On Your Side for 20 Years: Fastmail Better Than Ever

Profile picture for The Fastmail Team

Fastmail, now 20 years old, keeps evolving to make your life easier.


Our cake has 20 candles, and we’re celebrating by releasing more helpful features for you. Email technology has changed over the last two decades, and we’re leading that charge by releasing JMAP, a new modern open standard for email, and user-focused features and benefits that put people first.

Growing through the years

In the late 1990s, internet use exploded, and over time having an email address became a societal expectation, just like having a phone number. Still today, email is one of the most widespread and heavily adopted communications tools.

When Fastmail started in 1999, internet service providers or webmail sites offered email; however, many of these options were slow and cluttered with ads. Fastmail founders felt there should be better experiences for people using email.

People want to work smarter and faster, and everyone wants to be treated with respect. Fastmail has differentiated itself by providing a quality product, with excellent email delivery, an ad-free and thoughtful interface, top features, and expert customer support to boot.

Service you can trust

Our relevance has increased in an era where free email services monetize user data, which costs people their privacy. Scan the headlines today, and you’ll find that you can’t trust many big tech companies. The tech sector’s dirty secret is that free services come with a price. Fastmail leaves advertisers out and uses a straighforward fee-for-service model that’s fair to customers and protects user data.

It’s not easy to build a trusted company, but we do so by being clear about who we are and working hard every day to deliver reliable service and one-to-one customer support. When email is on your side, you spend less time worrying about your data and your service.

Fast because we save you time

In recent years, the “fast” in Fastmail refers to spending less time on email. You get better productivity with time-saving features and technical excellence. When you open Fastmail, your mail loads instantly. It’s speed you have to see to believe!

To keep you working faster, in the past year, we’ve released snooze, undo send, notification settings, multi-user support in our mobile apps, VIP contacts, new calendar views and calendar search, and side-by-side calendars and calendar groups.

You’ll have fun discovering the many new Fastmail features that uplift your quality of life!

Better onboarding, new import tools, more ways to share

Our user base is growing, and that’s good news for you! New users help us bring more features to our platform. To welcome more new users, we’ve overhauled our onboarding process, which means that you can tell your friends, “It’s easy to move over to Fastmail.”

Beyond making life easier for new sign-ups, current customers can more seamlessly bring in new calendars, domains, or additional email accounts. Our improved import tool gives you a full, worry-free sync!

Anyone looking for a private email alternative, where you don’t have to give up the features you love to move away from big tech providers, are at home at Fastmail. Give peace-of-mind to the people you care about the most each time you share Fastmail.

Making a better future for email

Academics spend years and years working to publish new internet standards, so it’s pretty surprising when a company puts in the effort. But in doing so for the greater good, the work is open for future innovation instead of being locked-up for profit.

We’re pleased to introduce JMAP to the world, a new open internet standard that makes email better for everyone.

JMAP not only opens up a new wave of innovation around email management, but it means developers can make tools for everyone, not just one dominant provider like Gmail.

Your support of Fastmail is making JMAP possible and that’s one of the reasons why Fastmail is email you can feel good about.

You’re the essential piece!

Email is something you use every day. It can bog you down or raise you up, which is why email on your side is something worth paying for. If you’ve been with us 20 years or you just signed up, thank you for allowing us to keep you connected.

We look forward to a future of making email everything you need it to be. Stay tuned for more exciting updates!

Profile picture for The Fastmail Team