How to use existing email addresses with your FastMail account

You can set up FastMail to send and receive email from other accounts you own so you can manage all of your mail in one place:

1. Open the Settings → Identities & Fetch screen.

2. Use the Add Identity/Fetch button and enter in your other email address.

   For most accounts, that's all we require, but if we can't determine the server names we'll prompt you for them. In that instance, you'll have to find out what they are from your other email provider.

3. If you only want to send email from the account, not receive it, uncheck the "Fetch mail" option. If you do want to fetch mail, you can also change which folder the mail is fetched into, and whether to delete the email from the original server.

4. Click "Save" at the top of the screen.

For additional options to control how your email appears when you send as this account, review the identities information.

Own domain? If your existing address is at a domain you own, you probably want to just host your domain with FastMail instead of fetching mail from your current email host.

Troubleshooting adding a Gmail or Yahoo account

If you're having difficulty adding a Gmail account, make sure that POP access is enabled.

Yahoo users should similarly ensure POP access is enabled.

Troubleshooting iCloud mail

You need to get a new password from iCloud for use with FastMail, called an "app-specific password". iCloud has changed their policy to require app-specific passwords for apps that access iCloud user data. From an Apple Support email sent on the 15th of May:

"Beginning on 15 June, app-specific passwords will be required to access your iCloud data using third-party apps such as Microsoft Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird, or other mail, contacts and calendar services not provided by Apple. If you are already signed in to a third-party app using your primary Apple ID password, you will be signed out automatically when this change takes effect. You will need to generate an app-specific password and sign in again."

You can find the Apple Support instructions on how to generate an app-specific password at https://support.apple.com/en-au/HT204397

Errors while fetching mail

If you have "fetch mail" enabled and we cannot connect to the server, we'll send you an email to let you know. If 5 connection errors happen in a row, we'll automatically disable fetching mail. This usually happens because the password has been changed; you can update it on the Settings → Identities & Fetch screen.

Other errors you might see:

Timed out connecting to pop server — FastMail will allow up to 60 seconds to connect to an external server. If it takes longer than this, you'll receive this message. This usually means there are network problems between FastMail and the server you are trying to retrieve from. These are normally temporary, and the fetch will often succeed next time it tries.

POP Server does not support the UIDL command — Some rare POP servers don't support the UIDL command. To retrieve correctly from these servers, you must set the option to delete the copy from the original server.

Could not retrieve msg 'xyz' from server — this is a generic message when there are problems at the POP protocol level. The "Extra" field usually provides more technical error details. This usually means some low level error occurred. It's best to just retry the retrieve.

Could not deliver msg 'xyz' to mailbox — this is a generic message when an error occurs trying to deliver a retrieved message to your mailbox. The "Extra" field usually provides more details. The two most common reasons are over-quota accounts and "bad headers". If you receive a "bad header" message, please forward it to our support team.

A timeout occurred trying to download a pop message — FastMail will allow 30 seconds to download each message (plus 30 seconds per 500k of message data). This is normally sufficient for most connections, but some particularly slow ones may have problems. When a timeout occurs, FastMail will leave the message on the server, but depending on your settings it may or may not try and retrieve the message again. Read the error message for more details.