Gmail Is Dead; Long Live FastMail
See updates at the end of the post.
I’ve decided to reduce my dependence on Google to its minimum. There is no particular reason, nor have I encountered a tipping point that made me think “now it’s time.”
I’ve been meaning to do this for a long time, but until now I figured the cons of moving out outweighed the pros.
I haven’t been particularly concerned with Gmail now showing ads, since I don’t use the tabbed interface1.
The recent shenanigan with Google+ comments on YouTube isn’t much of a problem either, as I use neither.
The privacy, or the lack thereof, on Google is probably my main concern. I just don’t like that my time is being sold to advertisers I don’t care about. Google is selling my attention to third-parties, and I’m not okay with that.
As I’ve said, until now, I thought it was more work to deal with the migration than it was worth it, and that I could live with the fact of being a product in Google’s catalog. I thought Google was a good company2, but not anymore.
It’s time to move out.
The first thing to do is to leave Gmail. I have one personal email account (that I strangely also use for work) and two email accounts on custom domains (vzr.me and geekeri.es).
My plan was to use two main aliases on vzr.me (personal and work), and a third one on geekeri.es for the blog.
Being the geek I am, I immediately turned to FastMail.FM. It has quite a reputation (having been owned and operated by Opera), and I remember Marco saying good things about it. If, like me, you want to read from multiple sources before bridging the gap, have a look at the following links: Joe Brockmeier’s From Gmail to FastMail: Moving Away From Google, My experience with FastMail as a Gmail replacement, Thord Daniel Hedengren’s Fastmail Failed, Colin Donnell’s From Gmail to FastMail and Max Masnick’s Switching from Gmail to FastMail.
Update: I also recommend you read Vincent Gosselin’s Switching Email from Google Apps to FastMail.
I created an account, and dived into the configuration. The Help section is very deep and detailed but looks old and is rather hard to read.
The two custom domains were set up in a breeze, and the DNS changes were caught up almost instantly (that is to say, in the world of DNS changes, in less than one hour).
I have yet to change my email address on every forum and other internet account though. I can set up a mail redirection from Gmail to FastMail though, so that will ease up the transition.
I also needed to do a bit of coding to modify my posting workflow here. Instead of checking Gmail, I had to check a standard IMAP server for the emails. The beauty of Ruby made so that it was fairly trivial.
I’ll write regular updates here on this post about how it goes with FastMail, but I don’t expect it to go badly anyway. It’s already a bliss to use the web interface, and the IMAP support is best in class.
Once the email transition is done, I’ll permanently delete my Google account. I will back to being an anonymous soul using Google Search (it’s still the damn best search engine there is). That’s it.
(2013/11/13) Update: I couldn’t have chosen a better time to switch to FastMail. Today, it has increased the storage quotas on all accounts. ‘Enhanced’ accounts, the more common ones, now have 15 GB storage for $40 a year.
Also, despite what is written in the Help pages, the Custom Styles feature doesn’t work with the new interface. If the font weight makes you squint, you’ll have to use other methods to deal with it (e.g. user stylesheet, browser addon).
(2013/11/18) Update: A spammer has used my own domain to send spam. I manage my own DNS and forgot to add SPF, CSV and DKIM records to my domain. It’s a bit difficult to manage, but hopefully FastMail proposes the service for free. It’s an easy switch, as easy as changing a domain’s name servers. Just keep in mind that you have to do have these records on your domains or they will be blacklisted as soon as a spammer uses them.
(2013/12/03) Update: From time to time, I receive a spam in my mailbox. More often than not it’s in Chinese. FastMail says its antispam system is self-learning, so I hope the situation will improve. The amount of spam that gets through is still low enough that I can deal with it, but still be prepared to see some spam if you come over from Gmail.
Also, I’ve forwarded all my email accounts (Gmail and my two schools email account) to FastMail. I don’t reply from these addresses anyway so it’s an easy transition.
(2013/12/15) Update: If you’ve found this post interesting and intend to try out FastMail, please use this link: it would support me and this blog. Thank you very much!
(2014/01/11) Update: If you, like me, wonder why there are two copies of each message that show up in the Sent Items folder, here’s a resource that will help you: “2 messages in ‘sent items’ when using iPhone”.