The day they start trying to put AI trash in Fastmail, though, is the day I start looking elsewhere.
Search on HN or elsewhere for what happens when Google's automated systems ban your account and you lose access to email and everything tied to it. You have no recourse and no chance to recover it unless you have inside contacts or manage to stir up a social media shitstorm.
You can also use your own domain (for example, tied to your real identity: firstname@lastname.com) and move it to a different provider if your current one goes to pieces.
Additionally, I use a separate email address for each service (hn@domain.com, paypal@domain.com, amazon@domain.com, etc.) and can simply remove the alias if it starts receiving spam. You know then who leaked your email to spammers. You can add a random "IV" to be sure (i.e. amazon-5VoXwj5@domain.com).
The only thing is the automatic banning which could be a huge problem.
I find the UI much snappier, and I don't have to deal with some of the accessibility frustrations of gmail.
Plus, it's a service I pay for, and isn't an ad tech offering.
Fastmail's UI is a ton more user-centric. It just feels more thoughtful to me.
Fastmail treats keyboard shortcuts as first class citizens, so you can run it almost completely mouse free.
Spam filtering is on par with gmail, if not better.
Aliases and throwaway accounts are easy to use if you have your own domain. I don't know how gmail handles that.
When you click a link from fastmail it doesn't pass through a fastmail server as gmail does, but instead goes directly to the source.
The calendar is decent but it's a hassle to import .ics files. It's readable and searchable though. If you attach external calendars then there's some delay when you change something on the external calendar. That can be annoying.
The Contacts manager is OK. It's definitely not special but that also means it's not over-engineered.
They have some file storage and notes capabilities which I don't use, and honestly I worry that it's the beginning of adding features for features' sake, but if that continues I can always keep fastmail and move back to Thunderbird or whatever, although that would suck a little bit.
The android app seems good, but I came from K9 mail which wasn't the most polished. I don't use gmail on my phone so I can't compare, but to me Fastmail's app proves the adage that the better a tool is, the less you're aware you're even using it. It just does its job and stays out of the way, which is cool.
I guess adding new calendar entries on a phone can be annoying. Like you tab the box to add a contact and the dropdown menu is obscured by the edge of the screen, stuff like that.
One annoyance is that editing notes doesn't auto-save. I've lost some big edits.
Upload files (or save attachments) to folders. Okay that's pedestrian. But then you can share links to the individual files or a folder as a .zip, which is heaps handy. So far google drive can do this already.
You can also convert a folder into a website using fastmail's domain or a custom address using your own domain, to share as a listing of files or photo gallery, optionally password protected. I've used this quite a bit.
Holy cow I didn't know you could do this!
Gmail is hostile when it comes to alias / catch-all.
AI is... yeah. I can see in theory being able to have an AI answer questions like "who sent me a question I haven't replied to yet?" or "who have I emailed something expecting a response to and not heard back from?" could be powerful - but the tech is really immature and it hallucinates the craziest things. I don't think it's something we need to do in-house - it's something that could be added on with an IMAP or JMAP connector for those who want it.