Fastmail Reviews, Please

[RJM62]

I need another email address that's not associated with any server I administer nor on the same network as any other third-party email addresses I have. I need IMAP, BlackBerry Push, CardDAV, and CalDAV. I don't need huge storage. I do need webmail "just in case," but I will rarely (if ever) use it so I don't care how ugly it is.

A large percentage of the incoming email will consist of automated messages from machines telling me of their trials, tribulations, and adventures (services failed and recovered, root login attempts, accounts suspended for non-payment, etc.). I'll also be using it as an off-network address for my accounts with datacenters and other providers.

Freemail is out of the question. Netaddress.com is also out of the question, but only because I already have an account with them and don't want another on the same network.

I've been on a trial of Fastmail.com for about a week. So far, so good. Everything works, my BlackBerry doesn't vomit on it, and my two "test" support requests were answered very promptly. It looks good; but I'm interested in knowing if anyone has been using Fastmail for a while and has anything to say about it, good or bad, before I commit to it.

As an aside...

The reason I need another address is because I previously was using a Gmail address for the server messages, logins with datacenters, and communications with Google itself -- and nothing else. No one else even knew that the Gmail address existed. It was strictly for the above purposes.

Alas, Google's robot has decided that the stream of mundane status messages from my servers are spam and has blocked them. Oddly enough, the server IPs are not blocked, just the status messages. I can email myself just fine through any of the servers in question. Gmail spits back only the status messages. I suppose it vomits on them because they contain no interesting personal information that Google can sell to the highest bidder. No one especially cares that "spamd failed and was restarted automagically."

So now my Gmail account has exactly one purpose left: to communicate with Google itself, which unfortunately is something that's pretty much unavoidable in my business. I'd love to close my Google account altogether, but that would be like a septic tank pumper saying that he doesn't want to deal with **** anymore.

Anyway, back to Fastmail, any comments positive or negative would be appreciated. Thanks.

Rich

 

[SCCutler]

...
Alas, Google's robot has decided that the stream of mundane status messages from my servers are spam and has blocked them. Oddly enough, the server IPs are not blocked, just the status messages. I can email myself just fine through any of the servers in question. Gmail spits back only the status messages. I suppose it vomits on them because they contain no interesting personal information that Google can sell to the highest bidder. No one especially cares that "spamd failed and was restarted automagically."
...

Rich

 

[wsuffa]

I need another email address that's not associated with any server I administer nor on the same network as any other third-party email addresses I have. I need IMAP, BlackBerry Push, CardDAV, and CalDAV. I don't need huge storage. I do need webmail "just in case," but I will rarely (if ever) use it so I don't care how ugly it is.

A large percentage of the incoming email will consist of automated messages from machines telling me of their trials, tribulations, and adventures (services failed and recovered, root login attempts, accounts suspended for non-payment, etc.). I'll also be using it as an off-network address for my accounts with datacenters and other providers.

Freemail is out of the question. Netaddress.com is also out of the question, but only because I already have an account with them and don't want another on the same network.

I've been on a trial of Fastmail.com for about a week. So far, so good. Everything works, my BlackBerry doesn't vomit on it, and my two "test" support requests were answered very promptly. It looks good; but I'm interested in knowing if anyone has been using Fastmail for a while and has anything to say about it, good or bad, before I commit to it.

As an aside...

The reason I need another address is because I previously was using a Gmail address for the server messages, logins with datacenters, and communications with Google itself -- and nothing else. No one else even knew that the Gmail address existed. It was strictly for the above purposes.

Alas, Google's robot has decided that the stream of mundane status messages from my servers are spam and has blocked them. Oddly enough, the server IPs are not blocked, just the status messages. I can email myself just fine through any of the servers in question. Gmail spits back only the status messages. I suppose it vomits on them because they contain no interesting personal information that Google can sell to the highest bidder. No one especially cares that "spamd failed and was restarted automagically."

So now my Gmail account has exactly one purpose left: to communicate with Google itself, which unfortunately is something that's pretty much unavoidable in my business. I'd love to close my Google account altogether, but that would be like a septic tank pumper saying that he doesn't want to deal with **** anymore.

Anyway, back to Fastmail, any comments positive or negative would be appreciated. Thanks.

Rich

Not to defend Google, but can't you mark the messages as "not spam" or remove them from the spam list? If they've eliminated that feature, it's about worthless to me, too.

 

[chartbundle]

There is a way to make a filter that flags all messages that match it as 'Not Spam' in GMail I do that for things like automated messages.

I've heard FastMail mentioned at least once by someone using it as an Alternative to Google and they seemed to like it, but I didn't do any follow-up.

 

[flyingron]

I use TUFFMAIL. They support IMAP and a half a dozen web email clients. Good spam filters, SIEVE, and many other features. Price is reasonable.

GODADDY'S mail sucks badly and I'm not particularly fond of gmail either.

 

[gitmo234]

<sarcasm> I hear http://manyinternet.com/many-email/ has good service </sarcasm>

EDIT: serious note, have you thought of just putting up your own server from home? Building a $100 box, run a small email server, point some super obscured domain at it, and use it for nothing else? With the right tools you can protect it from the rest of your network, limit traffic to only certain email addresses or similar, so even if it gets haxxored, they've struck gold only so far as server status message stock piles

 

[RJM62]

Not to defend Google, but can't you mark the messages as "not spam" or remove them from the spam list? If they've eliminated that feature, it's about worthless to me, too.

They never got far enough for me to label them as anything. They just got bounced back to my server, not sent to the spam box. I only found out when I never got notification of some server backups having been completed and started investigating what I thought was a backup problem.

Rich

 

[RJM62]

<sarcasm> I hear http://manyinternet.com/many-email/ has good service </sarcasm>

EDIT: serious note, have you thought of just putting up your own server from home? Building a $100 box, run a small email server, point some super obscured domain at it, and use it for nothing else? With the right tools you can protect it from the rest of your network, limit traffic to only certain email addresses or similar, so even if it gets haxxored, they've struck gold only so far as server status message stock piles

I could, I suppose. I have a static IP and a reliable connection, and I already have a Linux server running in my office. Its main job is to upload a video stream of a turtle tank, but I could easily run mail and calendar servers on it, as well.

Something to think about. Thanks.

Rich

 

[RJM62]

I use TUFFMAIL. They support IMAP and a half a dozen web email clients. Good spam filters, SIEVE, and many other features. Price is reasonable.

GODADDY'S mail sucks badly and I'm not particularly fond of gmail either.

Thanks.

Rich

 

[JimNtexas]

Google scripting presents a pretty comprehensive gmail api, I bet you could fix your gmail issues with a pretty straightforward script.

https://developers.google.com/apps-script/reference/gmail/

 

[RJM62]

Google scripting presents a pretty comprehensive gmail api, I bet you could fix your gmail issues with a pretty straightforward script.

https://developers.google.com/apps-script/reference/gmail/

Maybe, although I don't know how it would deal with mail that had been bounced. Neither can I figure out what it was about the server messages that triggered the bounces. We're talking about a daily backup notification from each server and an occasional service failed message (usually no more than two or three a week at most).

It's pretty bizarre, actually, especially considering how many thousands or millions of these messages are sent every day. You'd think even Google's dopey robots would figure out that they're not spam after a while.

Rich

 

[poadeleted21]

They never got far enough for me to label them as anything. They just got bounced back to my server, not sent to the spam box. I only found out when I never got notification of some server backups having been completed and started investigating what I thought was a backup problem.

Rich

Then you had/have a serious config issue with your email server.

 

[RJM62]

Then you had/have a serious config issue with your email server.

Well, if you can suggest a scenario in which a misconfiguration would cause a standard system message to be bounced by only one provider, while everything else worked normally, I'll investigate it. I spent hours poring over the logs, and nothing else had been bounced.

I also have SpamAssassin configured to block forwarding of spammy mail (3.0 or higher), just in case some of my clients decide to forward all their mail to third-party providers. All the incoming mail is checked against four different RBLs and rejected if the sender is on any of them before it even gets scored, and even that's assuming that it slipped past the two previous RBL checks at the firewall to get as far as Exim.

When I figured out that Gmail had bounced the messages, I changed the system contact address to my phone's SMS address and restarted a few services. The notices came through fine. Then I pointed the emails to my USA.net address and restarted a few services. Also fine. And now they're pointed to the trial fastmail.com address. That works fine, too.

So if it's a misconfig -- which is certainly possible: I don't claim to be perfect -- it's a mighty damned selective one that happened simultaneously on multiple servers with different IP addresses. That seems less likely than that some temporary problem caused Gmail to barf on service status messages.

But frankly, I have no idea what the problem was. The only reason I even noticed it was because I recently started using AWS as my backup destination and have been keeping a closer-than-usual eye on things. The backups are usually completed between by 5:00 a.m., so it's one of the first things I check when I wake up.

Whatever the case, I do want to receive these messages. Once every few years, one of them is important and requires my attention. So now I have them being sent to me both as texts and to the Fastmail address. They usually arrive within moments of each other now -- which is another thing I like better about Fastmail so far: Either they have BB push enabled, or their IMAP IDLE implementation actually works.

I suspect the latter based on a noticeable shortening of battery life from two days to one and a half, but it's hard to say because I also did an OS upgrade on the BB at the same time as I started the FM trial. Some users on Crackberry have reported shorter battery life since the update.

Rich

 

[camel]

I've used Fastmail as a secondary address since before Gmail existed (i.e. before 2004). It's pretty solid. I don't think I've used their IMAP though, but I'd be surprised if it wasn't solid as well.

 

[RJM62]

I've used Fastmail as a secondary address since before Gmail existed (i.e. before 2004). It's pretty solid. I don't think I've used their IMAP though, but I'd be surprised if it wasn't solid as well.

Thank you. That's really what I want to know. It seems good to me so far, but I've only been using it for a week. And the price of $40.00 / year is very reasonable if they're a quality outfit.

Rich