicly shared like a blog because I never used it for anything private.

How come you use both instead of just migrating fully to fastmail?

Re: An update on leaving Gmail for Fastmail

#66

Post by muhammadusman »

I moved to using Fastmail as my primary over 7 years ago and I still use it as my main email address but I had hoped I could get rid of my gmail but instead it became a catch-all junk inbox similar to OP's gmail. The main issue is that so many websites use Login in with Google as a way to sign-in that I just had to keep my gmail logged in most of the time.

So instead of "moving away from Gmail to Fastmail" it's more like "using Gmail and Fastmail" for me.

Re: An update on leaving Gmail for Fastmail

#68

Post by Scene_Cast2 »

I made the move some time ago. There are some unpolished parts here and there, but I'm glad I made the move.

Somewhat unrelated criticism of Gmail - during the migration, I found out that there is no way to search for starred archived emails in Gmail. They don't show up in Starred, nor in any search with is:starred. Their star status also doesn't carry over when migrating.

Re: An update on leaving Gmail for Fastmail

#69

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

Subdomain addressing really is a killer feature. Since developers are braindead and can't implement a valid email address parser to save their lives, 'foo+bar@mydomain.com', 'foo-bar@mydomain.com', and 'foo.bar@mydomain.com' often get rejected as "invalid email addresses". But 'foo@bar.mydomain.com' always works fine.

Fastmail's Gmail integration to injest mails and calendars works fantastically. I've only had the calendar integration fail once, and was easily able to reconnect it. And iirc, you can even send mail through Gmail from Fastmail, so you can use Fastmail as an interface for both systems.

Up until recently my biggest gripe was the lack of offline mail, but finally both the web app and mobile app have offline now. The UI is still a teeny bit clunky (the whole email view reloads itself, even in the mobile app, for no reason), but I barely notice it. It's very stable, fast, reliable, and simple. I even use the 'file storage' feature as a replacement for GDrive sharing the occasional file.

One thing you don't realize when you leave Gmail is just how much crap you've signed up to over the years. I haven't used my Gmail for several years now but it still gets mail. (I'm keeping the account active so nobody else takes it and uses it for a weird attack)

Re: An update on leaving Gmail for Fastmail

#70

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

GiorgioG wrote: post #15

I moved to Fastmail from gmail a few years ago. I'm thrilled to not have Google searching my primary email address any longer. I still use gmail for SSO for a lot of things from my 'gmail.com' account.

You may already know this, but in case anyone else doesn't, you can create a Google account using a non-Google email address, so your SSO doesn't have to depend on a Gmail address if you don't want
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