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Fastmail vs Gmail

Move to Fastmail and get your email out of the clutches of big tech, while keeping the features you love.

Just like Gmail, you can use labels, snooze messages, schedule messages to send later, and get great search. Unlike Gmail, you’ll also get push email on iPhone, Masked Email addresses to keep your identity private, and so much more. All backed by the experts in email, with real people to provide support if you need it.

Email worth paying for

Free email isn’t really free: you’re paying with your privacy. As a paid service, we only serve you, our customer. This means we have no split loyalties, no mining of your personal data, and no ads, ever.

Moving made easy

We’ve made moving your email so much easier than you think. In a few clicks you can pull in all your email, contacts, and calendar events from Google into your new Fastmail account. We can keep fetching any new mail that arrives in your old Gmail inbox afterwards, so you’ll never miss a message while you update everyone with your new address. You can even send replies from your Gmail address if you need to.

  1. Sign up for your new Fastmail account.
  2. Go to Settings → Migration, and choose Gmail / Google Workspace.
  3. Sign in to your old Google account.
  4. Choose what you want to import and click Do it.

That’s it! Sit back, relax, grab your beverage of choice. We’ll pull in all your data using our super-fast server-to-server connection direct to the Google data centers. You can keep using your new email while we do this, or go do something else while we get on with it. Depending on the size of your mail history, it can take a few hours to complete. We’ll send you an email when it’s done.

Frequently Asked Questions

  • How do I turn on labels?

    Fastmail uses folders to organise mail by default, but you can easily switch at any time to organise your messages with labels, which work just like Gmail’s labels do. You’ll find the setting at the bottom of the Settings → Folders screen.

  • Can I import my filters/rules from Gmail too?

    Yes. Here’s how you do it:

    1. In your Gmail account, open Settings → Filters and Blocked Addresses.
    2. Under the list of your filters, click the link to Select All, then click Export to download a file called mailFilters.xml.
    3. In your Fastmail account, open Settings → Mail rules.
    4. Click the Import… button, then Choose a file to choose the file you exported.
    5. Select the rules you want to import (or leave it as Import all) and click Import.

  • Is your search as good as Gmail’s?

    Yes. Just like in Gmail we have fast, full text search of all your mail. We can even search inside your attachments. Our powerful autocomplete lets you quickly and intuitively find what you are looking for, or if you’re already a power user you can keep using all the same syntax you know from Gmail.

  • How’s the spam filtering?

    Also pretty great. No spam filtering is perfect, but most of our users tell us we’re doing a damn fine job, often better than they used to see at Gmail. What’s more, we have adaptive filters that learn based on the spam you receive so as you report anything we missed, your filter will keep getting better and better.