Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

From Gmail to Fastmail

blog.l0cal.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 166 posts

Re: From Gmail to Fastmail

#81

Post by Semaphor »

djokkataja wrote: post #55

I switched from Gmail to Fastmail about a year ago after using exclusively Gmail for email since 2007. I've been very happy with Fastmail since then. Primarily I was bothered by getting the service for "free" from Google--it's not free for them to provide it (no such thing as a free lunch), which means they have to find ways to monetize my personal communications with others without me directly paying them. Obviously…

> The Fastmail interface is not as pretty as the Gmail interface.

I disagree, I find it prettier than gmail.

Pretty much agree with everything else you said.

One con I'd like to add: GMail has send and archive and you can set it as default. I really miss that in fastmail.

Re: From Gmail to Fastmail

#82

Post by Semaphor »

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 think the Snowden submissions + Reader shutdown made many people switch => more articles about switching. I know I wanted to end my reliance on google services after the shutdown and ended up on fastmail after comparing many services.

Re: From Gmail to Fastmail

#83

Post by RexRollman »

tjr wrote: post #61
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…

Even running your own mail system might not gain you as much as you'd hope: http://mako.cc/copyrighteous/google-has-most-of-my-email-bec...

I've wondered about this from time to time. Its one thing to scan emails to serve ads to the person who is using Gmail, but is Google also using those emails to also create profiles of non-Gmail users? I would like to think it's not.

Re: From Gmail to Fastmail

#85

Post by tpeng »

Fastmail should really invest in some better domains. While I can use google to find a company's website, I still have to communicate my email address literally on a regular basis. I'd rather not have to spell out a weird domain.

Re: From Gmail to Fastmail

#87

Post by lobster_johnson »

Semaphor wrote: post #80
lobster_johnson wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want CardDAV and CalDAV support, you should take a look at Fruux [1]. They are a "headless" contact/calendaring server, no GUI, just the API. I moved to them (off Google Calendar) around the same time as I moved from Gmail to Fastmail, and I'm extremely satisfied. [1] https://fruux.com

Does fruux now support keeping in sync with an ics file like facebooks private urls? Last time I checked that was the last hurdle I had to move away from google calendar.

Don't think so. I don't use that, I just plug external calendars into the apps that need them (or at least Calendar on Mac).

Re: From Gmail to Fastmail

#88

Post by psychometry »

tpeng wrote: post #85

Fastmail should really invest in some better domains. While I can use google to find a company's website, I still have to communicate my email address literally on a regular basis. I'd rather not have to spell out a weird domain.

As someone who actually switched from Fastmail TO Gmail several years ago, this definitely resonates. "Fastmail" is not easily recognized by most people and becomes especially unclear if you're reciting your email address over the phone.

Fastmail doesn't even own fastmail.com! They do have many domains available [1] but none are that great.

[1] https://www.fastmail.fm/help/legal/ourdomains.html

Re: From Gmail to Fastmail

#89

Post by brongondwana »

XorNot wrote: post #52
kylec wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You probably couldn't resist intrusion if you were under an active investigation, but hosting your own mail server would certainly help to partially mitigate the mass surveillance dragnets that are logging all traffic en masse from popular mail providers.

How? Fastmail is...another mail provider. Paying for email service might be a good idea for a lot of reasons, but people have an extremely absurd sense that they're "fighting the man". You know - by paying in US dollars, to a US company, using US banks.... EDIT: Something I did just see is that Fastmail gives you sieve scripting. Since going from hosting my own inbound email to Gmail, I've really missed having a good…

We're an Australian company. Everything else you say is accurate enough, though we actually use an Australian payment provider (https://pin.net.au/).
Post reply on HN