I am ecstatic with my new email home, Fastmail. I’ve used Gmail for as long as I can remember. Since I first heard of it. However, I only used it to send and receive mail from my own custom domains, never from my actual Gmail address. I also used it for things like Calendar and YouTube because using those with a non-Gmail address didn’t used to be possible (now you can sign up with Google with your own non-Gmail email address). However, I recently read here that the “send-as” feature would be going away in January 2027 which makes Gmail no longer an option for me. Gmail’s “Send as” alias feature has always been a little janky and become more so over the years. I used to be able to send using Gmail’s SMTP servers but at some point that changed and I had to start using my web host’s SMTP servers. You also had to use “app passwords” with the alias accounts. It always felt a bit forced and cobbled together. So the search began for a new solution. I didn’t mind paying for the right service.
I could sign up for a paid Google Workspace account which allows you to send from custom domains. From what I read though you can only have one main domain, and any secondary domains must all use the same username before the @. I have 7 domains and several different usernames before the @ so that wouldn’t work.
Someone recommended mxroute which actually seemed pretty nice and simple for just email needs. I already pay for a web hosting account to host my website which does include email servers as well if I wanted to just use that since I’m already paying for it. I set up some test accounts to see how it felt. It was okay but I’d have to use the default mail app on my iPhone and start using some kind of mail app on my PC if I went that way. It all felt a little antiquated and clunky.
Many recommended Proton Mail but their mid-tier only supports one domain, and even their highest tier only supports 3 domains. Then someone recommended Fastmail. I started researching them and was pretty intrigued very quickly. My understanding is that they’ve been around a very long time, are based in Australia, and have a great reputation. You can have up to 100 domains in one account and as many different aliases as you like. I decided to set up one of my spare domains that isn’t really used for much as a test bed and then if I liked it, I could always set the rest up if/when that Gmail feature stopped working. I was immediately impressed. Everything just felt good. Elegant, smooth, well thought out. Plenty of options to customize things to the way you like them but not overwhelming. After some poking around I really felt like this was the winner. So much so that I decided not to wait until Gmail stopped working with domains, but to make the jump immediately. Very quickly, in one evening I had all my domains, old emails, contacts, and email rules/filters transferred over. They had import tools and great clear documentation for everything. Again, every step of the way I was just super happy and impressed. I suddenly realized how many compromises I had just been living with at Gmail. Such as the fact that Fastmail has a dark mode that’s actually dark. Gmail’s “Dark Theme” is dark until you click on an email, and then the content in the reading pane is still blinding white. If you accidentally deleted an email at Gmail it could be hard to find as the trash was ordered by receive date and not deletion date. At Fastmail there are multiple sorting options including deletion date.
A few of my imported email rules were disabled as they didn’t have default equivalent functionality at Fastmail, but they were nothing critical. I had some rules to make sure certain addresses were not spammed (after they had been incorrectly spammed at Gmail) and Fastmail didn’t have that rule option but apparently if I just add those addressed to my contacts they won’t go to spam. I also had one rule set up at Gmail so that if someone sent me an email with a certain subject line, it would automatically send a certain email template. While Fastmail does support email templates, this was not an option in their rules set. They do however support the Sieve coding language for custom rules so with a little learning I might be able to eventually replicate it. It’s not anything critical for me and was just a very niche case.
Fastmail’s app and web interface are great and there’ is nothing I have wished for that wasn’t there. In fact exploring the options led me to start doing some things in ways I hadn’t really thought about before but ended up liking better. You can also choose whether you want to organize you email by Labels like Gmail or by Folders if you prefer. Fastmail can also generate “Masked Emails” and also use “Plus addressing” like Gmail or the even more flexible “Subdomain Addressing” which can avoid the problem of some websites not accepting + in an email address.
There’s also contacts, calendars, notes, and files built in to Fastmail which is nice. I set the Calendar up to sync with my Google calendars as I don’t think there’s any escaping those. It’s what everyone I know uses and I have several shared band calendars and such, but it’s still nice to be able to view it from within Fastmail if I want. Fastmail’s calendar also can’t do the cool address/location lookup that Google Calendar does.
Fastmail’s notes are nice for quick easy notes but won’t be replacing Google Keep for me. Keep can do things like label and categorize notes among many other features lacking in Fastmail’s notes, but hey it’s still a nice freebie in there that is useful. And of course who knows if Google might just decide to kill Keep someday like they have so many other great services over the years. There’s also a “Files” tab in Fastmail which I’ve used to quickly transfer a file between my phone and PC, which was handy!
It did feel a bit weird to transition after being a Gmail user for so long, but that weirdness is already gone. I’m 100% satisfied and all in with Fastmail. So much so that I paid for 3 years to get the lowest price. I cannot recommend them highly enough. I have my old Gmail forwarding to my new account just in case anything comes in there, such as calendar event invitations since I don’t think there’s any way around that. There’s unfortunately no way that I know of to totally free myself from my old Gmail account. You can’t change you google account address to a non-gmail address, and if I made a new Google account using my own domain address (which I tried but couldn’t do because it told me my phone number was already used too many times), there’s no way I know of to transfer my calendars, YouTube channel and such to a new account. So I suppose the old Gmail account will be with me in some capacity until my dying day, but not for email any longer! Fastmail is my luxurious, happy new home.