Hello again, Fastmail
I had a free, personal Fastmail account before everyone lost their minds that googlemail is coming out!!! back in about about 2004(ish). I seem to remember using it quite happily until the gmail thing. At that time Google could do no wrong and I went with the horde and got my very own googlemail account and left stupid Fastmail behind. What had I been thinking?!
Fast Forward to 2017
I’d just started my own business and needed a professional email account. Now, I honestly can’t remember my reasoning, but I signed up for G Suite, now Google Workspace. It did the job acceptably, but at some point between 2017 and 2022, I became uncomfortable with using it.1 I next tried Rackspace business email for a few months as it seemed to get recommended quite often, but I didn’t really get along with that either. I then decided to give Fastmail a go (again). One of the reasons was that Fastmail is entirely focused on email2 and has been since 1999. The old do one thing and do it well adage has always resonated with me.
Rather than listen to me waffle on, you can read about what they offer for business on their Fastmail for Business page.
(Try to) Ignore the Silly Marketing
If today, you go to the Fastmail Product Tour page, you will see five photos of incredibly happy Fastmail customers (I assume). Here is the happiest lady of the bunch:
She can’t believe that she’s only just discovered Fastmail. Happiest day of her life, clearly!
Man, I hate that stock photo, everybody smiling nonsense. Fastmail: have a rethink on your marketing people / strategy. Your potential customers are not five years old!
We don’t even know if she’s on the Fastmail app. She might be watching cat videos!
Rackspace’s photo is far better. Definitely reading a business email and not watching silly videos:
Anyway…
I’ve been using Fastmail business for nearly a year and a half. It works very well, both through the web interface and their Android app (don’t use istuff so no comments about that). One thing that I think sets them apart from their competition is their excellent help. They’ve even given it it’s own domain: fastmail.help.
Functionality wise, you’ll get all the email features everyone expect nowadays, with the one possible exception of the ability to edit office files. One could argue that is not the job of an email client, and one would have a point. Still, if you need that, you’ll be disappointed.
I should point out a couple of problems I’ve experienced. First, on all my other email accounts (I have a lot), notifications on my Android phone come through normally. For some reason, Fastmail notifies me about emails I’ve already read or deleted on my desktop. It’s not a showstopper, but it’s a bit weird. I suppose I should open a ticket. The only other odd thing I’ve come across is (and this has only happened a few times), sometimes the web interface hangs on loading. I don’t recall seeing a message, just the loading page icon, similar to this:
But, as I said, it only happens once in a while, very rare, so please don’t let that put you off. I’m just mentioning it as I’ve seen it.
What’s Good?
- Does everything an email client needs to do
- Includes contacts, file storage, notes, calendar
- Integrates with other services / platforms3
- Excellent help system
- It is fast, as advertised
What’s Not Good?
- Weird sync issues on Android phone
- No support for viewing / editing office files
Conclusion
If you’re looking to create a new business email account, or to migrate from another provider, I think you’ll be happy with Fastmail. They’ve been doing email for twenty five years and it shows.
Footnotes
1 Oh yes, they dropped their famous motto, that could have been it!
2 Fastmail are the primary maintainer of Cyrus IMAP.
3 I only use the Dropbox integration. Works well.