Fastmail: Year Two

Here’s a small follow-up to my usage of Fastmail that started in 2021. In a nutshell - little has changed since my previous update. Fastmail is still my favorite email vendor and I keep using it more and more. Here are a few highlights:

• I’ve been using it so much that I killed my HEY account
• I’ll likely kill my Proton account as well, given that I haven’t opened it in ages
• I like that Fastmail kept adding some small new features and refining existing features (e.g. small tweaks to the calendar, the settings, the search, etc) - I’m not a fan of drastic changes, but I appreciate small tasteful improvements
• You can now even buy domains from Fastmail, which I think is pretty cool, as I use most of the domains that I own only for email

You might recall I complained about issues that I encountered with the web version of Fastmail, but you can forget about those. Ever since I’ve stopped using AdGuard most (all?) of the issues with Fastmail freezing disappeared. Other issues disappeared for me as well, so I guess it’s not a bad thing I finally got rid of AdGuard.

One “hyped” Fastmail feature I didn’t end up using in the long run is masked email addresses. At first I was excited about it, but I quickly realized I rarely care if some service knows my real email domain, so I reverted to using addresses like service_name@my_domain.net for most services. I know that for my password manager it’s all the same, but those meaningful addresses make it easier for me to configure my email sorting rules.

I’m still using Gmail, as it’s good to have some backup email address, but they way things are going I won’t be surprised if in the end I’m left with only Fastmail and Gmail. Less is more, right?

To wrap up this short article - Fastmail was awesome when I started to use it and it got better over time. I still recommend it highly and I’m still not affiliated with Fastmail in any way.