Moving from Fastmail to a generic host + own domain
Ente is done and next meal on the menu is Fastmail.
I've been a happy Fastmail user for years. The service is good, the apps are nice, and everything works just as you'd expect an email provider to, with practically zero shenanigans or downtime I've observed. So why am I switching?
Mostly it's about them being Australian, so a part of the 'five eyes' intelligence alliance, sharing the table with the USA and the UK, neither of which I hold in high regard on the technology-freedom-privacy vectors. Simple no-nonsense email hosting is available from many providers, so why not move to Europe, or better yet, Finland.
The other has been an itch to get my own domain so switching hosts will be trivial, should the need arise. Sure, I could use a custom domain in Fastmail, but since I already had a reason to migrate, it wouldn't make much sense to pay for the privilege.
The pain of choosing a domain name
First things first, I wanted a domain name with some nice properties:
- short
- easy to pronounce in Finnish
- preferably not a Finnish word
- .fi TLD (top level domain)
I'd been thinking about this for a while, so I had a candidate ready. All seemed good - it was currently free - but .fi domains need to be verified against trademarks in the EU and I got turned down due to some bastard in Italy having a company with that name >:I. Alternative TLDs of interest (and suitable price) were taken, so I was back at square one.
After two hours of going through things like Wheel of Time Old Tongue wordlist and a few failed attempts, I got a satisfactory domain registered - with a .it TLD. Take that, Italy!
Picking a provider
I could've gone for any one of the bigger European email providers but wanted to use something Finnish. I ended up picking hostaan.fi, who runs their traditional web hosting service on UpCloud and Hetzner datacenters - email runs in Finland. I used them for both the domain and email service registration, costing me ~80€/yr. Very comparable to Fastmail's 60/yr with the domain added on top.
Setting up the service was rather mundane, with a simple admin page, certificate registration, webmail configuration, client registration for email and calendar - nothing especially noteworthy here. Having set up the server, I used Thunderbird to connect with both mobile and desktop.
Migration
Moving the old emails can be done with the Hostaan migration tool using IMAP, so there's not much going on there either: generate an application password on Fastmail, use that as the password to authorize the import, and let it chug.
I considered not importing everything at first, but decided that the risk of missing something critical was worse carrying all of the old cruft with me (or the effort of cleaning it up).
What about masked emails?
Fastmail masked emails is a feature I've used excessively. They're kind of aliases that do not expose your actual email address in any way. Truly useful, and a functionality not offered by the box standard email I've just activated. On the next chapter of this story I'll describe the new approach, when we move on to replacing Bitwarden. For spoilers, you may hover on the email link below (and maybe say hi!)
Stay tuned!
Thoughts, comments? Send me an email!