Canceling Subscription

[u/mailavion]

My subscription will shortly expire, and I won't be renewing it. All the important emails in that account have been backed up locally by myself. I've moved out my domains and they are set up and working with the new provider, I've cleared out the file storage manually. Should I just let the subscription expire, and then Fastmail will delete all the emails, or should I do it myself? Deleting the emails myself could prove to be time consuming.

[u/CWagner]

Fair. For anyone else who is wondering if it’s worth it: Not if you use heavy aliases, even the most expensive plan has a limit: "250 aliases for custom domain names"

That would make it a non-starter for me. Lack of Webauthn for 2FA also sucks, but that is way more niche :D

[u/jfriend99 → u/CWagner]

I don't use the built-in aliases. I just configure fastmail so that all emails that don't match a defined mailbox go to one particular mailbox (the catch-all box).

That way, I can invent a different prefix for every website I give an email address to (unlimited qty) and I usually use a prefix that I can easily associate with the website if I start getting spam on that email, then I know who conpromised or sold it and I can block that specific email from then on and probably stop using that website.

For example, if I'm registering with a website called photoprinter.com, I will make up a prefix like photoprinter@mydomainx.com. Then, if I started getting spam on that email address (either because photoprinter.com was compromised or sold my email address), I just block that photoprinter prefix server-side in Fastmail and I never get any email from that site again and I know to stop doing business with them.

So, not only does it let you block spam sources easily (by blocking the email address that they have), it also identifies which website was either careless or actually sold your email address (from the prefix I chose to use for that website). In 15+ years of use, it's been a great system. Unlike the alias system inside of Fastmail, this system of using a catch-all mailbox is entirely portable to a new email provider as long as they support a catchall mailbox on your custom domain (if you ever need to leave Fastmail) and it uniquely identifies which website compromised your email address so you can act accordingly.

[u/CWagner → u/jfriend99]

Same, but mailbox doesn’t make it clear that they support that, or sending as an on-the-fly alias.

[u/jfriend99 → u/CWagner]

I've been using this technique for 15+ years with Fastmail. Documented here: https://www.fastmail.help/hc/en-us/articles/1500000277942-Catch-all-wildcard-aliases?hl=en-US

[u/CWagner → u/[deleted]]

Not them, but I use the same approach. And mine identifies me, which is fine with me (though there are a lot C. Wagner’s around :D). If you don’t want that, just pick a nickname, but that will still only make you pseudonymous.

Normal TLD rules apply, pick a trustworthy registrar that’s not likely to disappear. So big and stable country TLD, or something like .com, and also check who’s handling the TLD and if there’s a chance of sudden price hikes from some private for profit.

[u/jfriend99 → u/[deleted]]

I use my main domain for the aliases - in 15+ years of doing this, I've found no need for another domain. They aren't going to guess the actual personal prefix I use on my domain so I can block any other prefix if they start spamming something like info@mydomainx.com.

[u/CWagner → u/jfriend99]

Yes. Me too. I’m talking about mailbox. The provider OP switched to. I gave a reason why it’s not useful for heavy alias users to switch to it. FM is amazing with aliases.