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From Gmail to Fastmail

blog.l0cal.com

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Re: From Gmail to Fastmail

#141

Post by chmars »

ender7 wrote: post #28

There are plenty of reasons to switch to another host from Gmail, but this oft-expressed one is not great: "Getting my data back under control In the past months we’ve had a lot of scary revelations about privacy violations, the biggest being of course the NSA spying scandal. It became urgent to regain control of my data." If someone else is hosting your e-mail, then you do not have your data "under your control". A…

Fastmail and other Australian mail providers are not protected from the NSA, on the contrary, Australia is one of the Five Eyes:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes

Re: From Gmail to Fastmail

#142

Post by chmars »

eknkc wrote: post #76
sivers wrote: post #34

I'm so glad someone wrote this up. I've been meaning to. Of all the tech changes I've made in the last few years, moving from Google Apps mail to Fastmail is the one that's made me the happiest, every day. The webmail is absolutely amazing. So fast, rock-sold, clean, minimal, focused. Having your webmail experience be completely ad-free and snoop-free, and, well, Google-free is priceless. Choose the Business email op…

Same here! Have been using fastmail for ~6 months now. I was hesitant, thought I'd miss push mail on iOS but it has been just fine. Also, there are some iOS mail clients that can push on FastMail ( http://mymail.my.com ) I always hated Gmail's slow/weird IMAP behavior. Switched to Office365 at some point. Exchange was great but so freaking slow. FastMail has standard, fast IMAP. I also use the included DNS server for…

Fastmail seems to support IMAP Idle only. And IMAP Idle is not an option for mobile devices since the mail client has to keep the connection open all the time, so there goes your battery …

Re: From Gmail to Fastmail

#143

Post by cpach »

chmars wrote: post #139

I moved from Gmail to Fastmail too but I am not that happy. And no, Fastmail does not protect you from the NSA since Australia is one of the Five Eyes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes I moved from Gmail to Fastmail because my personal CRM's mail integration depends on Apple Mail. Gmail and Apple Mail do not go well together because Gmail is not IMAP (and Apple Mail has some issues too, even with the latest im…

The only trustworthy way to make sure that only the recipient is reading your message is to use end-to-end encryption. Which for e-mail means GnuPG.

Re: From Gmail to Fastmail

#144

Post by chmars »

sivers wrote: post #34

I'm so glad someone wrote this up. I've been meaning to. Of all the tech changes I've made in the last few years, moving from Google Apps mail to Fastmail is the one that's made me the happiest, every day. The webmail is absolutely amazing. So fast, rock-sold, clean, minimal, focused. Having your webmail experience be completely ad-free and snoop-free, and, well, Google-free is priceless. Choose the Business email op…

Does Fastmail provide a matrix of all offers? I have for example never understood why business accounts have a USD 15/year management fee while family accounts have not …

Re: From Gmail to Fastmail

#145

Post by chmars »

ForHackernews wrote: post #112
paul wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems rather dishonest to imply that Google is giving (or selling) your data to marketing companies.

Newsflash: Google is a marketing company!

Correct … but do not forget that there is Google Apps for Business too where you are not shown any ads.

Re: From Gmail to Fastmail

#146

Post by chmars »

microtonal wrote: post #123
stevenleeg wrote: post #2

I also recently switched from Gmail to Fastmail and haven't looked back. The webmail is fantastic, they're not scanning my email to show me ads, IMAP works great across all of my devices (which makes me more inclined to use OpenPGP when I can), and I can use it with my own domain rather than gmail.com. They're also working on CardDAV and a web calendar (with CalDAV support), which will get me completely off of google…

The webmail is fantastic, they're not scanning my email to show me ads, [...] and I can use it with my own domain rather than gmail.com. In all fairness, if you use Google Apps for Business ($50 per year), you can also use e-mail with your domain and they are not scanning your e-mail to show you ads.

Google will still scan your mails but you will not be shown any ads.

I agree that Gmail (especially via Google Apps for Business) is a great mail provider. My main beef with Gmail is the sub-par IMAP support.

Re: From Gmail to Fastmail

#147

Post by chmars »

chjj wrote: post #12
stevenleeg wrote: post #2

I also recently switched from Gmail to Fastmail and haven't looked back. The webmail is fantastic, they're not scanning my email to show me ads, IMAP works great across all of my devices (which makes me more inclined to use OpenPGP when I can), and I can use it with my own domain rather than gmail.com. They're also working on CardDAV and a web calendar (with CalDAV support), which will get me completely off of google…

Just curious, does it support 2FA for the web login and api key (or device keys, whatever google calls them) access for IMAP?

No, Fastmail does not support actual 2FA. You can add alternative login methods, for example Google Authenticator, but you can always login with your password only, i.e., it is not like Gmail where you have to use 2FA for untrusted devices or logins from strange locations plus specific passwords for IMAP etc. And the configuration screen is a mess:

http://i.imgur.com/NzW8o5h.png http://i.imgur.com/dmoBbpy.png

Re: From Gmail to Fastmail

#148

Post by microtonal »

chmars wrote: post #146
microtonal wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The webmail is fantastic, they're not scanning my email to show me ads, [...] and I can use it with my own domain rather than gmail.com. In all fairness, if you use Google Apps for Business ($50 per year), you can also use e-mail with your domain and they are not scanning your e-mail to show you ads.

Google will still scan your mails but you will not be shown any ads. I agree that Gmail (especially via Google Apps for Business) is a great mail provider. My main beef with Gmail is the sub-par IMAP support.

Google will still scan your mails but you will not be shown any ads.

For viruses and spam, yes. But Fastmail does that too.

In addition to these increased security measures, as we recently announced, we’ve now turned off ads in Google Apps services. This means administrators no longer have the option or ability to turn on ads in these services. We’ve also permanently removed all ads scanning in Gmail for Google Apps, which means Google does not collect or use data in Google Apps services for advertising purposes.

Source: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.de/2014/05/protecting-googl...

Re: From Gmail to Fastmail

#149

Post by chmars »

microtonal wrote: post #148
chmars wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google will still scan your mails but you will not be shown any ads. I agree that Gmail (especially via Google Apps for Business) is a great mail provider. My main beef with Gmail is the sub-par IMAP support.

Google will still scan your mails but you will not be shown any ads. For viruses and spam, yes. But Fastmail does that too. In addition to these increased security measures, as we recently announced, we’ve now turned off ads in Google Apps services. This means administrators no longer have the option or ability to turn on ads in these services. We’ve also permanently removed all ads scanning in Gmail for Google Apps,…

Thanks, I wasn't aware of that!

Re: From Gmail to Fastmail

#150

Post by tagrun »

The GET part of the fastmail link in this blog post suggests this is a fastmail sponsored ad rather than honest opinions of an unbiased user: http://www.fastmail.net/?STKI=12089553

Also, I don't see how "Getting my data back under control" is achieved by shifting from a free service to a paid service; if you're serious about this, you should rather setup your own mail server on a spareable machine (Raspberry Pi etc. + an ordinary desktop mail client + Roundcube etc).

And unless you use something like GPG, your email data is as secure as your corresponding mailbox.

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