Note that FastMail.FM has many features not mentioned
here. This is just a summary of those features which have different options for
different membership levels. We also have a page showing exactly which
membership levels have which features.
- Web-based email
- Is web interface access included
- IMAP
- Is IMAP access included (sophisticated mail reading and synchronization
protocol supported by most current mail software)
- POP3
- Is POP3 access included (basic mail reading protocol required by some older
email software)
- POP/Hotmail Links
- Can external POP and Hotmail accounts be accessed and messages downloaded
to your mailbox)
- Technical Support
- FastMail.FM has an extensive help system covering all aspects of the
service that all users have full access to. In addition, Full and Enhanced
subscribers get free technical support via email. Enhanced
subscribers' requests are placed in a priority queue and are normally
answered in under 12 hours.
- Mail Forwarding
- Guests cannot use any email forwarding.
All other accounts get full custom forwarding,
where certain emails can be forwarded based on criteria, and optionally a
copy can be left on the server
- SMTP
- Is SMTP access included. Almost all ISPs provide access to an SMTP server,
so for most customers use of FastMail.FM's SMTP server will not be necessary
(since FastMail.FM can be used for reading mail with IMAP while your ISP's
SMTP server is used for send messages). People who use multiple ISP's but
do not want to switch SMTP servers regularly will probably want to use FastMail.FM's
SMTP server
- Virus scanning
- Advanced: received messages are checked by our virus scanner on the
server, which can be turned on or off for each account. Basic: messages are
checked for some common email worms
- Spam protection
- Advanced: received messages are analysed by a sophisticated Artificial
Intelligence algorithm and compared to common spam features; fully
customisable filtering based on "spam score"; messages from POP and Hotmail
links also checked. Basic: Source of each message is checked for likely spam
sources
- Aliases
- Members can sign up for one additional address, which is their existing
username in an additional domain. Full
accounts get 3 aliases, which can be different names in any of FastMail.FM's
domains (dictionary words and common first/surnames are not permitted).
Enhanced accounts can have 5 aliases, plus 10 addresses in their own domain
(does not include domain registration fee)
- Min username chars
- Minimum length of username. Dictionary words and common first/surnames
are not permitted except for Enhanced and Full account user names. All
aliases must be at least 5 characters.
- Own subdomain
- All members get access to their very own subdomain. For instance, the account
"yourname@fastmail.fm" gets to use the domain "yourname.fastmail.fm".
Any email sent to any address in this domain will be sent to that mailbox.
In addition, email sent to "foldername@yourname.fastmail.fm" will
automatically be filed into a folder called "foldername" for you.
These features are great for managing mailing lists, registrations, and for
avoiding spam by setting up reject filters for addresses that get on spammers'
lists
- Storage quota
- How many megabytes of storage space is provided for email. A warning is
sent if an account goes over 80% full
- Maximum attachment size
- The largest size for the total of all attachments to a message, either
sending or receiving. Slightly larger attachments may get through depending
on their encoding, but this is the guaranteed minimum.
- Monthly transfer quota
- How many megabytes of traffic can go through the account. A one megabyte
message to one recipient results in two megabytes of traffic, since it is
received from your PC (1MB) and sent to the recipient (1MB). Sending a one
megabyte message to nine people creates ten megabytes of traffic, using the
same logic
- Extra transfer / GB
- Cost of extra traffic beyond the transfer quota. You can choose whether
or not your credit card is automatically charged as required for additional
traffic. If you choose not to use automatic charging, your account will be
locked until the end of the month or until you pay for the necessary bandwidth.
Guest accounts do not have the option for automatic charging—they must
first become a FastMail.FM member
- Hourly transfer quota
- Amount of traffic permitted through account in one hour. Account will be
locked for an hour if this limit is reached
- Hourly message quota
- Number of message items permitted through account in one hour. A "message
item" is one message sent to one recipient. Non-subscribers have lower
quotas to avoid the possibility of mail abuse
-
- Account closed
- Days of inactivity before the account is automatically closed. Logging in
through the web, POP, IMAP, or SMTP causes the counter to reset. If you are
going on an extended vacation you can put your account "on hold"
which causes messages to not be delivered (the sender gets back a message
that your account is on hold) but the account will not be closed
- Mailing list binaries allowed
- FastMail.FM accounts may not be used for sending or receiving messages to
mailing lists which contain large attachments if you are not a member.
These types of lists (e.g. adult images distribution lists) generate
very high traffic and too many complaints and are too expensive for us to
provide for non-members
- Address book
- How many addresses can be added to the address book
- Personalities
- How many "personalities" can be created. Multiple personalities
let you send from multiple email addresses with different signatures for each
one. In the future that will also let you automatically route mail to your
different aliases to different folders (and even put replies in different
Sent folders)
- Pop links
- How many external POP or Hotmail links can be used for downloading mail
from other accounts
- Poll window
- The poll window is a small window that shows you when you have got mail
(if you leave the poll window on the side of the screen, or by updating a
button in the task bar if using Windows). Different membership levels have
different limits as to how often this will automatically refresh (note that
if you use IMAP software you will automatically be notified of new mail as
soon as you receive it, even for guests!)
- Commercial use allowed
- Do the Terms of Service for this account allow commercial use
- Own domain names
- Is possible to receive email sent to one of your own domains rather than
FastMail.FM's domains
- Secondary email address required
- Is it necessary to have a backup email account to authenticate your identity
when you sign up, or is a credit card required. (Guests require a backup email
account to help us combat email abuse).
- Ads
- Will any advertising be shown on the site, or tag-lines added to outgoing
mail sent through the web interface (IMAP users will not experience ads, of
course)
- Address book groups
- Can "groups" be created, where sending to just one address causes
the email to be sent to multiple recipients
- Address book synchronization
- Can the FastMail.FM synchronization tool be used with this account. This
tool copies all changes to your personal address book (in Outlook Express,
Eudora, etc) to your FastMail.FM address book, and visa versa. It also does
this for your bookmarks/favorites
- Auto-get POP on IMAP
- Normally messages are downloaded from POP links either manually (by pressing
a button) or at regular intervals (no more than every 3 hours). Enhanced accounts
can use a special "auto-link" mode which downloads from all POP
links any time you log into your account through an IMAP client
- Mail notification
- Can this account receive SMS, pager, IM, or email notifications at another
account when mail is received
- File storage
- Can files be stored (your own private web site!)
- File storage quota
- Maximum amount of storage available in your file space.
- Maximum file size
- The largest size of a single file allowed in your file storage.
- Monthly file transfer quota
- How many megabytes of traffic is allowed for your file storage space in a
month. This is reset at the start of each month.
- Hourly file transfer quota
- Amount of traffic permitted for your file storage in one hour. When the limit
is exceeded, your file storage is locked for one hour. Note that your email is
NOT locked.
- DAV Access
- Can file storage be accessed using DAV (allows you to use Windows Explorer
and similar tools to directly access your files!)
- Advanced rules (Custome Sieve script)
- Allows you to script advanced rules using the Sieve language to
reject/forward/discard mails or file mails into different
folders based on the information in the headers of the mail.
- Notepad entries
- Number of notes that you can store in your 'Notepad' page.