A Review of FastMail Email Service

Find out if it covers your email needs

Fastmail interface Welcome to Fastmail screen

FastMail is a great email service with IMAP access, useful features, and a stellar web interface. It has many good features and some weaknesses For example, it would be nice to have more storage space with the basic plans.

Pros and Cons of Fastmail

What We Like
  • Offers elegant, powerful, and flexible web-based email access.

  • Includes IMAP access.

  • Receive and send mail from other email accounts.

What We Don't Like
  • Doesn't offer labels or smart folders to organize mail.

  • May have a high learning curve.

  • Lacks a task manager and integration with third-party services.

Features

Email services on the web are great, but they often come at a price such as tons of ads crowding a slow-loading and all-around cumbersome interface. Not so with FastMail.

Here are a few of the other beneficial features that make FastMail a competitive email service:

  • Offers email accounts with 100 MB to 60 GB mailbox size and IMAP access.
  • Has a fast and highly customizable web interface. Keyboard shortcuts make it fast.
  • Writes both plain-text and rich HTML emails properly.
  • Creates flexible custom filters and vacation auto-replies.
  • Includes basic protection from spam and viruses. Paid accounts use personal Bayesian filtering.
  • Counteracts phishing attempts and disables links that are misleading.
  • Collects mail from other POP accounts and sends messages using those addresses.
  • Contains a full-featured address book as well as file hosting and a notebook.

IMAP Access

FastMail nets you IMAP access from any email program. This makes up for the somewhat limited online mailbox size of FastMail accounts.

Flexibility and Power

Try the FastMail web-based interface for its flexibility and power. Keyboard shortcuts take you everywhere in seconds: to the search box, for example, which turns up just the right emails fast; to the folder list, from which you can select with auto-completion; or to the message editor, which can juggle plain text and HTML expertly.

If you like FastMail enough to make it your main email service, have it retrieve mail from other mailboxes using POP (it doesn't function as an IMAP client) and send with the right address in the From line, too.

Not the Best Level of Spam and Virus Filtering

The FastMail filtering interface may look confusing at first, but it's quite sensible and versatile. However, free FastMail accounts do not have the best level of spam and virus filtering. Basic junk dumping is in place, though.

Finding Messages Is Fast

While operating folders in FastMail is a pleasure, the freedom of multiple labels per message is lacking. Finding messages with the FastMail search offers swift and precise results (and search terms can be saved for one-click repetition). The addition of smart folders that update in real-time and go bold upon new mail would be nice.

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