I Spent $50 on Fastmail: A Review of Its Custom Domain and Alias Features

Fastmail is an email service company headquartered in Melbourne, Australia. It offers a secure, reliable, and highly customizable email solution that meets the needs of various users.

Fastmail is not free and does not offer a free tier. The cheapest plan is $3/month, and new users can try it for one month. Recently, I spent $50 to subscribe to the Fastmail Standard plan for one year and am sharing my personal experience.

Registering for Fastmail

Registration Link: https://ref.fm/u29508080 (Get a 10% discount on annual plans via this link)

The registration page supports Chinese and offers multiple email suffix options, as shown below.

After registration, you automatically get a 30-day trial of the Professional version.

Fastmail Pricing

Fastmail offers three paid tiers: Basic ($3/month), Standard ($5/month), and Professional ($9/month). Features vary by plan. If you intend to use your own custom domain, you must choose either the Standard or Professional plan.

To use the custom domain feature, I invested $50 to subscribe to the Fastmail Standard plan for one year.

Custom Domains

After subscribing to the Standard plan, you can use custom domains. Go to "Settings - Add or Buy Domain".

Since I already own a domain, I selected "Use an existing domain".

Enter your domain name, click Continue, and you will be prompted to add MX/TXT records. Add these records via your DNS provider and wait for them to propagate.

I encountered an issue here: although I added the required DNS records as instructed, the system still showed them as invalid after several days.

I suspected a bug in their validation script because my dig command test confirmed the records were working, and sending/receiving emails with the custom domain functioned perfectly. So, I ignored the error message.

Convenient Email Alias Features

Users of any plan can use the email alias service, which allows you to generate up to 600 aliases.

Simply go to "Settings - My Email Addresses", enter the desired alias, select the domain suffix, and click "Continue" to add it.

Benefits of email aliases include:

1. Enhanced Privacy: Using aliases prevents you from exposing your primary email address in places where it's not necessary, helping protect your privacy and reducing spam.
2. Organization and Categorization: You can create specific aliases for specific purposes, such as one for bills and another for newsletters, making it easier to manage and organize your inbox.
3. Improved Security: If an alias is compromised or misused, you can easily disable or delete it without affecting your primary email address.
4. Flexible Management: Aliases can be added or removed at any time without creating new email accounts, offering great flexibility.
5. Adapting to Different Identities: If you use the same email for both work and personal life but want to distinguish between them, aliases are a great solution. Create one alias for work and another for personal use.
6. Filtering and Sorting: Many email services allow you to set filters based on aliases, automatically moving emails from specific aliases to designated folders or marking them as read.

Fastmail Account Limits

According to the Fastmail Official Documentation, here are the account limits:

• Standard plan and above: Up to 100 custom domains
• All plans: Up to 600 email aliases
• Standard plan: Daily sending limit of 8,000 emails
• Standard plan: Hourly sending limit of 4,000 emails
• Standard plan: 10-minute sending limit of 2,000 emails

For more specific limits, please refer to the official link.

Comparison with Zoho Mail

Before using Fastmail, I used Zoho Mail's Lite version for over a year at a cost of $12/year, making Zoho more affordable. However, Zoho Mail's interface is bloated and sluggish, integrating many unnecessary services.

Although I paid for the Zoho Mail Lite version, sending large volumes of emails still results in restrictions, and the specific rules seem unclear (not found in the official documentation).

Currently, I use both Zoho Mail Lite and Fastmail. In terms of user experience, Fastmail is more comfortable, simpler, and has a much smoother interface.

If your budget is tight, you can try Zoho Mail Lite, which also supports multiple domains and email aliases: https://go.zoho.com/Csx.

Conclusion

If you need a paid email service, Fastmail is an excellent choice. However, note that custom domains require the Standard or Professional plan. While Fastmail offers a great user experience, it can be slightly expensive for individual users.

Fastmail Registration Link: https://ref.fm/u29508080 (Get a 10% discount on annual plans via this link)