When comparing PolarisMail vs FastMail, the Slant community recommends PolarisMail for most people. In the question“What are the best email service providers?” PolarisMail is ranked 7th while FastMail is ranked 9th. The most important reason people chose PolarisMail is:
At $1/month for a 25GiB mailbox and 5GiB of cloud storage, $2.90/month for 50GiB/15GiB of each, and $6/month for a 25GiB ExchangeMail account, that's about half of what you can see for those service levels from Google, Microsoft and Fastmail. Considering the uptime numbers are above industry averages and they don't skimp on security either, that represents some of the best value in the market.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Typically half the price of brand name e-mail hosting
At $1/month for a 25GiB mailbox and 5GiB of cloud storage, $2.90/month for 50GiB/15GiB of each, and $6/month for a 25GiB ExchangeMail account, that's about half of what you can see for those service levels from Google, Microsoft and Fastmail. Considering the uptime numbers are above industry averages and they don't skimp on security either, that represents some of the best value in the market.
Pro Folder sharing
If you have multiple people responsible for answering e-mail sent to one address, say for customer support purposes or such, you can share folders between accounts to accommodate precisely that use case.
Pro Two factor authentication support
All mailboxes can be setup to use two-factor authentication using a TOTP-based application like Authy, Duo or 1Password. Separately, the Admin Panel features can also be setup to require two factor authentication which is independent of the mailboxes, which adds an extra level of security for the accounts.
Pro Unlimited account aliases
There are no limits on the number of aliases you can create for any mailbox, that includes wildcard or catch-all aliases and cross-domain aliases for other domain names you own.
Pro Fast POP3/IMAP4/SMTP access
For those that still like to access their e-mail using a bona fide client application like Thunderbird, Outlook or eM Client, there's no limit to the access provided via the standard POP3/IMAP4 servers for incoming mail and a workable limit of 35 e-mails per day sent over the SMTP server, which can be increased by written request. The Autodiscovery feature is still a bit hit-or-miss, so don't be surprised if you have to configure the client with the actual server addresses and ports yourself.
Pro Supports large file attachments (≤ 50MiB)
You can attach large files to your e-mails without a problem, so long as none are larger than 50MiB individually. For files larger than that, it's pretty easy to use the cloud storage to host the file and generate a link to share with someone via e-mail for them to get access to it.
Pro No ads anywhere
From the webmail interface to the groupware, support wiki and company website, there is not a single advertisement to be seen anywhere, on any of them. Their absence is actually pretty jarring if you're used to using the Gmail, Outlook and Yahoo! webmails, just to name a few. Their portals load fast because of it.
Pro Adjustable spam/virus filtering
The Admin Panel lets you select a value on a ten-point scale to determine how permissive or restrictive you want the spam filtering engine (in this case Rspamd, with SpamAssassin running as a secondary trap) to be on each account. It takes a bit of trial-and-error to find the correct number for each account, but works remarkably well after that, though some senders need to be whitelisted manually if they don't conform to good DMARC practices.
Pro Free e-mail migration
Most of the time you can handle this on your own since IMAP4 has been the de facto e-mail standard for so long, but some hosters don't implement it correctly and others like Google specifically mangle it to discourage you from leaving them. In the event you can't get it sorted on your own, Polaris will untangle it for you without a charge if you pay up for at least a year in advance.
Pro Free API access to Admin Panel controls
If you host a lot of e-mail accounts with them, you may want to automate their management behind a CLI or REPL, or if you're getting into the e-mail reselling game then you'll want to map their control panel behind a branded one of your own. Luckily, access to their API is free and moderately well-documented, so all of that is limited only by your imagination.
Pro Message delivery rules
It's easy to write rules to send messages that meet some criteria, say those from a certain e-mail address or domain, or those sent to one of the mailboxes aliases, to bypass the Inbox and be delivered directly to a specific mailbox folder or even just logged and deleted.
Pro 30 day backups
Automatic backups are made of your account (including deleted items) and stored for 30 days, in the event something happens to their equipment or you suddenly realize two weeks after the fact that the e-mail receipt you deleted without thinking is actually needed for something important. They can be restored at will from the Admin Panel, just be sure to export all of the e-mails you've received since then so you can reimport them one the backup restoration process has finished.
Pro Traditional revenue model increases likelihood of personal data privacy and safety
Depending on your point of view, requiring to pay for Fastmail is actually a positive aspect of the service. This way you know the company is at least making some revenue (they have been around since 2010) and you know who the customer is. Pricing is as follows (go here for their on-site pricing info).
Pro Human support team
As you are their customer, Fastmail provides human support.
Pro Offers more control over email
Gmail has a tendency to dumb down the interface (try to sort by sender). Fastmail gives full control over email, just like a "traditional" client would.
Pro Secure
Supports two-factor authentication, one-time passwords and fully encrypted connections.
Pro Fully responsive interface
The Fastmail interface is fully responsive across all browser sizes.
Pro Fast
As Fastmail does away with all the extra bells and whistles of Gmail it is super fast to interact with. It also has faster IMAP and SMTP performance than Gmail.
Pro Custom sieve scripts
You can write your own Sieve scripts for filtering/rerouting email.
Pro Simple email actioning
Like gmail, you can "Pin" emails to the top of your inbox to deal with later with either a checkbox or the keyboard shortcut. Like Gmail you can also both archive and delete emails.
Pro Offers IMAP migration tool
Get your old email out of Gmail easily with their migration tool.
Pro Adjustable spam filter
On writing this Fastmail has Basic, Normal, Aggressive or Customisable spam filtering which can be selected in the Advanced settings.
Each user has an individually trainable bayes database to improve spam filtering. You can train your personal bayes database by selecting some messages and using the Report spam and Report Non-Spam options from the Action menu on the Mailbox screen.
For IMAP users who don't use the web interface much, you can specify folders as spam/non-spam training folders on the Folders screen. Then just move messages into those folders as appropriate to train your bayes database.
For your personal bayes databases to be active, you have to train it with at least 200 spam messages and 200 non-spam messages. If you haven't trained enough messages, then we use a global continuously updated bayes database against your incoming messages, which helps detect spam/non-spam, but isn't as good as a personally trained one.
Pro Offers subdomain addressing
Instead of using plus addressing (e.g. foo+bar@email.com), FastMail offers the ability to receive mail through subdomain addresses (e.g. foo@bar.email.com).
Pro Integrated file storage
Fastmail allows saving attachments and other files into their own file storage system for easy retrieval later.
Pro Proper support for folders
FastMail has full support for folders, unlike Gmail where you only have labels.
Pro Intuitive default filters
Fastmail automatically filters your email into:
- All
- Unread
- Personal
- Notifications
- Mailing Lists
Pro Identities & aliases practically gives you a new email that you can manage from a single account
With identities and aliases, you can set up a completely new email address that can be managed from your account, without paying for more. As of time of this writing, FastMail offers up to 500 identities and 600 aliases per account, regardless of plan type.
Cons
Con Australian law enforcement
The company and all email hosted by then is subject to Australian laws requiring sharing with law enforcement. These provisions are weaker than those provided by European GDPR.
Con Lacks folder notifications on official mobile app
Con Expensive
The most popular domain registrars will provide you with both multiple email accounts and a domain name at a lower price than FastMail charges for only 1 email account.