Fastmail review
We read the pricing page with its three terms and the help centre, and bought no plan.
- BySalwa Al-Otaibi · edited by Nora Al-Mutairi
- Read on
- Score4.1 / 10
We read the pricing page and the help centre on Fastmail’s own site, on .
Fastmail does something no other service in this round does: Fastmail prints the one, two and three-year rates and each term’s total on the same card, so the terms compare without arithmetic That is the clarity this whole page is looking for.
Its score is low anyway, and the reason is written across three criteria rather than one: We read Fastmail’s pages, its published language set and its help centre, and found no Arabic in any of them One support channel with no hours and no published refund, and a small entry plan.
How this review was built
We bought no plan. Mail delivery speed and uptime are out of the score for that reason. The score rests on four criteria readable on the company’s own pages: price and billing, Arabic and the mail interface, what the mailbox gives you, and support availability.
We read the whole page across its three terms, the comparison table, then the help centre and the language set the site publishes.
The price is worked out for a team of five mailboxes on the entry plan, because the entry plan is what this page compares at every service.
There is no buyer-reports chapter here. We opened no reports this round.
Buying and price
5.5
Basis: the company’s own pages · weight 25%
The price is {entry} a month for a team of five mailboxes billed yearly, rising a little month to month.
What sets it apart here is not the figure but how it is shown: Fastmail prints the one, two and three-year rates and each term’s total on the same card, so the terms compare without arithmetic A buyer sees what the longer commitment saves and decides knowing it, instead of being pushed towards a discount with no second figure anywhere.
There is no published renewal price, and that lowers the score. But the monthly premium is narrow, there is no commission, and the commitment is offered rather than imposed.
There is no free tier, only a full month’s trial before you pay anything.
| Value | Points |
|---|---|
| $15.00/mo for five mailboxes | 9.17 |
| Paying monthly costs a good deal more | 3.33 |
| The price is tied to a 12-month term | 7.25 |
| A trial only, no free tier | 5.00 |
| No renewal price on the page | 0.00 |
Arabic and right-to-left
0.0
Basis: the company’s own pages · weight 20%
We read Fastmail’s pages, its published language set and its help centre, and found no Arabic in any of them
We read two of the four places: the language tag set on the page, which holds no Arabic and carries no switcher, and the help centre, which is served in English.
The other two — the mail interface’s language and the mailbox’s reading direction — we did not reach, and we will not write an answer we did not see.
Fastmail is an Australian company selling to an English-reading audience and has claimed nothing else. This criterion carries a fifth of the score here, which is why it lands where it does.
| Value | Points |
|---|---|
| Arabic: 0 of the 2 places we could read | 0.00 |
Published features
5.7
Basis: the company’s own pages · weight 35%
What the mailbox gives you is good at its core: your own domain, IMAP so any mail client can reach it, a migration tool, a calendar, an admin console and aliases.
What constrains it is storage: Fastmail’s entry plan carries 6 GB per user, and the page itself sells it to those with low storage needs The tier above it gives ten times as much, and is probably what a real team will buy.
We compare the entry plan at every service, which is why Fastmail appears here with its small mailbox. Anyone reading this and wanting storage should read the tier above on its own page, where the price is printed plainly.
What is missing: no office applications, and no retention policy at this tier.
| Value | Points |
|---|---|
| What you get: 6 of the 8 capabilities we could read | 7.62 |
| A mailbox of 6 GB | 2.86 |
Support availability
3.8
Basis: the company’s own pages · weight 20%
One channel, a ticket queue, with no working hours published on the pricing page and no refund window.
And no renewal price, which is the fourth thing. Together the four put the support score here among the lower ones on this page.
That result deserves reading carefully: the page is very transparent about price and entirely silent about support, and those are two different doors.
| Value | Points |
|---|---|
| Contact by tickets only | 3.33 |
| no published support hours | 0.00 |
| A free trial of 30 days | 10.00 |
Speed and uptime: we did not measure them
We did not measure mail delivery speed or uptime, bought no plan, and wrote to no one in support.
We did not settle the mail interface’s language or the mailbox’s reading direction, did not read the terms of service, and opened no buyer reports. What we did not check is written here.
No refund, and a month’s trial in its place
Fastmail writes on its cancellation page a sentence other companies avoid: there is no refund for an unused subscription.
That is a clear position and deserves reading as it stands: anyone who pays for a year and leaves after two months does not get the ten months back. There is no refund window in days of the kind Hostinger, IONOS and Proton publish.
Against that, the company gives a full month’s trial before any payment. That serves a buyer better than a refund does: no money leaves at all, and the decision is made from inside the product rather than from outside it.
So the support score here counts the trial in place of a refund, and the card says which of the two it read. That is a change we made to the model this round: what this part measures is whether you can turn back, not by which particular means.
One more line deserves attention: deleting the account destroys the data permanently after seven days. Anyone who decides to leave should take their archive before pressing the button, not after.
The full calculation
| Sub-score | Value | Weight | Contribution |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | 5.5 | 25% | 1.375 |
| Arabic | 0.0 | 20% | 0.000 |
| Features | 5.7 | 35% | 1.995 |
| Support | 3.8 | 20% | 0.760 |
| Total | 4.130 → 4.1 |
If not this one, then what
Both picks are computed from the scores rather than written by hand: the first is the one directly above it in the ranking, the second the one that beats it by the widest margin on the criterion it loses on.
Migadu
4.4The service directly above it in the ranking.
$7.50/mo for five mailboxes billed yearly, or $9.00/mo month to month, and no renewal price published
Read the reviewGoDaddy Professional Email
7.5What this page offers instead on the criterion it loses on — Arabic and right-to-left.
It publishes a price, but not what five mailboxes cost
Read the review
Bottom line
Anyone who reads English and wants fast, clean mail, and wants to see every term’s figure before choosing, finds here a page that is honest with them about price.
Anyone writing in Arabic, or wanting to know when they will be answered, or needing storage from the entry plan, should read the rows above.
Questions
Why is Fastmail’s score low when its pricing is so clear?
Because price is one criterion of four. Arabic is absent, support runs on one channel with no hours and no refund, and the entry plan’s storage is small.
Does it print a renewal price?
No. But it prints all three term rates and their totals on the same card, which no other service we read does.
Is the entry plan’s storage enough?
The page itself sells it to those with low storage needs. The tier above gives ten times as much.
Do I get my money back if I leave early?
No. The company writes that it does not refund an unused subscription. The full month’s trial before payment is the alternative.
What happens to my mail if I delete the account?
The page says data is permanently destroyed seven days after deletion, so take your archive first.
What we know, and where from
Every figure on this page, where it came from and when we read it.
| What we say | How we know | Source | Checked |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fastmail prints the one, two and three-year rates and each term’s total on the same card, so the terms compare without arithmetic | the company states it | Fastmail — pricing | |
| We read Fastmail’s pages, its published language set and its help centre, and found no Arabic in any of them | we could not find it | Fastmail — published language alternates | |
| Fastmail’s entry plan carries 6 GB per user, and the page itself sells it to those with low storage needs | the company states it | Fastmail — plan comparison |