I have been a paying customer for years, and I don't expect to ever leave. My favorites are: - DNS capabilities - Friendly and fast customer support - Great, smooth, pretty UI on all platforms

I find latency on gmail (for work or otherwise) makes gmail unusable. I am more latency sensitive than most of my colleagues though.

It's just really good at being an email provider. Reliable, privacy-respecting, good support, and with a webmail client to rival (or beat) Gmail.

Plus they frequently develop new useful features, like partnering with Bitwarden and 1Password to generate throwaway email address on the fly at your domain.

I tried fastmail once when I was looking for a new provider. Free trial, they said. So I created an account, switched over my MX records, changed my mail client, etc. Seemed fine.

That is, until I received an email from my father. I couldn't open it. It was so perplexing that I eventually opened a ticket with support to see what I screwed up. Turns out their "free trial" only worked with other fastmail addresses until verified my account. The only supported method of verification was to create a paid account. Support wouldn't or couldn't help until I verified. I was pretty pissed; felt like I got bait and switched. What good is a trial that only works with a service that (relatively) very few people use? I closed my account, moved to purelymail, and haven't looked back.

I still have no idea what email my dad sent me. They might be a great service otherwise, but this gave me a very sour experience.

Fastmail is just normal IMAP unlike Gmail, so it works with email clients without weirdness around folders and archiving. It also supports native push notifications on iOS, which Gmail does not. And it works well with your own domain names.

That said I switched to using iCloud mail with my own domain as soon as it was available.