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Fastmail is an email hosting company based in
Melbourne Melbourne ( , ; Boonwurrung language, Boonwurrung/ or ) is the List of Australian capital cities, capital and List of cities in Australia by population, most populous city of the States and territories of Australia, Australian state of Victori ...
, Australia. In addition to its Fastmail-branded services, the company also operates Topicbox, a
mailing list A mailing list is a collection of names and addresses used by an individual or an organization to send material to multiple recipients. Mailing lists are often rented or sold. If rented, the renter agrees to use the mailing list only at contra ...
service, and Pobox, an email service it acquired in 2015. The company was acquired by
Opera Software Opera (formerly Opera Software AS) is a Norwegian multinational technology corporation headquartered in Oslo, Norway with additional offices in European Union, Europe, China, and Africa. Opera offers a range of products and services that inclu ...
in 2010 but became independent again in 2013 through a staff buyout. Its servers are located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and St. Louis, Missouri.


History

Fastmail was founded in 1999 by Rob Mueller, 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 Opera (formerly Opera Software AS) is a Norwegian multinational technology corporation headquartered in Oslo, Norway with additional offices in European Union, Europe, China, and Africa. Opera offers a range of products and services that inclu ...
(best known for its web browser) from 2010 to 2013. Through a staff buyout, the company became fully independent again. When first established, 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 In computing, the Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) is an Internet standard protocol used by email clients to retrieve email messages from a mail server over a TCP/IP connection. IMAP is defined by . IMAP was designed with the goal of per ...
and SSL support, and an independent public forum and wiki among user support options. Over the years, these features became commonplace, but features such as
WebDAV WebDAV (Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning) is a set of extensions to the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), which allows user agents to collaboratively author contents ''directly'' in an HTTP web server by providing facilities for conc ...
, secure
LDAP The Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP ) is an open, vendor-neutral, industry standard application protocol for accessing and maintaining distributed Directory service, directory information services over an Internet Protocol (IP) networ ...
, opportunistic inter-server encryption, reliability via minimization of single points of failure, and customizable filtering via
Sieve A sieve (), fine mesh strainer, or sift is a tool used for separating wanted elements from unwanted material or for controlling the particle size distribution of a sample, using a screen such as a woven mesh or net or perforated sheet m ...
are current differentiators. In 2003, mail servers were moved under the domain name messagingengine.com. On 23 October 2014, Fastmail moved their primary domain from fastmail.fm to fastmail.com. On 18 October 2012 Fastmail announced that new signups for the free service level had been discontinued. 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. All existing "guest" and "one-time payment" email accounts were discontinued on 31 July 2017 as Fastmail transitioned into a subscription-only email service. Existing users were given the option to subscribe to Fastmail with a discount or to request a refund of their one-time payment. As of December 2018, Fastmail and all other Australian companies are subject to the Assistance and Access Bill, which compels them to assist law enforcement in accessing encrypted communications if warranted during an investigation. Fastmail stated that while their services were not "materially affected" since they already complied with warrants per the Telecommunications Act, concerns have been shown by customers over the bill's effects. On 24 June 2019, Fastmail launched a refreshed UI design, with a new logo, app icon, colors, and website. The logo now reads "Fastmail" instead of "FastMail".


Features


Address and domain management

Fastmail offers users a choice of domains for their email addresses. Many of these domains begin with "fastmail" followed by various
top-level domains A top-level domain (TLD) is one of the domains at the highest level in the hierarchical Domain Name System of the Internet after the root domain. The top-level domain names are installed in the root zone of the name space. For all domains i ...
(e.g., fastmail.com, fastmail.co.uk, fastmail.jp). In addition to these Fastmail-branded options, the service also provides numerous other domains, such as 123mail.org, airpost.net, mailbolt.com, and sent.as. Users also have the option to use their own custom domains. To manage email identities, users can create up to 600
aliases A pseudonym (; ) or alias () is a fictitious name that a person assumes for a particular purpose, which differs from their original or true meaning (orthonym). This also differs from a new name that entirely or legally replaces an individual's ow ...
, which are additional email addresses that deliver to the same inbox. This allows for separate addresses for different purposes (e.g., work, personal, or specific services) without creating new user accounts. For users with custom domains, catch-all aliases can be configured to receive any email sent to that domain, regardless of the address specified. Fastmail offers a feature called 'Masked Email'. This allows users to generate unique, random email addresses for every online service they sign up for, keeping their primary email address private. If a masked address begins to receive spam, it can be disabled or deleted, and it helps identify which service may have shared or leaked the user's data. Fastmail provides integrations with the password managers
1Password 1Password is a password manager developed by the Canadian software company AgileBits Inc. It supports multiple platforms such as iOS, Android, Windows, Linux, and macOS. It provides a place for users to store various passwords, software licenses ...
and
Bitwarden Bitwarden is a freemium open-source password management service that is used to store sensitive information, such as website credentials, in an encrypted vault. Functionalities Bitwarden uses zero-knowledge encryption, meaning the compa ...
, allowing users to create Masked Email addresses directly from the password manager's interface when signing up for new accounts.


Applications

Fastmail can be accessed through its web interface, dedicated mobile apps for iOS and Android, or as a
Progressive Web App A progressive web application (PWA), or progressive web app, is a type of web app that can be installed on a device as a standalone application software, application. PWAs are installed using the offline cache of the device's web browser. PWAs w ...
(PWA) on supported desktop browsers. On December 16, 2024, the team announced a public beta testing of offline support for the mobile apps, allowing to, for example, compose an email without requiring an active internet connection.


Organization

The service provides tools for organizing mail. Users can choose between labels or traditional folders. Powerful mail rules (filters) can be created to automatically organize incoming mail, with support for advanced customization through the Sieve scripting language. A vacation response (autoreply) can be set for any email address, and a restore tool allows for the recovery of messages, contacts, events, or notes deleted within the past seven days.


Additional features

Beyond email, users can create and manage calendars and notes within the web interface, which can be synchronized with other devices and applications using the
CalDAV Calendaring Extensions to WebDAV, or CalDAV, is an Internet standard allowing a client to access and manage calendar data along with the ability to schedule meetings with users on the same or on remote servers. It lets multiple users in differe ...
and
IMAP In computing, the Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) is an Internet standard protocol used by email clients to retrieve email messages from a mail server over a TCP/IP connection. IMAP is defined by . IMAP was designed with the goal of per ...
protocols, respectively. A comprehensive address book allows users to manage contacts. The contacts feature is integrated with the mail interface, enabling users to view contact details and conversation history in a sidebar, add senders to contacts directly from a message, and receive auto-complete suggestions when composing an email. Contacts can be marked as VIPs, which adds a star icon to their messages and allows for specific notifications for that group. Adding a sender to the address book also serves to whitelist them, preventing their messages from being marked as spam. Contacts can be synced through the
CardDAV vCard Extensions to WebDAV (CardDAV) is an address book client/server protocol designed to allow users to access and share contact data on a server. The CardDAV protocol was developed by the IETF and was published as in August 2011. CardDAV is ...
protocol.


Technology

The site developers are among active contributors to the widely used Cyrus IMAP
open source software Open-source software (OSS) is Software, computer software that is released under a Open-source license, license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and Software distribution, distribute the software an ...
project and include the lead developer and maintainer of
Perl Perl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. Though Perl is not officially an acronym, there are various backronyms in use, including "Practical Extraction and Reporting Language". Perl was developed ...
module Mail::IMAPTalk. Fastmail supported the development of the
free software Free software, libre software, libreware sometimes known as freedom-respecting software is computer software distributed open-source license, under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, distribut ...
webmail interface Roundcube and developed
JMAP The JSON Meta Application Protocol (JMAP) is a set of related open Internet Standard protocols for handling email. JMAP is implemented using JSON APIs over HTTP and has been developed as an alternative to IMAP and proprietary email APIs such as Go ...
– a new open email protocol. 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. 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. In August 2024 Fastmail introduced support for
passwordless authentication Passwordless authentication is an authentication method in which a user can log in to a computer system without entering (and having to remember) a password or any other knowledge-based secret. In most common implementations users are asked to en ...
with passkeys.


See also

*
Comparison of webmail providers The following tables compare general and technical information for a number of notable webmail providers who offer a web interface in English. The list does not include web hosting providers who may offer email server and/or client software as ...


References


External links

* {{Official website, https://www.fastmail.com/ Webmail Internet properties established in 1999 Companies based in Melbourne