How to set up a website

Please note: We support static webpages only and do not plan on adding support for dynamic websites or website builder functionality.

With Fastmail, you can publish your own static website or share your files at a domain of your choice. If you are not using your own domain, your content will be published to an address based on your username or email address. For example, if your email address is inigomontoya@fastmail.com, then the website address would be http://inigomontoya.fastmail.com. Please note that for security reasons, the content is actually hosted at http://inigomontoya.fastmail.com.user.fm.

In a multi-user account, only administrators can set up a website.

You can create each website through the Files → Websites page and choose which folder is displayed for that website.

Create a standard website

Upload your website files

In your Files page, create a new folder in which to upload your website files. Add files to your folder by using the Upload button or by dragging and dropping files from your computer onto your web browser window.

Publish your website

Once you have uploaded files to a folder, click on the Websites link in the sidebar of the Files screen.

To create a new website, click Create Website at the top of the screen.

createwebsite.png

  1. Choose the the web address where your website will be published in the URL section. Use the drop-down to select the domain you wish to use. The available domains include your email addresses and personal domains. Optionally, you can add a further subdomain section before it, or a path after it. 
    • If you are using your own domain, we recommend that you host your name servers with Fastmail. However if you prefer to have name servers pointing to an external host, then you can point the MX and A records of your domain to Fastmail. For A records, you'll need to point them to the 103.168.172.37 and 103.168.172.52 IP addresses.
    • HTTPS: If you are using a personal domain hosted with Fastmail for your website, you can choose to encrypt your website with Let's Encrypt HTTPS.
  2. Publish as options:
    • Website if you have uploaded HTML pages for your website
    • Photo gallery to let visitors browse the files presented in a photo gallery format
    • Redirect to set this website URL to direct to another external site. (Note: This option is only available for custom domains.)
  3. In the Publish folder section, select the folder to which you've uploaded your website files.
  4. If you'd like to set a password to make your website private, you can specify one in the Password field. This will deny access to anyone who does not know the password.
  5. In the Website options section, choose whether you want to list the folder contents if there is no index.html file present.

    1. If you enable the option to list the folder contents, you can also allow visitors to upload files to the published folders. If you enable visitors to upload files, your website must be password-protected.

  6. Click the Save button when you have finished.

Your webpages are now published and accessible at the web address you specified.

A website hosted on Fastmail

Encrypted access

If you're using a Fastmail address based on your username and you've set a password on your site and would like to access your files over an encrypted connection, you can do so by using the special address of the form below:

https://user.fm/yourusername.fastmail.com/

If you're using a custom domain hosted at Fastmail, you can enable SSL encryption when creating your website. Find out more about Let's Encrypt SSL certificates.

Set a homepage

To set a homepage that visitors will see when they visit your website, create a file called index.html or index.htm. It must be lower case. If both index.html and index.htm are present, index.html will be shown.

Fastmail's website hosting is only designed to host simple static webpages. For scripting and database functionality, please use a full web hosting provider.

404 pages

To add a custom 404 (Not Found) page to your website, upload a file named 404.html to the top-level directory for your website.

Managing domains

Use your own domain

If you are hosting your domain's DNS with us, then you don't need to do any additional setup.

Website-only domain content is hosted by us, but DNS/email hosted elsewhere

In some rare cases, users may want to host websites at Fastmail but keep the DNS and/or email hosting for their domain elsewhere. In that case, you should set a CNAME record for the subdomain www. at your DNS host pointing to web.fastmail.com.

Note: After setting up the CNAME record, it may not propagate immediately (DNS updates can take anywhere from a few hours to 72 hours for propagation). Please allow some time for the record to take effect.

Even after you have updated your DNS records, you still need to set up the website on the Websites screen as outlined above.

A note about email addresses

Email addresses with a . (dot) in them can't be used to create a website.

Fastmail maps all email addresses to URLs by converting name@fastmail.com to http://name.fastmail.com. A subdomain at that address will take the form of http://subdomain.name.fastmail.com, so to avoid email addresses being mistaken for subdomains, we don't allow you to create webpages using addresses with a period.

Usernames containing a dot are fine: they are internally translated to an underscore.

Redirected websites

A redirected website allows you to set up a URL within your domain that sends your users elsewhere when they visit it.

Redirects can only be set up for websites at custom domains. Redirects cannot be set up for websites that have been created at Fastmail system domains.

To set up a redirected website, you will need to select Redirect from the Publish as options.

It is best practice in website management and SEO to insert "301" at the start of the URL you are redirecting to if your redirect is permanent: 301 https://yourdomain.com. By default, Fastmail will use a "302" redirect, which indicates that the redirect is only temporary. If your redirect is permanent, you will need to add "301" before the URL that you enter in the Redirect to field as displayed below.

Customer website Privacy Policy

Where a Fastmail customer has a website configured, they have access to some information about people who visit their site.

The website owner can see and download the following information for all visitors who viewed their website in the past two weeks:

  • The date and time of access
  • The user-agent string which shows what kind of browser accessed the site.

Fastmail does not set any additional cookies, though the website owner may do so.

Fastmail has access to additional information about website visitors. For more details and our privacy policy, see here.

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