Sunday, September 18, 2011

FastMail, from Opera Software Australia

By Vasudev Ram - dancingbison.com | @vasudevram | jugad2.blogspot.com

Just got to know about FastMail.fm, an email service provider.

It is by Opera Software Australia Pty Ltd, which must be a subsidiary of Opera Software of Norway, makers of the widely used desktop and mobile browsers, Opera and Opera Mini (I use the latter on my Android phone in preference to the stock Android browser). Based on an initial look at FastMail, it seems to be a potentially good option for an email service, though only time and use will tell. By that, I mean, use by individual users who want to try it out, but, FWIW, it already seems to have been in existence from some time, and the home page shows testimonials from well-known organizations.

They have a low-end free plan (for non-commercial use only) and multiple higher paid plans, for individuals, families, businesses, etc.

Some info and links about them:

They use Cyrus IMAP/POP server software ( http://cyrusimap.web.cmu.edu
), a "highly scalable enterprise mail system", which is used by "some of the largest educational institutions in the world."

Cyrus is developed at Carnegie Mellon University ( http://www.cmu.edu ), and is used by them (CMU) and Cambridge University


[
Incidentally, speaking of CMU, check this bit of news:

"Businessman, scholar, philanthropist and longtime Carnegie Mellon University trustee William S. Dietrich II announced a plan on Sept. 7, 2011, to provide a record-breaking gift of a $265 million fund to support CMU. It's the largest gift in CMU's history and one of the 10 largest by an individual to a private higher education institution in the United States."

That's from the CMU site, and I had also mentioned it earlier in a comment on "A VC" Fred Wilson's blog, http://avc.com

]

Read about Fastmail's techniques to ensure reliability here:
https://www.fastmail.fm/help/overview_reliability.html

More about the company here: https://www.fastmail.fm/help/overview_about.html

Posted via email

- Vasudev Ram @ Dancing Bison

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