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From Gmail to Fastmail

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Re: From Gmail to Fastmail

#31

Post by andrewmunsell »

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…

I've also done the same recently-- though I always liked Gmail, FastMail has just been much better in terms of usability with the web client (e.g. no ads, it's fast, etc.)

Re: From Gmail to Fastmail

#32

Post by ForHackernews »

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…

There's two types of "data under your control" at play here.

The first (and for most users, more important) is about not giving away your data to marketing companies. Switching to Fastmail accomplishes that (probably?).

The second is about securing your data from governments/state actors. That battle seems kind of futile to me. Even if I were running everything on my own server in my own basement, with my own ISP, I'm almost certainly not qualified to sysadmin a machine that needs to be secure against the NSA.

Re: From Gmail to Fastmail

#33

Post by davidbarker »

personZ wrote: post #23

I find it suspicious that these Gmail -> Fastmail submissions appear relatively regularly, and then see an abnormally high number of supportive commentary, out of proportion with other posts at the same time of day.

Suspicious, how so? I've been using Fastmail for a few months and highly recommend it. My initial thought RE: the number of comments would be that many of the people who've switched to Fastmail are vocal in their support because they had specific reasons to switch.

Re: From Gmail to Fastmail

#34

Post by sivers »

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 option - https://www.fastmail.fm/signup/business.html - if you want them to keep an automatic archive of the emails you download via POP. When I signed up under the Personal Email option I found they didn't have this archive option, but they switched me over to the business account on request.

It's so worth the measly $15/year, considering the importance a good email/webmail experience, and how much it affects your every-day life.

I've helped a few friends switch over, and they've all been thrilled with it.

Re: From Gmail to Fastmail

#35

Post by ForHackernews »

xkarga00 wrote: post #24
DanBC wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your privacy risk assessment?

I just don't want advertising companies or the NSA sniffing around my personal communications. It has to be private as private should be.

> It has to be private as private should be.

But you also don't want to pay any money for it?

Re: From Gmail to Fastmail

#36

Post by etix »

personZ wrote: post #23

I find it suspicious that these Gmail -> Fastmail submissions appear relatively regularly, and then see an abnormally high number of supportive commentary, out of proportion with other posts at the same time of day.

I'm not related to Fastmail in any way, you can verify that easily. I'm just a simple but happy customer who likes to share when he think that it might be of interest to others.

Re: From Gmail to Fastmail

#37

Post by phaed »

ZohoMail does everything Gmail does, including using you own domain. http://www.zoho.com/mail/features.html

Ditched Gmail when it started getting slow, ditched Outlook when it disabled its domain feature. It has a REAL free tier of 5GB + 10 users. (unlike Fastmail's 250MB). Plus their webmail interface is nice and clean.

Re: From Gmail to Fastmail

#38

Post by _pius »

spindritf wrote: post #25
bratsche wrote: post #10

I recently switched from Gmail to Fastmail as well, and I like it so far. For me, scanning my email to show me ads didn't really bother me that much. But the thing that I really like with Fastmail is that my outbound email alias works the way I want. The university I graduated from gives us email aliases for life, and I prefer to use my university alias instead of my Gmail address. It obviously works fine when I rece…

when I send mail from Gmail it would say "from me@gmail.com on behalf of me@jhu.edu" (or whatever) You can configure Gmail to use your university's SMTP server and then Gmail is simply an e-mail client. They steer you away from that option but it's available.

If that's true, would love to see some documentation for it.

Re: From Gmail to Fastmail

#39

Post by ronaldx »

xkarga00 wrote: post #9

I have been looking for a free e-mail provider that takes privacy seriously. Isn't there anyone out there?

The best option I found, to match my own preferences, was Runbox:

https://runbox.com/why-runbox/email-privacy/

Edited to apologise: The cheapest option seems to be $20pa, sorry. I find it excellent value.

Re: From Gmail to Fastmail

#40

Post by xkarga00 »

ForHackernews wrote: post #35
xkarga00 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just don't want advertising companies or the NSA sniffing around my personal communications. It has to be private as private should be.

> It has to be private as private should be. But you also don't want to pay any money for it?

No. Do you believe that by paying money your privacy is guaranteed? Even Fastmail's privacy is doubtful regarding its non-US clients -which would be my case if i used it.
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