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Let me give you some (non financially motivated) praise for Fastmail.

It has everything Gmail has - even app passwords, hide my email, and ios integration. The only criticism is the calendar doesn’t autocomplete addresses so that’s a bit more typing than I would like. But everything you do in Fastmail is instant. They live up to the name!

Once you try it and go back, you’ll be shocked - Gmail makes you stare at its logo for multiple seconds while it shrugs and eventually loads.. then takes over the top of your inbox with “try our new AI features!” which never remembers that you dismissed it 50 times in a row. Everything in gmail is SO slow, while Fastmail doesn’t even bother with animations. No animations will confuse you until you settle in and realise that yes, things can be nice.

Fastmail data migration brought across my 22 years of emails over the course of about 30 hours with zero help from me. Search on Fastmail finds everything - even back to when you could only get Gmail with a friend code. There’s nothing left on the other side, it’s all here with me.

Going back to my brand new startup inbox (G Suite) gives me the same feelings I get wandering a castle ruin.

▲ sshine an hour ago | parent | next [-]

When I migrated from Gmail to Fastmail years ago, I thought Fastmail felt... less featureful.

When I rarely visit my abandoned Gmail, I can't believe I put up with the clunkiness.

Lean software stands the test of time.

Fastmail hasn't had a noteworthy UI change ever.

Minor annoyances:

  - Clicking an iPhone notification opens the app, but never brings me to the actual email
  - It is difficult to unfold the full extended header section on iPhone
  - ...I can't think of more...

It saves my drafts, it's not annoying, it has a mobile app.

I might switch away for a solution that is more affordable when hosting emails for many family members and organisations. But for a handful, I really can't recommend it enough.

	▲	streptomycin 10 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		The only thing I miss from Gmail is a "send and archive" button to save me a click when replying to emails.
	▲	FireBeyond 15 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I use it with Spark on macOS and iOS (Spark Classic) and it just works. Archiving works fine, marking as spam actually moves and 'activates' Fastmail's training. There's email masks, aliases, the UI is always fast and responsive in the web view when I go there.

▲ Slow_Hand an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Does it automatically filter my email into tabs for primary, promotions, social, and updates? Cause that is the single most useful feature offered by Gmail that I have yet to find elsewhere.

I'm not talking about manually tagging, setting up, and filtering all incoming email before my inbox can self-organize. I mean automatically. Only show me the true primary items in my inbox from the jump. Everything else can wait.

In the absence of this feature my inbox becomes a torrent of incoming mail that is far harder to manage and prioritize. I keep my inbox at "zero" and I can completely understand why other people give up and let their inbox be overrun. This feature is essential for me.

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AdieuToLogic 33 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

> Does it automatically filter my email into tabs for primary, promotions, social, and updates?

This is where email MUAs[0] shine. Mail user agents such as Thunderbird[1], KMail[2], Apple Mail[3], and nmh[4] (for hard-core Unix command-line aficionados) support filtering and automatic categorization to varying degrees.

All while being mail service agnostic.

0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_client

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Thunderbird

2 - https://apps.kde.org/kmail2/

3 - https://support.apple.com/mail

4 - https://www.nongnu.org/nmh/

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cadamsdotcom an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

No it doesn’t.

But luckily you’re about 5 email filter rules away from your ideal setup.

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EchoReflection an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

yes. Fastmail can "automatically" do that, if you configure it to have those rules.

	▲	Slow_Hand an hour ago \| parent [-]
		If I configure my rules today and then tomorrow I sign up for a new site do I have to amend my rules to also filter the new site? Because that's too much manual management. It's not a lot for a single site, yes, but x10 new sites a month it is too much. It's death by 1,000 cuts. I don't ever have to do it with Gmail, and that is a tremendous amount of time saved. It is a lifesaver.

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loloquwowndueo an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Mash that unsubscribe button my dude.

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Slow_Hand an hour ago | parent | next [-]

I unsubscribe aggressively. I keep my inbox well maintained, but that's still not the feature I'm talking about.

My work sends me several shipping notifications a day, but they are not priorities. They are emails to be reviewed later in the day. I don't want push notifications for them. I don't want them in my primary inbox. Gmail (without me telling it to) puts them in the "updates" tab.

Same for the promotional emails that come in. They go in "promotions".

If I get a 2FA email or an update on a social website they are sorted in the "social" tab without my having to set anything up.

This is extraordinarily helpful for managing my email, and it is absent in every client I have tried.

	▲	ghaff 43 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Exactly. I do unsubscribe--perhaps not as aggressively as I should--but there's a ton of stuff I may want to be aware of that I don't want polluting my primary mailbox. Sometimes I even shift them to my primary tab but, in general, I'm happy with keeping my primary to stuff that I generally do mostly care about and have a few other categories I care about to varying degrees.

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ghaff an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

I don't want to unsubscribe from everything that I might not be interested in at the moment but may want to skim now and then to various degrees. I find gmail is very effective for that sort of thing. I find gmail's tabs pretty useful.

▲ rc_mob 24 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I been using proton but the UI is just a little bit of a let down. missing things that just were natural on gmail and i never had to think about

dunno ok maybe I'll try fastmail

▲ EchoReflection an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Fastmail is great. I also use (and really like) Fairemail https://email.faircode.eu/