It's a one-man enterprise, which may frighten some people, but I prefer boutique internet companies to the faceless monoliths. (I'd like more of the internet to be made of these small corner bodegas.)
Email is super critical for most people these days (eg. 2FA). That sounds like a really scary bus-factor [1] risk, especially considering data is encrypted at rest.
Not such a big deal if you have your own domain (you should). Update the MX record and point it elsewhere.
I've switched from Gmail to a similar setup a year ago. Honestly, it's been way easier than I expected, in terms of updating everywhere. And I can just point my MX somewhere else should I ever be unhappy with the current provider.
No delivery issues either so far. Seriously, the hardest part about this whole ordeal was getting imapsync to run, to transfer my mails over.
Not using gmail or another big silo is really not that hard, as HN often makes it out to be.
Obviously, I think Fastmail is worth the extra for the multi-copy redundancy & backups, new features, contributions we're making to the standards world, and not being dependent on a single person - the past few years in particular we've been focusing on not only being able to survive any server dying, but also being able to survive the unavailability of any single person!
Anyway - glad you're happy. Fastmail will still be here if you ever find that you want to move back.
I fondly recall many years ago I had some WebDAV issue and got a reply directly from you saying you'd fixed the issue but you were just heading out to dinner and so you'd push to production when you got back. That convinced a few friends to join too.
After about 10 years, Fastmail felt it was shifting to a more "enterprise" focus, which I can understand, and I just wanted to try something a little more "indie web".
As for enterprise focus - not so much enterprise, but we are focusing more on the non-technical user. All the power is still there under the hood and available, but it's not so much in your face if you don't want it to be!
[1] https://fastmail.blog/historical/changes-to-fastmail-service...
DMARC reporting could be a huge value add if you could build something in. That whole industry is a massive ripoff and too expensive for small businesses.
Thanks for the suggestion with DMARC reporting. It's not something we're going to work on straight away, but I'll add it into the suggestions for the domain features. Definitely we'd only look at building something pretty basic and low-touch, but maybe that's enough for a lot of small businesses.
a) it's expensive for multiple mailboxes (like even three or four mailboxes) and
b) it's right in the Five Eyes jurisdictions (which I try to avoid as much as I can)
but I do appreciate
a) Fastmail's work on JMAP and can't wait for it to become more widely deployed and
b) frank and straightforward responses (including for example in the threads on the Assistance and Access Bill in Australia)
As an example of where I think the current value propositions are bad, DMARCian charges $240/year for the most basic plan that includes 100k compliant messages in a month. Most small businesses won’t do half that in a year. You probably have good stats to grok that.
I get it on the support thing. I pretty much never use support, so I guess that’s why I always feel like everything is too expensive. I’m always stunned to see how many employees at smaller tech companies are support. Sometimes I feel like I’m subsidizing users that are too lazy to learn.
Anyway, I've already filed the DMARC request internally, and linked to this thread.
For this reason alone, I can't trust that they meet all the security considerations email providers now have as a consequence of all the services effectively delegating either secondary or primary authentication factors (or reset mechanisms) to email.
Maybe it's good for personal use or as a throwaway email, but it is not good for main business email. Certainly not a replacement for Gmail or Fastmail kinds. Because you expect the email service to have 24/7 availability and near-perfect email delivery and receiving.
> It's a one-man enterprise
A person can get sick or just wish to take a holiday for a couple of weeks. What happens when service goes down or I need customer support urgently?
I think the expectation of urgency should be put into perspective alongside the $10/year price tag, i.e. if you need someone to get out of bed in the middle of the night $10 is probably not enough incentive.
That said, any issues or questions I've had have been resolved way faster than I experienced with Fastmail.