Updated June 2020, adding links, updating Fastmail ownership, changing tenses. Updates are indented and in italics.
Recently in 2013, when things regarding PRISM started popping up in the news I saw many tweets from people musing on what non-US email solutions there were that could be used. <FT.com> <The Guardian> <TechCrunch> <TheVerge>
I don’t have a Gmail account.
When I first posted this I was using Google’s wider services (blogger / blogspot) to publish my blog, and had had an account for ages before doing anything with it. I had attempted a blog several times but not really done anything with it. When I first posted this comment I noted I might move away from blogger’s services in the future.
I’m not sure who said it but “if you’re not paying for it then you are the customer”, it is a quote that is somewhat over used when discussing “free” online services, yet it’s still an apt quotation.
With email I have gone through a few different free email providers like Hotmail, Yahoo! along with some smaller free email providers which no longer exist like start.com.au (though I have linked to it via the Wayback Machine so you can see the early 2000s design) and also ones that came with my internet service provider (ISP) or ones that were connected to my ISP’s services.
None were exactly what I wanted, after shifting through various providers I wanted something that was permanent and wasn’t tied to a specific service (like ISP-based services) and wasn’t as bloated, busy or asked compromises of you as a user as some email providers had become.
Eventually I settled on FastMail.FM, as they’re an Australian company, who are Australia-based, and continue to be an Australian company (after passing into Opera Software ownership for a few years).
When I wrote this Fastmail had recently come under Opera Software, which when I wrote this was a Norwegian company, primarily known for its web browser. Since then Opera Software’s browser and brand was sold to a Chinese consortium.
FastMail did offer free email addresses/services in 2013. I, however pay for the email services from them.
In 2013 Fastmail still offered free email services, which they no longer offer, instead there is a free trial period of 30 days.
In 2013 I paid $20 USD a year to FastMail to provide my email services, for that I get what I want. No adverts, IMAP and 1GB of email storage plus other things like 100 MB file storage (separate from the email storage).
The other thing that I use are its “aliases” function.
These are basically email redirects, so they look like regular email addresses “whatever@fastmail.fm” (there’s 50+ domains to choose from though) and then that email directs into your main email address – the one you sign in with.
This I find brilliantly useful for things I need to sign up for that I might need logins for but don’t want to be endlessly contacted for. Or I can direct these emails into certain folders from these emails addresses and deal with them later.
Now, of course you could manage these sorts of things with email/spam filters, and it’s something that I used to do with my other email addresses I had in the past.
Though just being able to have multiple “aliases” without needing several logins or having several accounts just makes things much easier.
You can also send emails and make it look like it comes from these various “aliases”, so it’s not just an email address you give out you can for all intents use it as a real email address.
At my service level of $20USD a year I get six 5-character aliases and one 2-character alias.
If you just want an ad-free service it’s fairly inexpensive at about $5 USD a year, you don’t get a gigantic amount for this. It’s without adverts and you get access to their SMTP server (for sending email), this I think is useful if you’re on a data-only connection such as an iPad with cellular data-only and want to send emails from within the Mail app.
The full list of their features and price is here.