FastMail

FastMail
Type of site
 Webmail, POP3, IMAP4
Available in 36 languages
Owner FastMail Pty Ltd
Website www.fastmail.com
Commercial Yes
Registration Required
Launched 1999 (1999)
Current status Online

FastMail is an email service offering paid email accounts for individuals and organizations. It is provided in 36 languages[1] to customers worldwide by FastMail Pty Ltd, a company located in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.[2]

The company was acquired by Opera Software in 2010. On September 26, 2013, FastMail announced that it had split from Opera and became a privately held independent company.[3] Its main servers are located in New York City and Amsterdam; a previous backup location in Iceland is being replaced by the server location in Amsterdam.[4]

History

FastMail was founded by Bruce Davey and Jeremy Howard, to provide email service for customers of the Optimal Decisions Group.

The provider's sole product line is email services (and included accessories), but it was owned by Opera Software, (known best for its web browser) from 2010 to 2013.[5][6][7][8] Following a staff buyout, the company is now fully independent again.[9]

On October 18, 2012 it was announced that new signups for the free service level had been discontinued.[10] Existing free FastMail accounts would not be discontinued, but if a free account was deactivated because it was not logged into in over 120 days, it would not be reactivated. The company stated that they had decided to focus FastMail as a "premium brand" with only paid accounts.

When first established in 1999, the service was intended to differentiate itself through providing features that were not yet available from other market players. Early on, this included the ease and speed of email transport and access, personalities and IMAP[11] and SSL[12] support, and an independent public forum[13] and wiki among user support options. Over the years, these features became commonplace, but features such as WebDAV, secure LDAP, opportunistic inter-server encryption, reliability via minimization of single points of failure, and customizable filtering via Sieve are current differentiators.

On October 23, 2014, FastMail moved their primary domain from fastmail.fm to fastmail.com.[14]

All existing guest and "one-time payment" member email accounts are expected to be discontinued from July 31, 2017 as FastMail transitions into a subscription-only email service.[15] Existing users are given the option to subscribe to FastMail with a discount or to request a refund of their one-time payment. [16]

Features

FastMail offers 113 domains[17] which users can choose from, while also allowing customers to use their own domain.[18] Users are also able to create calendars and notes in the web mail environment and sync them over the IMAP and CalDav protocol.[19][20]

Technology

The site developers are among active contributors to the widely used Cyrus IMAP open source software project[21] and include the lead developer and maintainer of Perl module Mail::IMAPTalk.[22] They are actively developing JMAP - a new open email protocol.[23]

YubiKey inserted into a USB port

FastMail offers paid email accounts for individuals and organizations, with varying service levels and prices. Their individual accounts currently offer a 30-day free trial period.

FastMail also provides for two-factor login using a YubiKey. While associating one or more YubiKeys with a FastMail account will not prevent normal logins, it allowed for logging on to an email account with just a YubiKey and its auto-generated one time passwords, making it suitable for accessing email on public machines. The YubiKey-only login feature was discontinued in July 2016, as it was rarely used, according to the FastMail team.[24]

The email service also supports the U2F and the TOTP protocol as a secondary sign-in factor, allowing users to sign in with their password and a security token as an extra security feature.

See also

References

  1. ↑ "FastMail interface languages". FastMail Help & Support. Retrieved 2015-11-21.
  2. ↑ Wright, Charles (2002-10-07). "FastMail reinvents a slicker, quicker wheel". The Age. Melbourne. Archived from the original on 24 February 2008. Retrieved December 30, 2016.
  3. ↑ "FastMail became a privately held independent company". CEOWORLD Magazine. Retrieved 26 September 2013.
  4. ↑ "New secondary MX and nameserver IPs". Blog.fastmail.com. Retrieved 13 July 2015.
  5. ↑ "Opera targets mobile with email acquisition". The Register. Retrieved 16 September 2010.
  6. ↑ "Opera Software purchases Melbourne-based email provider". Arnnet.com.au. Retrieved 16 September 2010.
  7. ↑ "Opera acquires FastMail.fm". Opera.com. 2010-04-30. Retrieved 2016-12-06.
  8. ↑ "FastMail.FM has been acquired by Opera Software". Blog.fastmail.com. Retrieved 21 August 2010.
  9. ↑ "Exciting news: FastMail staff purchase the business from Opera". Blog.fastmail.com. Retrieved 18 July 2016.
  10. ↑ "Changes to FastMail service levels". Blog.fastmail.com. Retrieved 2016-12-06.
  11. ↑ Wright, Charles (2002-10-17). "The host with the most". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 10 September 2010.
  12. ↑ Fleishman, Glenn. Take Control of Your AirPort Network. Books.google.com. p. 106. Retrieved 2016-12-06.
  13. ↑ "Welcome to the Fastmail.FM General Discussions Forum".
  14. ↑ "FastMail has moved to fastmail.com, @fastmail.com email addresses now available". Blog.fastmail.com. Retrieved 2016-12-06.
  15. ↑ "Guest and Member subscriptions being discontinued". emaildiscussions.com. 2017-01-17. Retrieved 2017-02-02.
  16. ↑ "EmailDiscussions.com - View Single Post - Guest and Member subscriptions being discontinued". www.emaildiscussions.com. Retrieved 2017-05-05.
  17. ↑ "Our domains". Fastmail.com. FastMail Help & Support. Retrieved 2015-11-21.
  18. ↑ "Hosted domains". FastMail Help & Support. Retrieved 2015-11-21.
  19. ↑ "Dec 24: Note to self — IMAP notes are go!". FastMail Blog. Retrieved 2017-03-29.
  20. ↑ "Announcing the FastMail Calendar". FastMail Blog. Retrieved 2017-03-29.
  21. ↑ "Emailserviceguide.com". Emailserviceguide.com. Retrieved 2016-12-06.
  22. ↑ Blank-Edelman, David N. (2009). Automating system administration with Perl. p. 288. ISBN 978-0-596-00639-6.
  23. ↑ "JSON Meta Application Protocol Specification (JMAP)". Jmap.io. Retrieved 2016-12-06.
  24. ↑ "Two-step verification and other new security features". FastMail Blog. Retrieved 2016-10-21.
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