Hooroo Fastmail!

After many years as a Fastmail subscriber, today marks the day that my subscription expires.

Unfortunately, they're now far too expensive for me to justify the cost of renewal. I won't go into specifics about my alternative choice(s), just to say that they're now European based and far cheaper than Fastmail.

I don't recall the exact date that I first took out a Fastmail subscription, but I do recall when, in 2014, Fastmail acquired the fastmail.com domain:

FastMail has moved to fastmail.com, @fastmail.com email addresses now available

I thought - at the time - it would be a good idea to snag my 'firstname@fastmail.com' email address, and, as the availability was on a 'first come, first served' basis, I recall getting out of bed during the night, to log on to my account and claim the email address of choice as soon as they became available.

I was successful in snagging the address, but unfortunately could never really use it!

First of all, there was another person with the same first name as myself, and they must have assumed that they had been allocated this new email address - they had sent a few test emails to the address (which I ignored) and eventually they approached me directly and asked for the address (which I again ignored).

Whether or not it was disappointment on the part of the other person, or because I now had an an easily guessable email address, I started to get constant spam to that address - so much so that I had to whitelist the address to known senders only.

So, I guess that, eventually, that email address will become available should that other person still want it!