Fastmail – Email & Calendar

I’m a happy Fastmail user, and have used Gmail, Office365, Yahoo Mail, and a self-hosted solution in the past to handle my email. Out of all the options, Fastmail made the most sense, even after paying their reasonable fees. Haven’t had more than maybe a hour worth of downtime, and their support is actually useful. Their product is great and is not only super fast, but also secure. I’ve done a great deal of research into their backend/operations, and they are dedicated to security in a multitude of ways, and interested in the “next wave” of technologies for email. The only suggestion I have is for integration for iOS sharing (ex: If I want to share a PDF I first have to save to iCloud then upload that document from iCloud manually into email, whereas with Gmail you can use the sharing extension with one tap). Edit: They added iOS Sharing!!! Yay!!! Only last suggestion: add dark mode for iOS 13??

Fastmail is great, and I’ve had no issues that I can recall with the service itself. The settings and options are a little too nested in some cases which makes it a bit cumbersome to change things when needed; albeit not often. The features are great; haven’t found anything I “missed” from my previous email services. In regards to the interface - I’d like to see a more modern take. The app icon was updated today for the 20th anniversary but now it just doesn’t “fit” with the UX - at all. The design is straight forward, but feels dull. I do love the minimalist feel but feel like its a bit behind. Especially since it seems like the app is just wrapping the web interface.

Opened the app this morning to find they’re forcing me to use their preferred font instead of the system font I had selected in the previous version. I looked through the settings and it seems they’ve taken that option away. The dark mode also is custom, and isn’t True Black but instead an annoying very dark gray which makes for a brighter screen at night than is possible if they used the native UI. This app is what you get when web developers don’t actually like the platform they’re developing on, or think they can do better than the OS - it makes for a jarring experience with the rest of the phone. They’ve also increased the amount of white space, and made the font size of the folder you’re currently viewing much larger, creating more wasted space and reducing the number of messages visible on the screen. Why not put it between the menu bar control and the search icon? I love FastMail’s service but am growing to hate the app.

Update: Would have liked to have seen an increase in text size when composing email with this update. As for the new logo, I had to go to your blog to figure out what it’s supposed to be. It isn’t at all obvious that it’s an envelope. Original Review: I’ve been a FastMail user for well over a decade. Wouldn’t have my email hosted anywhere else! I really want to love the app. I’ve tried it on and off over the past couple of years, but I always end up uninstalling it and going back to iOS’ native mail app. The text size (I only use plain text) is just way too small when composing an email. While I may have aging eyes, that definitely isn’t the problem because I don’t need to adjust the text size on my iPhone at all, and I have no problem seeing any other app. As a matter of fact, even my teenager can barely see the text. I’d love to replace the iOS native mail app with the FastMail app. Aside from the incredibly small text when composing email, I love everything else about it. However, until the text on the compose screen is large enough to actually see it without the aid of a high-power magnifier, I’ll have to stick with Apple’s mail app.

I love fastmail service, but find the mail app only okay when compared to the mail app when I can add my fastmail account. It is packed with I think all of the features of fastmail you can accomplish on the website such as editing spam filtering level & other settings, advanced search, and bulk actions. Compared to mail app it is lacking unified inbox (I have 2 fastmail accounts), swiping messages in message list is not customizable (mark as unread would be useful here, and there is no option for confirming delete), sounds are customizable only from their list (need something more subtle), and some functions (mark unread and flag / unflagging) are more buried (under the ellipse at bottom of screen instead of the 3 dot menu at top) than they should be when viewing full message. I also wish viewing a message removed its notification, that 3D Touch was supported as a way to get to other actions for a message, and that I could increase font size. It feels like the great fastmail web service, but on iOS that feels out of place and I’d prefer more ease of use, less functionality, and more iOS conventions adhered to.