Post #622513

2026-03-04 01:17 UTC

So I&#39;ve been using Fastmail with my own domain name for several years now. Fastmail is excellent - simply the best e-mail service I know, but it&#39;s also a bit on the pricey side, and I&#39;m not sure if this is worth it any longer for my usage. Many years back my e-mail was mostly personal correspondence with friends. Nowadays it&#39;s just bills, confirmations, notifications and newsletters. These things (well, some of them) need to work reliably, too, but I just don&#39;t feel &quot;invested&quot; in e-mail any more and think about switching to a simpler and more affordable service, most likely Posteo. How has your use of e-mail changed over the years?

Replies (5)

@zolaris@mastodon.illumos.cafe 2026-03-04 08:00

@twm I am also using Fastmail with my own domain and I pretty like the catch-all feature. But yes, it is expensive, but also it worked pretty well with my Blackberry phones (but I don't use them anymore). Is there a cheaper, preferably european provider?

Open ##1053070
@drizzy@cyberplace.social 2026-03-04 10:23

@twm I've been Fastmail user for a few years and while yes, not exactly cheap (though... $3.89 USD/user/month is not that much) some of their features are hard to beat. One big example for me is support for custom domains + masked emails (or catch-all). Masked emails are nicer than catch-all since then my wife can use them too and since they're on my domain they're not getting blocked. There's an API for that too so I could plug into it.

Open ##1053073
@gumnos@mastodon.bsd.cafe 2026-03-04 15:54

@twm Early usage (mid-to-late 90s with several MUAs but primarily Pine): communication with friends & professors Mid usage (early 2000s to 2010s with Thunderbird as my MUA): correspondence with friends & family, mailing lists, interacting with mail-based workflows, mostly work correspondence. Usage of late (2010s to now with Claws Mail and later mutt/neomutt as my MUA): same as previously, only now more automated processes funnel data into my inbox. Those $DAYJOB case-notifications? Notifications that I was mentioned in $DAYJOB chat-rooms? System-admin checks of the system and reporting? Calendar reminders and daily agendas? RSS feeds? *Everything* gets routed to email. I could regularly refresh multiple websites and watch them all. Or install umpteen thick clients/apps with their outlandish resource-consumption and privacy-invading ToS. Or I could just let notifications come to email where I have one place to look, and powerful tools to efficiently index, search, and mow through the messages.

Open ##1053075
@bryan@dusty.ninja 2026-03-04 10:33

@twm I tested out mailbox.org before self-hosting. It’s fine. Cheap and reliable. I use Mail.app on my iPhone, iPad, and Mac. I never use web mail, so I can’t tell you if it’s good or not. https://mailbox.org/

Open ##1651071
@pedro@social.bufu.link 2026-03-04 17:52

@twm I just have a receiving domain, pedro@bufu.link, and it goes to gmail. I hate it but not enough to pay a monthly subscription to have an email

Open ##1651075