Interview With Jeremy Howard of FastMail.fm 135
Siker writes "In a world of giants such as Gmail and Rackspace, email service provider FastMail.fm is somehow doing great, with signups above the million mark and reliability above four 9s. Email Service Guide interviews Jeremy Howard, founder of FastMail.fm, to find out how. Also covered are the company's contributions to Open Source software such as Cyrus-IMAP and Thunderbird. Jeremy discusses the future of IMAP, how open protocols help FastMail.fm, and why he thinks SLAs from email providers are a con."
Re:Explain? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:SLA, from the article (Score:4, Interesting)
I had always thought the point of an SLA was for there to be some real, immediate monetary cost for downtime to the provider, which would provide an incentive to make sure their internal processes for ensuring uptime were robust. The payment to customers is just sort of a side effect of this.
try it! (Score:3, Interesting)
i pay the $15 per year for 600mb. it's fast, it works well on imap, i can use aliases, and my email won't trigger behavior profiling, won't target ads, or freeze me out of my email because someone sent me a spreadsheet [consumerist.com].
i know everyone is used to paying for email, but i really like email without ads, someone that will support mail from a domain i own, from a server i don't have to manage but can access anywhere with anything. i think they provide a great service for what i pay for.
Re:Great Service (Score:2, Interesting)
You effectively have unlimited email addresses by using subdomain addressing. This lets you use [anything]@username.domain as an email address. Also, if you have a folder name called [anything] (i.e. with a matching name) then messages to that address are autofiled to that folder.
Personally, every time I give my address to a company (e.g. when subscribing to a service) I put the company's name in the [anything] slot, so I know who gave out my address if I get unsolicited mail (or to block over-zealous marketing from the company in question).
Disclaimer: I am the Jeremy Howard interviewed in the article.
Worth it not to be sold for advertising (Score:2, Interesting)
I've been on fastmail for several years, and $40/year is nothing for the peace of mind I get knowing that our private emails are not being used or sold for advertising to us or anyone else, as well as the ability to serve as the mail host for my domains and used by me and my family.
They were ahead of Google in offering IMAP, including SSL for IMAP and SMTP, although I see Google has now caught up.
Something else I appreciate is the effectiveness of the server-side spam filtering. I've never had to spend any of my time fiddling with training my spam filtering. The default server-side rules take care of everything.
Another happy customer (Score:2, Interesting)
Their free account is rather weak, but I'm quite happy with what I'm paying $20/year for...
1. Actual security. It's the only webmail I know of I can log in through a secure connection, and it includes a no-cache mode so I don't have to worry about messages I read being in the cache on a public (and possibly infected) machine. You can also make a single-use password for when you have to use a machine that has a good chance of having key logging spyware.
2. On the flip side, there's a "log me in for freaking ever" option for when I'm on my own machine, which not only keeps me logged in, but sets the session to 8 hours so I can just leave it open when needed.
3. Long term file storage - especially when I'm developing something, there's a good chance the same file is going to get attached to a bunch of different messages. Needing to upload it only once (and having it already sitting on their servers for when I'm not on the machine I made said file with) is a huge time saver.
4. Full control of the spam filters, including custom entries. I have the tolerance set high (so I don't ever lose stuff to false positives) but deletion turned on for very high scores (so unquestionable spam is purged without me ever having to touch it.) Google gives you ummm... and "on" and an "off". :P
5. Full filter control, including the ability to autofile stuff into folders (the college I went to sends WAY too much crap, so I put that all in a folder, as I occasionally want to read some of it, but would rather not have it clog up my inbox.) Similarly, the ability to shove stuff you get from a mailing list in its old folder is good for the same reason.
6. File space can be used as webspace. Sometimes I need a temporary, quick, static webpage, and really don't want to be bothered downloading an FTP client (and risk leaving the password to my server sitting on a public machine).
7. Aliases - useful both for cutting spammers off, and for being able to select different sigs, whether to save sent mail, etc.
8. The "bounce" button - deletes a message and sends the sender the standard "this address doesn't exist" autoreply.
9. Real status updates - if something gets screwed up, they tell you exactly what went wrong, what they're doing to fix it, and when it'll be fixed assuming nothing else is borked.
10. Minimal downtime... I think I've seen them die 3 times in ~5 years. I DO have a Gmail account as well, and they're down far more often.
11. I CAN SEND .EXE AND .ZIP FILES. Seriously, as a freelance programmer, Gmail is often useless to me because they don't accept either.
12. Far more customizable, in general. I find Gmail's lack of options annoying.
Re:try it! (Score:5, Interesting)
They can't - they have no access to the emails, because they can't login to the machines and they can't access the encryption keys for the data. All maintenance of the OS/software is done from Australia.
We've had a number of US-based law enforcement bodies over the year try to get hold of our data without going via the appropriate Australian bodies, and it doesn't work out for them. In the end, they have always ended up submitting a request for cooperation via the Australian Federal Police, as they are required to do, and we respond to that request in line with Australian law.
Re:try it! (Score:3, Interesting)
We've had a number of US-based law enforcement bodies over the year try to get hold of our data without going via the appropriate Australian bodies, and it doesn't work out for them. In the end, they have always ended up submitting a request for cooperation via the Australian Federal Police, as they are required to do, and we respond to that request in line with Australian law.
Since people were asking, this is one of the things that makes Fastmail.fm great.
OK - Feature-wise all the other big dogs have caught up in some form or other. Fastmail.fm, though, was a pioneer in many aspects. I think they may have been the first reliable free email provider that offered POP/IMAP - years before the major ones did. Heck, I'd bet that's why they got so many customers. And their excellent customer service was why they stayed.
I've never been a member, but I've always recommended them to friends looking to pay for hassle-free email. Looking across the years, they have had the best service (in terms of customer service, etc) for folks who need it. It may be a somewhat largish operation, but they've always maintained the mom & pop attitude.
I get my current email served via my web hosting account. I'm thinking of changing hosts, and if the new place has crappy email, then Fastmail.fm's going to be the place I'll look to.