Fastmail vs. Gmail
Rakesh Agrawal at Lambi Pooch has written a detailed account 
of the pros and cons of using Gmail for his work email.
He finds lots to like — Gmail mobile, searching, simple interface (he is coming from Outlook), spam filtering — but also much that could be better.
Among areas of improvement, he lists formatting limitations, lack of disk space, problems with “masking” and occasional hiccups of service.
The post prompted John-Erling Holmenes Fredriksen at Life of Elling to list the ways in which Fastmail is a better service.
He shares my passion for Fastmail:
Before Gmail arrived, I used this paid e-mail service as my main e-mail client. It is still the most advanced and feature-rich online e-mail client I have seen. The amount of things you can do with this client is just amazing.
He describes the superior way in which Fastmail handles “Personalities” and the benefits of Fastmail’s POP polling feature.
He doesn’t mention other things about Fastmail that make it vastly superior in my mind — its IMAP account makes the email equally available to me on any computer in a (more simple) web interface and in Mail.app or other email client of my choice, daily off-site backups, the 1GB WebDAV-accessible file space that comes with the 2GB of email quota in my enhanced account, an https connection by default, more flexible arrangements for hosting domains, aliases and much more.
In fact-checking for this post, I notice that Fastmail is currently offering reduced prices. An Enhanced account will set you back only USD 35 a year (67 cents a week). That’s as good as free. Better, actually, when you consider what you get in return.
For the email fanatic, Fastmail is a clear winner.
Propriety: Sadly, I don’t work for Fastmail and have no financial interest in the company.
Tags: Apple Mail, email, fastmail, GMAIL, Google, imap, mail.app, Productivity, web 2.0Related posts
May 16th, 2006 at 1:40 am
Good points, and about time FastMail gets some attention. I’ve never seen them mentioned in any articles on webmail, and I find it puzzling seeing as it is such a good client. But it might be because it’s tailored for the professional users, not specifically targetted at the masses of e-mail users.
You’re quite right about the features that kick ass, especially IMAP. The only reason I didn’t mention these in my article is because my article is more targetted towards using Gmail as an e-mail client, in which case I didn’t see IMAP as an urgent improvement needed, seeing as you wouldn’t need to synchronize with an offline client anyway.
From what I’ve heard, Google use a complicated system for Gmail, that prevents them from easily implementing IMAP. This is only something I have heard though, can’t confirm it.
Anyway, I still have my FastMail account, and use it actively for different things. But Gmail is my mail of choice at the moment.
May 16th, 2006 at 8:30 am
That’s interesting. What are the benefits of Gmail that outwieigh the superior things about Fastmail that you mention in your post?
May 16th, 2006 at 5:22 pm
I must say I like the way Gmail handles organizing mail. I just tag and archive them, and they’re gone. And I never spend much time looking for them when I need them, thanks to the great search tool.
FastMail also handles organizing mail well, but it requires that you setup a system for yourself of folders, and either manually put stuff where it belongs, or set up rules to put them there. The search tool isn’t really that good, so finding a mail again often requires remembering which folder it’s in and then look through it.
The bottom line is that with Gmail I feel like I don’t have to actively do anything myself to keep my inbox clean and tidy. I just read my e-mail and click a button. It’s gone, but I know I’ll have no trouble finding it when I need it.
I also think tagging is a superior system to folders, because you can apply more than one tag to a mail, but you can’t apply more than one folder.
Other things I like about Gmail is the integration with other Google services. Having all my friends on Gmail, and being able to chat with them without an external chat client is great. Having the best online calendar is great. Having Google search in the client is great. Conversation view is really nice.
Being a Google fanatic, I guess the fact that it’s Google also counts in.
I think, to sum it up, that even though FastMail is a superior e-mail client, Gmail offers me a better user experience, and the luxury of integration with other services I use. But because of the immense power of FastMail, I’m still paying to have an account there, which I use actively. Amongst other things, to check my POP-mail accounts, and forward them to Gmail.
Did I mention AJAX?
May 16th, 2006 at 10:08 pm
To put it in another way, I use Gmail as my front-end interface, and FastMail as the engine behind it that makes it all work :)
As I mentioned, I use FastMail for those features that Gmail don’t support well enough yet, like retrieving POP mail, and forwarding it to my front-end interface - Gmail.
May 16th, 2006 at 11:38 pm
Thanks for the long and thoughtful reply.
I don’t use Gmail enough to get a proper sense of the user experience, I suppose, nor am I ever likely too, so it’s good to hear from someone who does.
October 24th, 2006 at 3:38 pm
I recently posted an acticle comparing GMail to an IMAP provider like fastmail or tuffmail. I also found strongly in favor of providers like fastmail and tuffmail.
You can use the GMail organizational paradigm with IMAP based mail, especially when those services allow for server side scripting. I’ve been automatically making a copy of all incoming email for years. This way I delete the copy in my inbox when I’m done with it and I have an archived version I can search through.
IMAP also supports tagging. Soon (in 2.0) Thunderbird will also support tagging. I’m hoping Roundcube will also add tagging support.
October 24th, 2006 at 3:48 pm
@ Rourke — Why wait for Thunderbird and Roundcube to get their acts together?
Enjoy tagging on IMAP now with the MailTags 2.0 Public Beta
for Apple Mail.
January 30th, 2007 at 1:28 pm
I am late to this party, but I’ve been using Fastmail for a couple of years (”Full” level) and am considering switching to GMail. I agree that IMAP access is amazingly convenient, but the fact that GMail has threaded “conversation” viewing in their web interface is a major plus… it means I can follow mailing list threads without being tied to Thunderbird. If Fastmail had this feature I would love them forever, but it’s been on their low-priority list for a while, so I don’t hold out much hope.
February 4th, 2007 at 2:31 am
I’ve been using Fastmail for a couple of years now (Enhanced level), with four of my own domains and a new alias for every website, discussion group, etc.
It really is excellent for that - and I agree, IMAP is one of the best things about it.
However, I have gone through a number of clients that support IMAP - Thunderbird, Eudora, Outlook and O. Express, Opera mail, and none seem to do it right. Add to that the fact that I can’t port my address book along with the messages: I have resigned myself to rely solely on the webmail client.
In spite of the tagging feature and seamless ‘instant’ changes of Gmail (all those user-friendly features other commenters have mentioned), I won’t go back to other clients.
Oh, and did I mention I’m Australian? Gotta support businesses from the Emerald Isle…
March 21st, 2007 at 6:21 am
I’ve been a paying Fastmail customer (Enhanced) with my own domains for years…and have loved the service. Well worth it. However, I’ve come to really enjoy the Gmail interface and user experience. I’ve had all my mail forwarded to Gmail for backup purposes for some time, however, for the last several weeks I’ve been using Gmail as my main ‘client’.
If FM put in more AJAX-ish stuff on the front-end (realtime refreshes for new messages etc), some version of a threaded view and better search…. I wouldn’t really have a need/desire for Gmail.
March 22nd, 2007 at 10:21 pm
I’m a Safari man myself, but I hear that there is a Greasmonkey extension that brings Gmail keyboard shortcuts to the Fastmail interface.
April 12th, 2007 at 1:21 am
Adam, I am with you 100%. I wish Fastmail would focus their efforts more on improving the speed and functionality of the web interface instead of adding new non-email features (calendars, web space, wiki, etc.)
June 11th, 2007 at 9:59 pm
I’m one of the big fastmail fans, I use Gmail as my secondary email only because of the large storage and the associated services.
I agree that Gmail provides a better user experience, but I find its GUI limited in several ways(in comparison to FM’s GUI), I wrote about it here http://www.thunderbird-software.com/blogs/2007/05/28/gmail-criticism/
As for FM features, As you said the engine is very strong, I find the GUI very good too but not as user-friendly as Gmail.
I don’t care a lot about Ajax itself, I can live without threaded conversations but it’d be nice to have them.
well, I added this comment primarily to ask you to gather and submit a request to FM, probably via EmailDiscussions forum asking them to increase the priority of threaded conversations and to improve the GUI in general
December 22nd, 2007 at 4:56 am
Does anybody know if there is a Growl notifier that works directly with FastMail (without a mail client)?