FastMail vs iCloud
Curious what feedback any Fastmail users have. Is the masked mail feature as good or better than iCloud’s hide my mail? I use icloud for my primary email now but it would be nice to have the masked feature on more than just my apple devices. It looks decent, but I read a lot of reviews about security concerns with a Australia based tech company.
I know this isn’t directly a 1Password question, but because of the integration I thought I ask here.
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Full disclosure: I'm a bit biased, based on our partnership with Fastmail on this feature. I didn't start using their service until after the partnership, and I do receive a discount on service. That said, I pay out of pocket for it (I don't get it for free, and 1Password doesn't cover the cost).
I really like the fact that I'm able to use Fastmail effectively and generate masked addresses regardless of which platform I'm using. I work on our platforms technical support team, and so I use Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, and Android. Having a system that is limited to Mac & iOS would be quite the roadblock for me. I'm still a big Apple fan though, and if someone were using Apple devices exclusively (or at least the vast majority of the time) I wouldn't hesitate to recommend iCloud/Hide My Email, with the understanding that it doesn't have any explicit integration with 1Password.
Hopefully some other folks from the community will jump in to share their experiences. :)
Ben
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Thanks Ben. It’s the cross platform ability that is appealing to me. I primarily use the Apple ecosystem in my personal life with some Windows, but Windows and Linux for work.
What I’m not sold on is whether FastMail’s security is on par with Apple’s. Maybe not Fastmail themselves but how Australian privacy laws may be lacking.
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Unfortunately I'm not sure US privacy laws are much if any better than Australian ones. Fastmail does have a blog post on the subject which may be of interest, though:
Fastmail | Australian Privacy Laws
Ben
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Fastmail takes privacy and security pretty serious.
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Full disclosure for me: I'm a biased here as well, based on the Fastmail partnership. I also didn't switch to Fastmail until after the partnership, and I do pay out of pocket full price.
As Ben mentioned, iCloud Hide My Email is great, but without integrating into 1Password, as well as really only working on Apple devices. I also have various devices across operating systems, but I work primarily from Windows, rather than macOS. Using Masked Emails, rather than Hide My Email allows me to create my aliases from every device I can use, not just limited to my iPhone or personal MacBook.
Additionally, the other thing I like about Fastmail's offering is the portability aspect. iCloud Hide My Email currently only offers the domain iCloud.com. Because of this, it's significantly harder to move away if the need were to arise. With Fastmail, I can use my own custom domain with my Masked Email addresses. I have a domain I use for receiving/sending regular email, and I've purchased a separate domain for my Masked Emails. If I were to ever need to switch away from Fastmail in the future, I would just need to migrate my regular domain, and my separate domain to a new mail host and be able to access all of my email aliases without any major interruptions.
Jack
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I’ve been playing with Apples Hide My Email, and for $.99 a month, it’s a deal. I use Apple, Linux, Windows, and Android and no issues whatsoever. I see these emails as glorified user names, and I get these emails on all of my devices. This set up is no difference than what it was before I started using it, it’s just a different email.
I’ll probably always have an Apple device in one way or another, but I learned I don’t even need that. I can go on iCloud.com and creat email addresses from there too, so it’s basically cross platform.
The cost of Fastmail is an issue. I have 1Password for Families and for 5 people, it wouldn’t be cheap, it’s an extra $150 a year (5x30) Vs $59.40 a year (.99 x12 x 5 people) for Apple.
Now, I doubt my mom and in-laws would use Fastmail, but for my wife and I, it’s $60 extra a year. That’s not cost effective at all. If Fastmail had a family plan, maybe I would look into it.
Hide My Email works with any email, and I have it connected to an non-Apple email address and now you can use your own domain with iCloud.
I love 1Password, but Fastmail needs to have better pricing if they want to win me over. The fact it’s integrated into 1Password isn’t enough to win me over. With the making of the emails, it’s not like I do this everyday, and again, they are glorified usernames.
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Apple is working at a scale that most companies can only dream of, so it is unsurprising that they can offer their services at a lower price point. For me, convenience is a big factor, and if I have to go to the iCloud.com web app to generate a new hidden email when I'm using a non-Apple device, I'm going to be less inclined to do so. I absolutly get where you're coming from though — $90/year isn't nothing.
Ben
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I've been using fastmail for about a month now. After a few days of using it I was so impressed that I went ahead and used the 1Password 25% discount to pay for 2 years upfront and then brought my domain over to it. They really have some great features. The 1Password integration is pretty neat and it's nice that you can pick whether you use the fastmail domain or a custom domain to create the masked emails. Having said that, I still use Apple's hide my email feature and just have it forwarded to my fastmail account. I use Apple's hide my emails for things I want to have be as anonymous as possible and having them attached to my Apple account I can just change the forwarding on the fly if I decide to move on from Fastmail. For most other emails, I use the catch-all feature for my domain so again, if I want to use another email provider, switching won't change my email addresses.
I original put my domain on icloud but it was too restrictive with only 3 aliases that could be created.
My setup is probably a little overly complicated but with 1Password I don't have to remember any of the email addresses anyway so I've got them all tracked in one spot.
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After a few days of using it I was so impressed that I went ahead and used the 1Password 25% discount to pay for 2 years upfront and then brought my domain over to it.
If they had they every 2 years, I would actually consider it.
Maybe someday, it’s not off the table.
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I’ve been reading about Fastmail, Simplelogin, Apple’s Hide My Email, and Anonaddy. Fastmail is actually out because it’s an actual email service while the others are just a service to hide and forward. I need another email service like I need another Transformer 😂. So, Fastmail is off the table.
Simplelogin and Anonaddy look good, but they do the same as Apples Hide My Email, and I have that already. I like Simplelogin because I can forward the emails to more than one real email address.
After reading about these service, I’m a little shocked you guys with with Fastmail. If Fastmail wasn’t just another email service, I would look more into this. I was disappointed that Fastmail is just a regular email with a few 100’s of aliases.
I have iCloud, Outlook, and added Tutanota. I’m eventually going to drop Outlook. I’m going to use iCloud for normal emails and hide my email, and Tutanota for other accounts.
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I’m a little shocked you guys with with Fastmail. If Fastmail wasn’t just another email service, I would look more into this
Fastmail is not "just another email service"; it's one of the best... (IMHO)
In particular for this feature, since they offer an API to do this, which many others probably don't?
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Agreed.
When I learned about Fastmail, I decided it was time to shut down the mail servers I'd been running for nearly a decade. I've been with them for years now, and it has been sublime.
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Fastmail is not "just another email service"; it's one of the best... (IMHO)
I use Tutanota, and I love it. If I didn’t use iCloud Hide My email for others, I would use Simplelogin with Tutanota (I’m still thinking about it). I have end to end encryption and 6 Aliases for $1 a month. I find it sad that Fastmail charges way more and no encryption.
If I didn’t have established emails, maybe Fastmail would be nice, but I don’t think it’s worth the price to move everything over and no e2ee.
I do think it’s amazing that 1Password is doing other things that other password managers don’t, and why I love 1Password a lot. It’s stuff like this that makes me excited to see what you guys will come up with next. My wife likes the fact Ryan Reynolds did a commercial for you guys 😂
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@Jack.P_1P and @XIII I gave in and tried out FastMail. I admit, I like it a lot better than I thought I would, I got the cheapest one, and I love their iOS app. It's very smooth, easy to use, and I don't have to a lot of clicks to get into the mask email part.
I actually knew I would try this eventually. Apple came out with iCloud Keychain, and it was ok, but I had to find something better (and 1Password was it).
I did have a question, and I hope someone cal help me. I posted it here. Thanks!!
@more_cowbell I've been using FastMail for a few weeks and I admit, it's WAY better and easier to use than Apple's Hide My Email. Like you, I was concerned with Australia's privacy laws, but I read this and I feel better: Fastmail Signups Blocked in Russia, Here's What We Know.
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I've had a couple of email addresses for years. By now they are widely available and I do get a fair bit of spam. I'm wondering if it is worth getting FastMail to cut out future problems or whether I should just accept the spam I get.
On another email question, I am wondering if it is possible to set up a rule in my email program (or on webmail) that automatically deletes messages not in English. Occasionally I get mail that's put correctly into junk that is in Chinese and it would be even better if it was directly deleted rather than visible in the junk folder.
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I’ve used the same email address for two decades. I gave up on plus addressing and multiple unique email addresses a long tim ago, in favor a better spam filtering and training. I ran my own email servers to ensure this, but gave that up after a decade when I decided Fastmail meet my requirements.
You can create a spam training folder in Fastmail, and configure it to auto-delete items. I set it to delete after two days, allowing Fastmail to process the mail as spam, training its Bayesian filters. When I ran my servers, I could immediately classify email, but Fastmail only runs its classifiers on user folders on a nightly basis, hence my choice of the two day deletion policy.
Once trained, spam detection is highly effective. I might get one, maybe two, messages a month in my Inbox, usually none. The few that wind up in Junk get moved (by me) into my spam-trading folder.
Sufficient trading is important, and does not take very long before the filters are effective for your mail patterns.
Having recently cleaned-up another user’s multitudes of email addresses across hundreds of institutions, it would not be an exaggeration to state what a nightmare the process is, and in some cases can be impossible without knowledge of the email address used at that institution.
I would advise against trying to create language detection rules to whitelist, blacklist, or delete messages in an automated fashion. The tools at your disposal in the email client are insufficient for this, and on the server-side, really require a fairly deep understanding of the possible traps and potential for false positives. Once the server has accepted the email, it is used to train the Bayesian filters. Unless you reclassify the email as spam, the filters will tend towards classifying future similar emails as “ham” (i.e. spam scores are reduced). So you really want to tell the system that the mail is indeed spam (rather than just deleting it). Let the anti-spam system work for you: instead of against you.
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Thanks. I should probably do some more whitelisting training anyway. Quite a bit of genuine mail gets classified as spam. I even get some mail, mainly from mailing lists, where one mail goes into the inbox and another into spam.
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After setting up a Fastmail account last winter, getting busy and never testing fully and losing my account from inactivity I’m now going to try testing out and giving Fastmail a try again. Fastmail support even got my email back and reinstated my account to keep my email so that was cool.
I really have no complaints with iCloud hide my email. It functions well outside of the fact that it only function well inside the Apple ecosystem.
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Okay, so playing around and already have a couple questions.
When I change the email for an existing logging to masked email using the safari extension it creates a email entry in 1Password resulting in an old email in the login field and the new masked email in an email field.
-Do email and login fields both feed to login form? -Should I be deleting one of them?
-What is the smoothest way to transition existing logins to masked emails?0 -
None of my business because I've never used either iCloud or Fastmail, but decided to write this after reading through the comments. Started out on Gmail a long, long time ago, but ran into a problem when I started getting emails for someone else, including invoices for purchases. That was a bit scary. Finally found out that the other person had put a dot in her email address and Gmail doesn't recognize that as being different. I had to find an email server and spent a lot of time researching and then changing over before deleting my G-mail account. Painful process.
I am on Proton out of Switzerland and I love it. End-to-end encryption, zero access encryption, and they just added a way to lock an email to someone that only that person can open with a password you provide, which is pretty cool. Besides email they have a calendar, drive, and VPN. I signed up early when it was fairly new and it's been interesting to watch the development. I get very little spam; many times none for a few weeks. No unwanted advertising. No pop-ups. And Swiss laws are stricter than most countries. Support has been excellent so far. And they do have a free level, and it's not only a trial. It's bare-bones, but a way to check it out without losing anything. Delete at will.
I'm not trying to sell anything and am not connected in any way to Switzerland, except my husband had some ancestors who immigrated to the U.S. over a century ago. >;-) Just putting this out there in the wild if anyone feels like checking it out. Or not. Your choice. And if you don't, I will never know. And even if I did, I don't hold grudges. Not for long, anyway. :-)
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@Ben could you provide direction on my post above and best way to change current logins to use masked mail?
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None of my business because I've never used either iCloud or Fastmail, but decided to write this after reading through the comments. Started out on Gmail a long, long time ago, but ran into a problem when I started getting emails for someone else, including invoices for purchases. That was a bit scary. Finally found out that the other person had put a dot in her email address and Gmail doesn't recognize that as being different. I had to find an email server and spent a lot of time researching and then changing over before deleting my G-mail account. Painful process.
I am on Proton out of Switzerland and I love it. End-to-end encryption, zero access encryption, and they just added a way to lock an email to someone that only that person can open with a password you provide, which is pretty cool. Besides email they have a calendar, drive, and VPN. I signed up early when it was fairly new and it's been interesting to watch the development. I get very little spam; many times none for a few weeks. No unwanted advertising. No pop-ups. And Swiss laws are stricter than most countries. Support has been excellent so far. And they do have a free level, and it's not only a trial. It's bare-bones, but a way to check it out without losing anything. Delete at will.
I'm not trying to sell anything and am not connected in any way to Switzerland, except my husband had some ancestors who immigrated to the U.S. over a century ago. >;-) Just putting this out there in the wild if anyone feels like checking it out. Or not. Your choice. And if you don't, I will never know. And even if I did, I don't hold grudges. Not for long, anyway. :-)I’m not a fan of Protonmail, there is something about them that I can’t put my finger on it. I use Tutanota for a few things because the in box is encrypted. I tried both for a while before I picked Tutanota, and I never got a single notification with Protonmail on iOS. There is a new app for Protonmail now that fixed that, but too late. I liked the idea of Simpelogin, but people on Reddit said how some services won’t let you use it. I hate how you have to have a subdomain also with it, so dumb. I’m not sure if verifymail.io/ will be an issue for SimpleLogin, but this said to block their domain.
I am actually toying the idea of dropping Tutanota and use Fastmail for everything. I use Tutanota as the shared email for my wife and I (items we both need to know about). Fastmail has a fix for this if she moves to it, so we can drop Tutanota if we want too.
It’s great you like Protonmail, but I can’t get myself to use them.
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Thanks for all the great comments.
For me, SimpleLogin”s support for multiple domains and multiple mailboxes means that I can have multiple aliases for different users, businesses and functions. The downside is that it does not integrate with 1Password, so my wife wouldn’t want to use it.
With the FastMail Masked email feature is great in terms of the integration with 1Password. The autofill prompting makes it brain dead simple for non technical users like my wife. The downside with Fastmail’s Masked email feature is that is that does not support multiple domains for the email aliases. So I can’t use a single Fastmail account to manage multiple users, and assign separate alias domains for each user. I could work around this if subdomains were possible, but it’s not… yet.
The convenience of the Fastmail Masked Email autofill feature trumps anything else in my circumstance. As a work around, I’ve had to create separate FM accounts for my wife and I, each with its own dedicated aliasing domain.
This means we (I) have to manage everything separately. While not hard, the admin overhead is slightly increased.
I’ll continue to use SimpleLogin for me, as well as FM’s Masked email, because I already have 100+ aliases there.. The nice thing is I can add an FM mailbox and redirect all existing aliases to FM, and keep the existing SL aliases. Of course existing emails will have to be migrated if I want them all in one provider, but that’s a different topic.
While I would like to see FM expand and mature the Masked Email offering, the strength and simplicity of 1Password’s autofill is what makes this so compelling.
Nice job @1Password!
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