An update on leaving Gmail for Fastmail • Hacker News Board

Re: An update on leaving Gmail for Fastmail

#91

Post by jambalaya8 » Tue, Aug 18, 2026, 1:43 AM UTC

Vinnl wrote: post #32

beart wrote: post #5

Changing email providers sounds daunting, but it was relatively painless when I actually committed to it. I did a search over my password manager for my old email and just went through the list logging in and switching to the new email. Probably took a few hours at most. For anything I missed, I set gmail to forward everything to my new host. Cleaned up the few things I missed, and am only left with spam. I still lea…

> Changing email providers sounds daunting, but it ... Probably took a few hours at most. That does indeed sound as daunting as I feared, unfortunately.

can always buy a domain with pop3 enabled mail like the old days. pretty cheap.

Re: An update on leaving Gmail for Fastmail

#92

Post by Scrounger » Tue, Aug 18, 2026, 1:46 AM UTC

beart wrote: post #5

Changing email providers sounds daunting, but it was relatively painless when I actually committed to it. I did a search over my password manager for my old email and just went through the list logging in and switching to the new email. Probably took a few hours at most. For anything I missed, I set gmail to forward everything to my new host. Cleaned up the few things I missed, and am only left with spam. I still lea…

> Changing email providers sounds daunting, but it was relatively painless

If you have your own custom domain, changing providers is pretty easy, IMO. In fact, the portability factor is probably the best benefit of having your own domain.

Re: An update on leaving Gmail for Fastmail

#93

Post by olivierestsage » Tue, Aug 18, 2026, 1:46 AM UTC

I’ve used Fastmail for about 20 years. The worst thing that happened was that because of an outage in 2006, I couldn’t log in to download my homework in time for my teacher to believe I wasn’t faking. The best thing was that I deleted all of my emails in the 2020s due to an IMAP mistake and a human got in contact with me and fixed it. I think that speaks for itself. Definitely not canceling that subscription anytime soon

Re: An update on leaving Gmail for Fastmail

#94

Post by danpalmer » Tue, Aug 18, 2026, 2:00 AM UTC

I have a blog post that I've been meaning to write about why I moved from Fastmail to Gmail. I love Fastmail as a product, but I realised it wasn't what I wanted anymore from my email.

I think there's a tension between explicit and implicit organisation. If you want a really good email client, Fastmail is great, but while I did care about that at one point in my life, what I want now is really just the big box at the top of the email telling me about my package arriving today or showing my boarding pass. Fastmail is excellent for explicit organisation, but its implicit organisation isn't great. Gmail is the other way around. I don't like the Gmail UI or any of the organisation features, but I also don't really need to use them.

Re: An update on leaving Gmail for Fastmail

#95

Post by kevin_thibedeau » Tue, Aug 18, 2026, 2:19 AM UTC

Scrounger wrote: post #92

beart wrote: post #5

Changing email providers sounds daunting, but it was relatively painless when I actually committed to it. I did a search over my password manager for my old email and just went through the list logging in and switching to the new email. Probably took a few hours at most. For anything I missed, I set gmail to forward everything to my new host. Cleaned up the few things I missed, and am only left with spam. I still lea…

> Changing email providers sounds daunting, but it was relatively painless If you have your own custom domain, changing providers is pretty easy, IMO. In fact, the portability factor is probably the best benefit of having your own domain.

Some TLDs get rejected or autocorrected by broken validators. I've had foo.dev changed to foo.de.

Re: An update on leaving Gmail for Fastmail

#96

Post by coffeefirst » Tue, Aug 18, 2026, 2:20 AM UTC

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.

Oh yeah. I did this in 2021. I got the list out of 1Pass and just did them in small batches. I hit a few that wouldn’t let you change but nothing important.

I had all the important stuff done in a week.

Re: An update on leaving Gmail for Fastmail

#97

Post by sodapopcan » Tue, Aug 18, 2026, 2:43 AM UTC

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.

I was able to change it on every single service I use except for a well known Canadian pizza chain.

Re: An update on leaving Gmail for Fastmail

#98

Post by righthand » Tue, Aug 18, 2026, 2:49 AM UTC

danpalmer wrote: post #94

I have a blog post that I've been meaning to write about why I moved from Fastmail to Gmail. I love Fastmail as a product, but I realised it wasn't what I wanted anymore from my email. I think there's a tension between explicit and implicit organisation. If you want a really good email client, Fastmail is great, but while I did care about that at one point in my life, what I want now is really just the big box at the…

If you want to be tagged and tracked in that way then there is no better platform than Google services for sure.

Re: An update on leaving Gmail for Fastmail

#99

Post by jmm5 » Tue, Aug 18, 2026, 2:52 AM UTC

rationalist wrote: post #51

john01dav wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sustainability of this is dubious to me because you're taking a one time fee for service forever, and eventually someone (possibly a future owner) is going to want to get more money out of you over this. Also, there are recurring costs to host this that continue forever, even with no further income from you.

Maybe they're betting on new people always signing up and paying, but not using it much. Still a risky endeavor.

They heavily limit the number of lifetime subscriptions they sell to avoid it becoming a sustainability issue. That product isn't available right now, for example.

Re: An update on leaving Gmail for Fastmail

#100

Post by ggm » Tue, Aug 18, 2026, 3:03 AM UTC

A shout out to the fastmail management who acquired pobox.com and kept the domain going, leveraging the fastmail infra.

I was really pleased my decades long investment in @short.name paid off, and I have been able to keep a short @pobox.com instance, which I undoubtedly would lose in the migration into @fastmail.com

Aside from the vanity aspect, the distinction between a real mail provider and a stable forwarding service is a useful one. Thank you Bron (and others) for keeping things going.