At Fastmail, we pride ourself on our experienced and knowledgeable customer support team. We aim to help customers as much as possible with their Fastmail issues. There are a few things to know before you contact our support team that will help you get the most out of your experience and keep things running smoothly.
Beware of scams
We only provide support via email through our support form.
At this time we do not have a customer service phone number. Any offers of phone support for Fastmail is likely a scam and may lead to attackers asking to access your computer.
We will never offer to fix your problems by remotely accessing your computer. This is a known common technical support scam. The attacker may try to steal your information, charge you for software you don't need, or install malicious programs on your computer.
We will never ask you for your password. This is a sign of a phishing email.
We will never ask you for your complete credit card information. In limited circumstances we may ask for the last four digits only of the card number and the name listed on the credit card, but we do not need any additional information than this. Anyone asking for your complete credit card number is likely a scammer.
Legitimate emails from Fastmail are marked with a green check mark in the web interface. If you're not sure if an email is from us or from a scammer, log on through the web interface and look for the green check of authenticity.
Support limitations
We are unable to provide support to users in the following cases:
- Abusive behavior
- External software clients (e.g. Outlook, Thunderbird, Apple Mail, Apple Calendar, etc.)
- Browser extensions, plugins, add-ons, etc.
- Older browsers
- Discontinued operating systems
- Social media
More information on each of these can be found below.
Abusive behavior
We will always treat our customers with respect, and provide honest and straightforward answers to support questions.
After some unfortunate incidents, we must be clear that we will not respond to, or engage with, people or customers that threaten, abuse, or defame our staff in any way. We reserve the right to deplatform anyone who chooses to threaten, abuse, or defame our staff.
External software
Over time, we've found that most third party email clients are buggy or have poor user interface issues in one way or another. This includes popular software like Microsoft Outlook and Apple Mail. We cannot help with every bug or scenario you may encounter using these clients. We can provide the protocols to access your email/calendar/contacts, and we offer step-by-step setup instructions on how to set up popular clients. However, if you use one of these clients, you will need to set up and manage it on your own.
Additionally, when things do go wrong, we can't access your machine to see what the problem is, and debugging problems remotely isn't feasible. The best we can offer in most cases is to suggest you delete your Fastmail account from the client and re-add it. This can be a fix for all sorts of problems, because the client often has corrupted local information.
Commonly reported problems that we cannot help with include:
- Microsoft Outlook takes several hours to sync
- Apple Mail deletes the password
- Apple Mail deletes mail from the server
- Most mail clients do not support sending from non-username email addresses, or unsubscribing from certain folders. One mail client that is capable of this is Thunderbird.
We recommend using our web interface, which we will be able to help with.
Browser extensions, plugins, and add-ons
Many browsers and email clients these days allow add-ons or extensions that add additional functionality to the product. Unfortunately, many extensions can be buggy, and may cause subtle and hard-to-track-down issues that impact Fastmail usage.
If we see reports about a bug using the Fastmail web interface with a web browser that we know normally works fine, we may ask you to disable all add-ons/extensions/plugins in the browser and try again:
- Firefox troubleshooting
- Chrome (turn off individually)
- Edge
- Safari - go to Preferences → Extensions, then turn off each one individually.
Disabling add-ons/extensions often fixes the problem.
Older browsers
We can't provide support with our web interface if you use old or unsupported web browsers. We will always support the latest versions of the common web browsers such as Firefox, Chrome, Edge, Safari, and Opera. All of these browsers will automatically and continuously update themselves to the latest version. We recommend that you do not disable this, and that you keep your browser up-to-date. We support:
- Firefox
- Chrome
- Opera
- Safari (included with macOS on Apple Mac computers)
- Edge (included with Windows on PC computers).
Older versions of these browsers are often known to be buggy and insecure, and we can't work around every bug. We make the best effort possible to support all browsers, but we can't guarantee that all features will work, and we can't help with issues on unsupported or older browsers.
Additional information on supported browsers can be found here.
Discontinued operating systems
Operating systems that have been discontinued generally do not receive security or application updates, which means that the software can be buggy, a security risk, and/or lacking in modern features. We make the best effort possible to support all operating systems, but we can't guarantee that all features will work, and we can't help with any issues on discontinued operating systems. We will always support the latest versions of popular operating systems including Microsoft Windows and macOS.
Social media
We do not provide individual support on Twitter or Facebook. We are happy to provide answers to general questions on our Twitter and our Facebook.
However, questions that require troubleshooting, assistance with a specific account, or detailed answers (i.e. a response larger than 240 characters) must be addressed through email or our online support form.
To provide the best possible troubleshooting for any issues you're experiencing, we need a detailed description of what's happening, along with information about your account, which can't be shared easily through social media. We ask that you get in touch with our support team directly through email or our online support form when you are experiencing problems with your account or when you have a complex question.