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Comment by weland | Hacker News Reader

> now email providers are sending us spam

Mine isn't.

Get used to it: if you aren't paying for the service, you're not their client and they are not your provider. You're their product.

It's not pretty, but sadly this is how life tends to work :-).

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Sadly? Just because there are free options, it does not mean you have to use them. Personally, I'm quite happy that it works like that, it does not bother me in the slightest, and I get a good service in change. I realise this might not be ideal for everyone though.

So I pay for Cable and I still have to watch endless commercials. Paying for something doesn't guarantee anything.

What do you use? Better yet, what's an alternative to Google Apps I can use for my domain?

Fastmail[1] is looking very nice, very fast and makes Google look like a bloated pig.

The prices too are similar to Google apps, but I'm not sure I'm going to move all my stuff there (Google Docs at least needs a competitor).

I've yet to decide if I'm going full scale when I'm through my free trial.

[1] http://fastmail.fm/

I've been using fastmail for two or three years, not sure. They're a very good service for a surprisingly small amount of money.

I see anywhere from zero to two spams in my inbox per day. I just move them over to my learn spam folder.

I just checked, and I have 270 spam messages in my junk folder since July 1.

I use their https web interface at work, not bad, nothing special. I use thunderbird over imap at home.

So in exchange for about $10 or $20 per year (depends on your service level), and the occasional need to tell fastmail "this message is spam, remember that for similar messages," I get an excellent imap service that is not gmail and not google. I'm a customer, not a product, and I'm very happy.

EDIT: corrected how many junk I have. It's 270 since July 1. It's about 1000 since June 22. They delete junk after awhile. I just combed through the 1000 and moved 9 into the "this is not junk, remember that" folder.

I looked at Fastmail recently, but then I saw the Opera logo and hesitated. I want to know what would happen to them if Opera cannot maintain profitability. I'd like to know my mail provider is going to stick around a while.

Fastmail has been around since 1999, I think it's going to be okay.

Sorry, this is really not a coherent comment. I rambled.

It's a fair question though. Despite the "If you don't pay for it…" mantra that people like to spout off, situations like Sparrow and other paid services shutting down tend to worry me. And I know, it's odd, considering Gmail is free and Google as a tendency to shut things down (but I don't see them shutting down Gmail).

I guess the issue is that if I pay for it, I'm investing time and money into something I want to know will stick around. And because I'm a customer, I feel like I'm empowered to believe that. After all, if a company is charging me X amount, I think that charge should be related to keeping themselves in business. I hate the idea of a company that charges not being able to stay afloat because of their low prices. It's not even giving me a choice as a customer to pay more to ensure their service remains.

They sold to Opera, so clearly it wasn't sustainable by itself.

Actually, they were doing fine but they weren't able to grow.

Not to be rude, but "doing fine but they weren't able to grow" sounds like PR bizspeak for "unable to sustain themselves". It isn't like Opera is a company that can really grow Fastmail when they haven't even done that with their browser. I don't see how you could particularly trust Fastmail to be around for an extended period when they were recently sold to company few would consider stable and healthy.

Then again, I don't really see the point of not using Fastmail as long as you can export your stuff.

They explain the rationale for selling in a couple blog posts. They were a really small company, only 3 or 4 guys. They didn't have any "PR bizspeak" people. They were profitable for 10 years but didn't have the resources to expand into business accounts. It sounded like the meeting with Opera people was kind of a fluke.

It's the same reason I don't switch apartments even though one might be better for the money: it's a hassle.

But here's the issue: Fastmail themselves may have been able to keep running indefinitely, but they're not Fastmail anymore. They're Fastmail from Opera. If Opera shuts down, what's the guarantee that they will let their purchases keep running?

Basically, since they sold themselves to Opera, they're at Opera's mercy to keep running. If Opera shuttered their doors or if Opera felt like pulling a Google Reader, there goes my mail provider. I'm iffy on the future of Opera as a company, which means I'm iffy on the future of everything they own regardless of that product's history.

At the very least (assuming the division is not operating at a loss) I think it would likely be sold off or spun out as a separate entity before opera shutdown.

Google had been around for over 10 years when it started doing bad things with its services too.

Do they have support for Gmails keyboard commands?

I don't use them, so I wouldn't know.

Well, thanks anyways. =)

Since I asked it, someone posted this to HN:

http://www.maxmasnick.com/2013/07/19/fastmail/

Which seems to suggest that it does have keyboard shortcuts. Not sure if they are the same as Gmails, but it's encouraging.

And, decided to actually just do a search, because, well yeah. I should. I discovered this:

http://fastmail.wikia.com/wiki/KeyboardShortcuts

Which from my initial review, seems to cover the shortcuts I routinely use!

Hopefully this helps others.

> "we have standard servers and a high speed connection in the US." - https://www.fastmail.fm/help/overview_about.html

so that's a non-starter then, for someone looking to escape the snooping that makes Gmail annoying.

That pricing is totally feasible. I've run large Exchange implementations where a large mailbox costs around $50/year, and a small webmail costs around $20-25.

That was a few years ago, based on Exchange 2007 and 2010 -- meaning using fibre channel SAN for storage, tape backups, F5, etc. If you implemented today with Exchange 2013, you'd probably be able to cut costs 30% or more. There are a ton of costs areas embedded in there.

If you're operating a simple (ie. no calendar, no hooks into other services) service with custom code, open source infrastructure, and no (or minimal) external licensing, you can absolutely offer a $5/year 100MB mailbox profitably. They are making higher margins on the enhanced plans as well.

Probably should have mentioned free alternatives as I've signed up with Google Apps for business prior to December 2012. Also, it's still free if you use Google Education.

So, any free alternatives to Google Apps for my domain?

The free internet fest is over. sorry.

Sounds like an opportunity.

Since I use Google Apps for my email, I could easily move my mail to another service without telling people my new address but Fastmail doesn't seem to support using your own domain. Do you know any service like Fastmail but with domain support?

Edit: The "family" package offers this: https://www.fastmail.fm/signup/family.html

Edit Again: I should have poked around more, it's included in the personal package too.

Office 365.

I've been running my own mail, jabber and www server for over three years now, and I am extremely happy with it. If anybody is interested in my setup and/or would like to run their own, I'll be happy to write a quick guide/howto.

I would be very interested in a quick how to guide.

Me too! I'll soon be buying a small home server and I am still wondering how to begin building my setup, since I've never used anything else than FTP hosting.

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