Fastmail review

Fastmail is a pretty decent business email hosting provider but you will find cheaper alternatives on the market. There’s some worthwhile features on show here, from third-party integrations to sizeable storage options, but notbhing that could be considered particularly ground-breaking.

The support is also only okay really - there’s no live chat support, for example - and while Fastmail has some good security credentials - is that really enough to justify its price tag? Although Fastmail claims to offer three apps in one - calendar and contacts, as well as email hosting - many other providers provide similar functionality. 

Keep reading to find out why, if budgets are tights, you might be better off looking elsewhere for your business email hosting solution.

Fastmail: Plans and pricing

One of the first things you’ll notice about Fastmail is its price tag - it’s one of the more expensive email hosting services out there. There are three pricing tiers, Basic, Standard, or Professional and for each one you can opt to pay monthly or choose to sign up for an annual, 24-month, or 36-month contract. 

The Basic plan will set you back $4 per use per month based on monthly billing, dropping to $3 if you pay yearly, $2.85 on a two-year contract, and $2.80 on a three-year plan. The Standard plan, meanwhile, is $6 per user per month when paid monthly, $5 annually, $4.75 with a two-year subscription and $4.67 if you commit for three years. The Professional plan, ideal for larger businesses with the highest resource needs, is $10 per use per month (for monthly billing), falling to $9, $8.55, and $8.40 per user per month for annual, two-year, and three-year contracts respectively. 

Businesses are able to keep costs down somewhat by opting to mix and match plans for their employees. For example, while some staff members may need the Professional plan, for others, the Standard offering may be more than enough. If that’s the case, the flexibility of purchasing different plans for each employee could lead to a substantial saving. 

Features

(Image credit: Fastmail)

Fastmail advertises itself as providing three apps in one - email, calendar, and contacts. However, this really does Fastmail a disservice as customers will find that they get a lot more than that. For instance, even with the Basic plan, you get 6GB total cloud storage per user (made up of 5GB of mail, contact, and calendar storage, and 1GB of file storage), multiple customizable addresses per account, masked email for greater anonymity, various themes, and several administration tools. 

Moving up the payscale, with a Standard plan, you receive all that plus, some additional storage, and more advanced features like email scheduling, integration with third-party apps like Dropbox, 1Password, various productivity tools, and the ability to mute threads you don’t want to see in your inbox. If you are considering opting for the Professional plan, you’ll also receive a whopping 150 GB total storage per user and an email retention archive for legal compliance. 

Overall, the features that come with a business Fastmail plan will help you to build a more professional identity - one of the core reasons why most companies sign up for business email hosting. However, it is slightly disappointing that more advanced functionality can’t be found. For instance, you won’t find any AI tools here. Fastmail even makes something of a big deal about offering Standard and Professional users the ability to schedule send messages - but this is something that is available to everyday Gmail users, so is unlikely to be that will amaze business customers.

Support

(Image credit: Fastmail )

Fastmail’s customer support is primarily provided by support ticket. There’s an online portal that is easy to fill in with your required details and it’s equally straightforward to monitor the status of your ticket. At the bottom of the ticket creation page, there’s also the option of email support, but this definitely feels like a secondary option. It’s also good to keep in mind that there’s no live chat option, which is disappointing if you don’t need to speak with a human support agent. 

As usual, there are plenty of resources to hel you resolve any issue you may have yourself. There are quite a few how-to guides online, for example, including tips on how migrate your email account from other brands, such as Microsoft Outlook or Proton Mail. There’s also advice on looking out for spam and managing your account. 

Overall, unless you can resolve your particular issue yourself, the lack of live chat support means we found it common to be waiting several hours for an issue to be fixed. Although that may not seem like much, for a business this could be a costly wait - depending on the particular issue. 

Security

Security is one of Fastmail’s strengths, with the hosting provider taking your privacy very seriously. Robus encryption is used for all your data, whether in transit or at rest, and there’s full support for two-factor authentication. And there’s a Fastmail Bug Bounty Program to incentivize white-hat hackers to find vulnerabitliies so they can be resolved before any malicious actors can exploit them.

Unlike with some email hosting providers, there’s no difference in the level of security you receive if you sign up to the cheapest plan or the most expensive. Anti-spam filtering is included at all three pricing tiers. 

The competition

You can’t really compare Fastmail to other business email hosting providers without talking about cost. As mentioned, Fastmail isn’t the most affordable option currently on the market. For example, if storage is your priority, IceWarp’s Business tier comes with 200GB of email storage and an additional 1TB of file storage for $3.50 per user per month, which is only slightly more expensive than Basic Fastmail plan, even if you pay yearly. 

Of course, storage isn’t everything. But even if you want more advanced features, you might want to look at Neo, with its AI Smart Write tool, or something like Google Workspace, with its suite of office productivity and collaboration tools. 

Fastmail: Final verdict

Fastmail does a lot of what you want a business email service to provide - including decent storage and security features - but, for the privilege, you are paying a higher rate that you might expect. An okay service with costs you might expect to come with more advanced functionality. 

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