FastMail1, my e-mail provider which I have recommended in the past, has been having a bit of trouble the last few days. Luckily for me, I haven’t been affected at all by these issues, but those who have are not happy.
As far as I can tell, all hosted services go through something like this at times – it sucks for everyone. When I was still with FeedLounge, we had several downtime issues and I tried my best to follow these simple guidelines:
- Communicate early and often.
- Don’t give time estimates you aren’t 100% certain about.
- Tell your users when they can expect another update and give them an update at that time.
- Be honest about what happened and the steps you’re taking to prevent it in the future.
FastMail didn’t follow all of these, and most of the frustration I’m seeing in the forums is a result of that.
As I’ve been reading through the forums, I’ve been thinking about ways to reduce my reliance on a single outside vendor for e-mail2, while avoiding the hassle of hosting it myself. A solution I’m considering implementing is fairly simple: have 2 hosted services for my e-mail.
The set-up isn’t complicated.
Right now I still have the MX records for my domains pointing at my own server. This means that e-mail to me comes to my server, then my server sends it on to FastMail3. It is trivial for me to have that e-mail also go to a second mail service.
When sending e-mail from my BlackBerry, I already BCC an address that I have set up in my FastMail account with rules to file messages sent to that address into my Sent Items folder. I could do the same thing with all my e-mail – BCC’ing an address that would get filed into Sent Mail on the backup mail account.
I’d have to do something initially to migrate my existing e-mail over, but if I go somewhere that has a nice IMAP import function like FastMail, that would be fairly trivial too. Really, this part of the puzzle isn’t that important. This would be an “in case of failure” account to use if I ever had to – e-mail insurance if you will. Like all insurance, it’s something you pay every month hoping never to see the money again.
Again, I haven’t had any trouble to speak of with FastMail since I moved over there – though that seems like good fortune in this case. If, over time, I decide that FastMail isn’t reliable enough, it would be simple to switch the two accounts and make my backup account the primary and FastMail my backup account (FastMail is already paid for for the next 5 years).
While considering something like this, I was tempted to take the plunge and go with a hosted Exchange account to give me a better calendaring solution. However MailStreet (which several folks I know use) is $23/month plus a $40 set-up fee and 1-and-1 hasn’t treated my friends very well. More likely I’d use something like TuffMail.
Feel free to add your recommendations for cheaper Exchange hosting (I’d consider $8/month or so) and other e-mail services in the comments.
- That link has a referral ID in it for me to get some small credit if you sign up. [back]
- Which is mission critical for me. [back]
- I realize that this makes my own server a potential problem point, but I actually have some control over it – including being able to replace it quickly if needed. [back]
You may want to consider hosted Zimbra as an alternative to hosted Exchange. Of particular interest to me is that Zimbra includes an iSync plugin!
I’ll have to check to see if Zimbra offers wireless BlackBerry sync (calendar and contacts)- that is the only thing I want from the Exchange account.
This page says they do, but there are no details – says “contact the sales team for more details.”
hmm.
I was wondering when all the folks who are having issues with FM would start showing up here, Alex. 😐
[It sucks that they’re having issues, and yes … it doesn’t seem like they’ve communicated well. Like you, I’ve had no problems.]
Have you given some more thought to a home-brewed, home-hosted solution? Yes, you lose the things that a datacenter gets you [clean power, nice bandwidth, fixing things becomes their problem], but you do gain total control over the thing. I only ask because I’ve been thinking about this myself, watching the FM issues from afar. [That, and I admit that I’m intrigued by ISP in a Box, as I expect to replace my mini with a higher horsepower Mac within the next 6-12 months.]
My DSL connection is probably my least reliable link at this point. After I got the new modem I had a week of it shutting down every night around 9 PM. The techs finally got things fixed, but I don’t think you’d be able to convince me to self-host again at all – let alone over my DSL connection.
Alex,
Zimbra has support for Blackberry over-the-air sync as an add-on in our most recent release. I’m not sure if any of our hosting partners have upgraded yet, but no doubt many will be including this soon. You can see this list for a partial list of our hosting providers.
http://www.zimbra.co[...]hosting.html
We have native support with Zimbra Mobile for many devices such as Treo 650, Treo 700 w/p, and Motorola Q, Nokia E-Series, etc.
http://www.zimbra.co[...]_mobile.html
Disclaimer: I work for Zimbra. Thanks to Stephen O’grady for the heads-up.
[…] In the comments on my redundant e-mail service post, Avi Flax brought up Zimbra as a potential alternative to a hosted Exchange account (for e-mail, calendaring, etc.). Kevin Henrikson was kind enough to stop by and clarify a few things for us: Zimbra has support for Blackberry over-the-air sync as an add-on in our most recent release. I’m not sure if any of our hosting partners have upgraded yet, but no doubt many will be including this soon. You can see this list for a partial list of our hosting providers… (read the full comment) […]
[…] My Mac Pro is supposed to arrive next week, but I won’t be switching my e-mail usage over to the Mac until I (eventually) get a Macbook Pro, which won’t happen until Merom updates. At that point, I’ll need some sort of email solution that supports two Macs, web access, and a Blackberry. Alex has written about this problem a lot, and I look forward to seeing his luck with Single-User Zimbra Hosting, should he decide to go that way […]
[…] wrote about setting up redundant e-mail services a few months ago. Since then, FastMail1 has had some ups and downs with another rough patch and […]