Working for me also. Seems to be one of the rare cases where the “down for some people” in a status page actually does mean “some”. Recently when Microsoft 365 was offline for all email services they reported it as a “limited degradation”.
Not working from the UK. My packets meander around several cloudflare servers in London and then give up. Also, does nobody configure reverse dns these days?
Works from US Mountain West. Looks like their /24 is announced by Cloudflare [1][2] and that may be having routing issues in the EU and parts of the US?. Having my old 1keyes account would be useful but CF does show up in their public dashboard [3].
That's also Cloudflare [1]. I guess we must wait and see if any of the CF employees here on HN have any theories. They are probably busy troubleshooting.
You can hardly characterize fastmail this way. They've been extremely stable in the years that I've been using them. In fact this is the first time I remember seeing a mention of fastmail on HN that wasn't praise.
You should explicitly cancel the reseller accounts, because if you don't then it wouldn't lapse, despite it was explicitly set not to draw from the main account.
Their mobile app is just a wrapper around their site, it does have no offline capabilities.
Their mobile app requires GApps to receive notifications, because Firebase. Ie no notifications on de-googled phones.
They would silently kill your account if their automated gearhead would think you are sending anything remotely resembling automated messages (that was a big ouch).
(too lazy to check if this is still a thing, with fronted mails they could had fixed it) You still can get an original mailbox name if you are sending from an identity of that mailbox.
Yes, they are rarely down, your support questions would be answered by a real humans (though not at your convienient time, so expect days to solve issues; probably should had added that into the list) but if you use it a bit more than a personal (or a business individual) account you are on the shallow grounds.
> but if you use it a bit more than a personal (or a business individual) account you are on the shallow grounds
What do you mean by "a bit more"? Do you mean using them as a SMTP relay? Having many email addresses and users under one account? Sending a lot of handwritten emails? Or something else?
They are fine being (an authenticated) SMTP relay.
> Having many email addresses and users under one account?
I do have only one account, with many domains and addresses.
> Sending a lot of handwritten emails?
Opposite of this. I was just testing the exact SMTP configuration for Ghost and then suddenly not only it stopped working but the account were ghosted. If I did that on my main account then I would had lost all my mail.
> Note: Fastmail is not a bulk email sending service. Our rate limits are designed to be generous for individual users, but not for bulk sending. Our Terms of Service prohibits sending duplicative email, and we will permanently close accounts found doing so.
Oh, yes, thanks, I didn't know I could send 5 emails (manually, I was testing a new thing) and be blocked without explanation, notification or a way to recourse.
Tracing route to app.fastmail.com [103.168.172.53] over a maximum of 30 hops:
...
6 2 ms 2 ms 2 ms ae0-0.alb2nqp8.dk.ip.tdc.net [83.88.19.117]
7 * * * Request timed out.
8 2 ms 2 ms 2 ms 162.158.133.45
9 2 ms 2 ms 1 ms 162.158.133.72
10 2 ms 2 ms 2 ms 162.158.133.37
11 * * * Request timed out.
12 94 ms 93 ms 93 ms www.fastmail.fm [103.168.172.53]
I think this is the first time they’ve had down time that I’ve noticed in almost ten years. I’m sure it happens more… It’s never an issue for me, though. It’s really nice.
Email delivery is also one of those interesting things where even small amounts of downtime are tolerated because email is treated as an unreliable protocol. Must be a bit more comfortable to be in that biz. Although I guess also that means your business involves making customers happy on an unreliable protocol. So maybe it's about the same overall then...
If we're talking about a five minute delay in email, the user may get bored of waiting and decide not to log in. If we're talking an hour long delay, the link in the email may be expired and won't work any longer. I think I've seen email links that expire as quickly as 15 minutes.
It's possible some mail servers would have very short retry windows, so if your mail server was offline briefly a sending server could give up trying and fail the delivery. For a login link that expires quickly, it's probably not worth retrying for several hours or days.
Does not work over SMTP or FastMail iOS app, but I can open FastMail over the web from the browser. And it seems like I got some new mail, so not sure if some other mail was bounced.
I have been using FastMail close to 10 years now (based on my blog post I wrote in may of 2014 about moving from Gmail to FastMail). I don't remember that big and long outage for those years. Which raises a concern for me:
- I don't like how they handled it, the latest update is 4 hours ago https://twitter.com/fastmail, they mentioned "We're in close communication with our provider", which probably means it is not their fault, but the ISP.
- Are they just too small, and it is just more likely to happen to them, comparing to GSuite or Outlook? For example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_services_outages At this point FastMail is down for more than 7 hours.
- I feel like a lot of companies might move to other providers after this. As I see a lot of people complain on twitter, and don't see any responses from Fastmail team. I am sure people will be unhappy.
Kind of worries me. I am not ready to move away from FastMail. But if I will have to, the only option I see right now is Apple Mail with custom domains. But I feel like I am using so many mail customizations, and not sure if Apple Mail can even support all of them.
Looked at the Apple Mail/iCloud Mail - they support only up to 5 custom domains. Which I guess you can workaround by creating separate iCloud accounts and pay for iCloud+
In a similar situation/location. But can't access it through my home internet, but my phone is just fine if I turn off wifi. This is funny because I was still getting push notifications, I just couldn't read them with my phone connected to the home router.
They've been brilliant otherwise. Able to import everything from gmail very easily.
> But can't access it through my home internet, but my phone is just fine if I turn off wifi.
Thanks for the tip. I can't access it via my home provider, but T-Mobile works. Interestingly enough, I'm getting new email notifications on my home provider; I just can't read the mail through it. They're probably using an unaffected Google service for notifications.
If you follow the Sysadmin subreddit, Microsoft routinely has long outages. Last week (or the week before) email was completely down, the admin panel was unusable, etc. Fastmail has been FAR more reliable then Microsoft. Yes, the Fastmail team should be responsive though. At least with Microsoft they internal comms are very leaky with this sort of thing so details are usually public long before it's announced.
Thank you, this is useful. And actually brings the most important concern: the support. If something will go wrong, you can talk to real people behind FastMail. In case of Apple - not sure what is going to happen.
That's fair, but I don't think either Google or Microsoft (being the two alternatives proposed) are terribly forward with their downtime notifications either.
I work in email security. If we even delay some emails for 5 minutes+ we're going to see significant customer response. Systems are designed accordingly.
We get to spend an average of 500ms with each email in terms of scanning. Obviously some things may spend a much longer time but we keep it to the minimum.
Absolutely email is not intended for time sensitive Comms but absolutely it is used for them.
It is more about how they handle it right now. I always only had the best to say of FastMail team. Great support, great team. And personally I always felt like I did not pay enough for using their service.
But it concerns me that we are in silent for 7 hours.
SMTP is designed to be resilient to outages. The sending MTA is supposed to queue messages if it can't reach the destination MTA. It should only bounce them after a significant outage (days, typically).
99% of outages on mail are supported totally by the protocol layer. It's a beautiful thing that if mail isn't delivered, the sender will just try again layer. It makes restarting services in a mail company much, uh, less risky. You won't miss any messages.
To all skeptics: For upwards of six years, I've been a happy user of Fastmail. My experience as a customer has been nothing short of excellent. Its wealth of features – including numerous alias names, concealed email addresses, customizable domains, and its notably swift customer service – all come with a modest price tag. I believe it's worth every cent and represents outstanding value for money.
Edit:
I must clarify, though, that I have no affiliation with Fastmail - my endorsement is purely a reflection of my positive user experience.
I actually think they don't charge us enough. I am paying ~240 for 3 years, so that is 80 a year, less than $7 per month. I would pay a higher price for this service. Especially if that will allow them to add more durability for ISP :D
Maybe open a couple extra accounts that you don't use so you can pay more. As much as I like Fastmail (been using them for a long time) there's only so much I'll pay for a service I can get for free elsewhere. If they're not making a healthy profit at the current prices, they're doing something wrong. I don't think I've ever experienced an outage, either, including today.
I have been using Fastmail for close to 20 years and this is the first time I’ve noticed any downtime. It’s one of the few services I’m happy to pay for year after year.
I must admit, I was unaware they've been operational for such an extensive period! Given their valuable service, I'm confident they will persist for another two decades. There's an undeniable need for email services that are independent and not subject to the whims of major corporations like Microsoft or Google.
I switched from gmail for my domain a couple years back and am similarly happy. The switch was incredibly easy - Fastmail imports everything for you - and the service has been rock solid and easy to use since. Strongly recommend them.
I share a similar experience. I transitioned from Gmail to Fastmail and haven't once regretted it. The migration process was impressively streamlined; I transferred several email addresses, including a few gigabytes of data, to Fastmail without any hassle. I'm particularly fond of their interface; it's straightforward, user-friendly, yet remarkably powerful.
Yep. I put off migrating a bunch of domains with mail that I had on Google for almost a decade, thinking it would be torture to sort it all out. Took a couple of hours and a few clicks on Fastmail to bring them all together. Been a delighted customer ever since.
I've seen a lot of commenters on HN like Fastmail and have nothing but praise for it.
But I disagree with
> all come with a modest price tag
The price tag may be modest for some people, but is not for everyone. If someone needs one mailbox per person in a family, the costs go up a lot with Fastmail. There are cheaper alternatives that have been around for long (though probably not doing things like developing new protocols such as JMAP). Some of these alternatives may also be suitable for people who don't want email to be hosted in the US.
I think the best option for families is either iCloud or Office 365 Family.
I've got both, because I can buy 12+3 month O365 keys on black friday sales and stack them. I think my next bill is coming in 2027. Until then everyone in my family has a 1TB Onedrive account and full Office suite with email.
I use fastmail for personal and o365 for work and if i could gwt work to switch to fastmail i would.... I don't get the allure, especially when you can buy a terabyte on pcloud for very cheap to combine with fastmail.
I think gmail has been out more than three times in the last 15 years. I remember in like 2013ish was the first gmail outage I remember and it was so shocking that everyone just left the office. heh. I've been trying to fully degoogle for six years. It's hard. I was an early GHA adopter and have multiple domains and stuff. That journey is finally wrapping up and FastMail has been a fantastic solution for me as I inch closer to self hosting. I've been very happy to give them money.
>Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.
I’m not affiliated with them in any way beyond being a customer. I work at a giant tech company, and the only money I’ve ever received from fastmail was a referral credit when one friend signed up for their service.
I’m a very happy customer, and feel compelled to speak up when they have a one off incident. It helps readers know this isn’t common, and that the negative title can be counter-balanced by customer anecdotes.
It definitely might be, but also, at least I always try to promote and share good thoughts about a few niche products that I like a lot.
I think paid email is pretty niche in 2023, and I don’t want it to go away (for totally selfish reasons!), so I tell people to try them.
I did the same thing for Kagi when they were new. Then they raised their prices and I changed my opinion to negative. Then Neeva went out of business and I started endorsing Kagi again, because I really want them to keep existing lol.
I’m a lot more forgiving and willing to defend niche companies that are genuinely good, compared to someone like GitHub having an outage and providing horrific status updates, for example.
I was happy to see it as a long time customer who checked my email in the last half hour successfully. If this becomes a problem for me, I’ll chime in. But Fastmail is one of the easiest decisions I’ve made, and is consistently reliable. I think HN commenters are basically the company’s target demo, and we’re very happy with the service.
If the service starts to regularly degrade, I’m sure you’ll see the comments swing the other way in the future, but unlike AWS outages which are poorly reported by AWS and seemingly a regular occurrence, FastMail having one outage isn’t worth canceling over. If someone has a clearly better provider that’s easy to switch to, I’m not opposed to hearing about it though.
Curious if you are their customer. I mean in the early comment I included a thought about moving away from FastMail. But later start to think about it:
1. Support. You talk to humans. I do not know much about email configurations (probably more than average user), but not ninja in DKIM/SPF. Once I have received an email from "some hacker" about email configurations, easily forwarded to FastMail support, and they verified all my configurations and confirmed that everything is configured correctly.
2. Seriously, those 10 years of using their service is unnoticeable. I mean, on the same level of Google Mail, just with way more trust from my side. I have seen some mentioning of outages in other FastMail services, but this is the first time I am affected by Mail.
I see how it could look that way, but these are glowing real Hacker News reviews ツ Turns out the secret to customer loyalty is working hard to deliver a great product...
Fastmail has been very reliable and fast for me for many years, and their web app is just beautifully designed and implemented, and their spam filtering (after training) is excellent.
And we're mostly web engineers here, so we know that infinite .9s adds up to 1 in math but not in SRE...
It's unusual in 2023 for a company to be run well. The default today is to have an adversarial relationship with your customers. When folks discuss the rare companies that they don't hate, it feels like astroturfing, because it doesn't seem possible.
I don't know, it seems genuine to me. I switch to Fastmail years ago and haven't looked back, I get annoyed when I have to use Gmail for work. I can understand that others might have similar feelings.
Maybe you should try Fastmail out for a month and see how you feel.
I'm a real person, been a fastmail customer for almost two decades, and it's one of the very few companies that I cheerfully evangelize for. They provide all the features I need, plenty of configurability, and it's very reliable (this morning notwithstanding). Doesn't at all surprise me that other people are chiming in to say similar things.
Love the service and it's been rock solid for over a decade for me.
I do understand the concern with the lack communication with this outage, however. It's a bit of an organizational/leadership red flag when a crucial service business like this doesn't communicate with its customers when things go south.
I don't care, this is the first time I've heard of it being down in years, and I didn't even notice. They've been so great, that they can have a lot more downtime than this before I'll even be annoyed.
I switched from GMail to iCloud, because I didn’t want Google hovering up my emails into their advertising business. I reluctantly switched from iCloud to FastMail, because iCloud’s alias feature wasn’t fully functioning. I love FastMail and wholeheartedly recommend it. I guess I have used it for about 5 years.
Would you mind sharing a detailed review (guessing you used with your domain) of iCloud? As in catch all, sending from different addresses on your domain etc? Last time I checked the latter didn't work at all - is that what you meant by alias?
Doesn't work for me in the Netherlands. Down since this morning. Though I used Tor and could access it via an IP in Ghana. I have new emails so I am pretty sure they keep arriving.
I share the positive sentiment about Fastmail here. Using it close to 10 years without issues. The times I needed there support for some more complex configuration question and they replied thoroughly and quickly. I normally dislike web interfaces but their UI is really well done.
> Doesn't work for me in the Netherlands. Down since this morning.
Same for me. It is accessible from my home network (AS206238) and from public transport wifi (AS202189), but not from any other network I can currently access (AS201975, AS50266).
Love Fastmail - happy to live with a small outage - still out here in SW UK - any suggestions on another way to access my e-mail would be gratefully accepted.
120 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 157 ms ] thread[1] - https://bgp.he.net/net/103.168.172.0/24#_netinfo
[2] - https://bgp.tools/prefix/103.168.172.0/24#connectivity
[3] - https://www.thousandeyes.com/outages/
[1] - https://bgp.he.net/ip/162.158.212.94
Their mobile app is just a wrapper around their site, it does have no offline capabilities.
Their mobile app requires GApps to receive notifications, because Firebase. Ie no notifications on de-googled phones.
They would silently kill your account if their automated gearhead would think you are sending anything remotely resembling automated messages (that was a big ouch).
(too lazy to check if this is still a thing, with fronted mails they could had fixed it) You still can get an original mailbox name if you are sending from an identity of that mailbox.
Yes, they are rarely down, your support questions would be answered by a real humans (though not at your convienient time, so expect days to solve issues; probably should had added that into the list) but if you use it a bit more than a personal (or a business individual) account you are on the shallow grounds.
What do you mean by "a bit more"? Do you mean using them as a SMTP relay? Having many email addresses and users under one account? Sending a lot of handwritten emails? Or something else?
They are fine being (an authenticated) SMTP relay.
> Having many email addresses and users under one account?
I do have only one account, with many domains and addresses.
> Sending a lot of handwritten emails?
Opposite of this. I was just testing the exact SMTP configuration for Ghost and then suddenly not only it stopped working but the account were ghosted. If I did that on my main account then I would had lost all my mail.
> Note: Fastmail is not a bulk email sending service. Our rate limits are designed to be generous for individual users, but not for bulk sending. Our Terms of Service prohibits sending duplicative email, and we will permanently close accounts found doing so.
Oh, yes, I read it way before this conversation.
Oh, yes, water is wet, what's next?
Are you familiar with what the failure mode is like with these systems? I’m assuming the login link shows up eventually, but not immediately?
It's possible some mail servers would have very short retry windows, so if your mail server was offline briefly a sending server could give up trying and fail the delivery. For a login link that expires quickly, it's probably not worth retrying for several hours or days.
Does not work over SMTP or FastMail iOS app, but I can open FastMail over the web from the browser. And it seems like I got some new mail, so not sure if some other mail was bounced.
I have been using FastMail close to 10 years now (based on my blog post I wrote in may of 2014 about moving from Gmail to FastMail). I don't remember that big and long outage for those years. Which raises a concern for me:
- I don't like how they handled it, the latest update is 4 hours ago https://twitter.com/fastmail, they mentioned "We're in close communication with our provider", which probably means it is not their fault, but the ISP.
- Are they just too small, and it is just more likely to happen to them, comparing to GSuite or Outlook? For example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_services_outages At this point FastMail is down for more than 7 hours.
- I feel like a lot of companies might move to other providers after this. As I see a lot of people complain on twitter, and don't see any responses from Fastmail team. I am sure people will be unhappy.
Kind of worries me. I am not ready to move away from FastMail. But if I will have to, the only option I see right now is Apple Mail with custom domains. But I feel like I am using so many mail customizations, and not sure if Apple Mail can even support all of them.
They've been brilliant otherwise. Able to import everything from gmail very easily.
Thanks for the tip. I can't access it via my home provider, but T-Mobile works. Interestingly enough, I'm getting new email notifications on my home provider; I just can't read the mail through it. They're probably using an unaffected Google service for notifications.
I made a table comparing different email services on the MacPowerUsers forum a while back. It's in need of updating but might be handy: https://talk.macpowerusers.com/t/icloud-mail-fastmail-gmail-...
No new updates, just that they are still working on this issue.
Absolutely email is not intended for time sensitive Comms but absolutely it is used for them.
But it concerns me that we are in silent for 7 hours.
Shouldn't a system this big be redundant?
SMTP is designed to be resilient to outages. The sending MTA is supposed to queue messages if it can't reach the destination MTA. It should only bounce them after a significant outage (days, typically).
https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5321#section-4.5.4
99% of outages on mail are supported totally by the protocol layer. It's a beautiful thing that if mail isn't delivered, the sender will just try again layer. It makes restarting services in a mail company much, uh, less risky. You won't miss any messages.
So I wouldn't think the mails should bounce unless someone used a really short retry period.
"Retries continue until the message is transmitted or the sender gives up; the give-up time generally needs to be at least 4-5 days." from RFC 5321
One outage in 10 years sounds like a good reason to not move away, if you ask me.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36534590
I'm a very happy Fastmail user.
I'll just say that over the years, Fastmail has always over delivered.
I'm a continued happy customer.
Edit:
I must clarify, though, that I have no affiliation with Fastmail - my endorsement is purely a reflection of my positive user experience.
But I disagree with
> all come with a modest price tag
The price tag may be modest for some people, but is not for everyone. If someone needs one mailbox per person in a family, the costs go up a lot with Fastmail. There are cheaper alternatives that have been around for long (though probably not doing things like developing new protocols such as JMAP). Some of these alternatives may also be suitable for people who don't want email to be hosted in the US.
I've got both, because I can buy 12+3 month O365 keys on black friday sales and stack them. I think my next bill is coming in 2027. Until then everyone in my family has a 1TB Onedrive account and full Office suite with email.
it's there to give your perspective
add me to happy customers
>Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.
I’m a very happy customer, and feel compelled to speak up when they have a one off incident. It helps readers know this isn’t common, and that the negative title can be counter-balanced by customer anecdotes.
I think paid email is pretty niche in 2023, and I don’t want it to go away (for totally selfish reasons!), so I tell people to try them.
I did the same thing for Kagi when they were new. Then they raised their prices and I changed my opinion to negative. Then Neeva went out of business and I started endorsing Kagi again, because I really want them to keep existing lol.
I’m a lot more forgiving and willing to defend niche companies that are genuinely good, compared to someone like GitHub having an outage and providing horrific status updates, for example.
If the service starts to regularly degrade, I’m sure you’ll see the comments swing the other way in the future, but unlike AWS outages which are poorly reported by AWS and seemingly a regular occurrence, FastMail having one outage isn’t worth canceling over. If someone has a clearly better provider that’s easy to switch to, I’m not opposed to hearing about it though.
1. Support. You talk to humans. I do not know much about email configurations (probably more than average user), but not ninja in DKIM/SPF. Once I have received an email from "some hacker" about email configurations, easily forwarded to FastMail support, and they verified all my configurations and confirmed that everything is configured correctly.
2. Seriously, those 10 years of using their service is unnoticeable. I mean, on the same level of Google Mail, just with way more trust from my side. I have seen some mentioning of outages in other FastMail services, but this is the first time I am affected by Mail.
Fastmail has been very reliable and fast for me for many years, and their web app is just beautifully designed and implemented, and their spam filtering (after training) is excellent.
And we're mostly web engineers here, so we know that infinite .9s adds up to 1 in math but not in SRE...
Maybe you should try Fastmail out for a month and see how you feel.
Love the service and it's been rock solid for over a decade for me.
I do understand the concern with the lack communication with this outage, however. It's a bit of an organizational/leadership red flag when a crucial service business like this doesn't communicate with its customers when things go south.
I share the positive sentiment about Fastmail here. Using it close to 10 years without issues. The times I needed there support for some more complex configuration question and they replied thoroughly and quickly. I normally dislike web interfaces but their UI is really well done.
Same for me. It is accessible from my home network (AS206238) and from public transport wifi (AS202189), but not from any other network I can currently access (AS201975, AS50266).