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Comment by dannysu | Hacker News Reader

Great job guys! Things like this together with CalDAV and CardDAV are reasons why I pay you guys for service.

I just tried the following experiments with my Gmail and FastMail account. There's a reason why FastMail just feels faster!

  Try this:
  1) While having the Gmail iOS app open, mark an email as read on the web
  2) See how long it takes for Gmail to reflect the change
  3) Now try with FastMail iOS app, see that it's faster

  Try this too:
  1) While having the Gmail iOS app open, delete an email on the web
  2) See that Gmail app never updates until you manually refresh
  3) Now try with FastMail iOS app, see that it happens instantly

  How about the other direction?
  1) Read an email on your phone
  2) See that Gmail on the web never updates until manual refresh
  3) Now try with FastMail... Instant update!

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Thank you for this comment. I do wonder why they simply didn't say this at the beginning of the article. I understood what they were up to purely because I'm a technical guy, but still I didn't want to actually have to watch the video -- namely because I'm deaf, and far too often there's no captions to explain what's going on so I prefer to read (and so do people at work, school, no sound etc), and it takes a lot less time!

I'm really considering moving from Google Apps to Fastmail... who else has made this jump? Totally worth it?

Every time I read about Fastmail, I want to make the jump from Google Apps. However, I don't do it because of Google Drive/Docs/Spreadsheet. Any recommendation for their replacement?!

Ha. I'm the same, every time I read about them I want to make the jump - but I'm not reliant on any of those, except mail fortunately.

I just haven't quite done it yet. From people I've spoken to, everyone praises Fastmail... seems like we all need that extra push.

Don't forget there's a 60 day free trial. How's that for a push :)

Less than pleasant first experience. Card failed, reason never communicated clearly enough. Very slow and archaic support.

Archaic?

Fax documents and payment information, poorly formatted support replies, supervisor escalation system after a couple different people over 2 weeks couldn't address a simple on-boarding issue.

I've had bugs reported, confirmed, and patched in production in less than 48hrs multiple times.

Slow?

I know it is not the solution, but maybe it will work for some people. You can sign up for Google account with external e-mail. It gives you everything but mail.

I know what you mean. Fastmail sync is definitely superior to Gmail for me, and DAV support may push me over the edge to switch my domain to FM. For Google Docs etc., maybe a private cloud provider that lets you add apps--ownCloud or something like that? I'm not sure if any of them provide apps at the same level of maturity as Google's offerings, but they could work depending on your use cases.

Yeah. I backed sandstorm.io and been closely monitoring it. The day collaboration apps on it closes the usability gap, I will switch.

The Youtube page has the full script on it.

Thanks for the heads up. I'm not sure about others but I almost -never- click through to the YouTube page unless I was seeking for more information but in this case, I just assumed that all the info was in the article (more or less).

Their email sync is definitely superior to Google Apps, and now that they're adding DAV support the only thing really holding me back from switching my personal domain email over to Fastmail is email tagging. Gmail is, as far as I can tell, the only show in town for having email tags that sync across the server and client (unless you're in Exchange, but that's suboptimal for my personal use), and that's how I do pseudo-GTD to keep track of actions in my email.

Edit: I have a secondary email account through Fastmail where I don't need the tagging ability, and have been very pleased with the service. If you don't need tagging, I think it's worth the switch. They're clearly active in improving the service, while Gmail feels like it's moribund.

True 2FA is holding me back. Alternative logins are great but I'd prefer to force 2FA on the account.

They've got "enhanced multi-factor authentication" on their roadmap for 2015. Not sure if that's "true" 2FA, but it's on the way, FYI.

It would be cool to have a browser plugin that decorated youtube links with captions.

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