1. Fastmail
  2. Setup
  3. Account setup basics

Fastmail guide for personal users

Introduction

Welcome to Fastmail!

If you're reading this, it's because you'd like to know more about us, or you've signed up and you're interested in a tour.

Getting Started

Logging in via the web

Start by opening your favorite web browser (we support most popular browsers, including Edge, Google Chrome, and Safari) and go to Fastmail's login page at https://app.fastmail.com/login.

In the Username field, enter your Fastmail username. Your username is the email address that you chose when you created the account. Please note that addresses other than your username cannot be used to log in.

In the Password field, enter your password.

If you're having trouble logging in, please see our I can't log in! help page for guidance on what to do next, or contact our support team.

Keep me logged in

If you don't want to log in every time you access your mail, and you're on a private computer that nobody else uses, you can select Keep me logged in, which means your browser will remember that you are logged in for 30 days or until you click Log out. Please note: When Keep me logged in is selected, we will cache more of your personal data in your browser between visits.

Security warning: Using the Keep me logged in feature means that your Fastmail account will have no password protection on that computer while it is enabled. Your email will be available to anyone who has access to your computer, making it vulnerable to malicious misuse.

Check the troubleshooting guide if you're having problems logging in.

Layout at a glance

When you first log in, you can see a menu bar along the top, the folder list down the left, and the list of messages in your inbox in the content pane.

mailview.png

The menu bar has a dropdown menu from where you can access your calendars, contacts, files, notes, and settings. The menu bar also has buttons that let you take actions on selected messages, and a search box.

The folder list shows you all your folders and a count of the unread messages in each folder.

The content pane has a list of all messages with a brief preview. The messages are sorted to show the newest first, and filter buttons to let you control if you're looking at just unread mail, or all mail.

Selecting a message will swap to the message view.

Reading mail

Selecting any folder out of the folder list will show the list of messages in that folder. Selecting a message will show you the contents of that message along with any other mail in that conversation.

From here you can manage your mail: reply to it, delete it, forward it, move it to a different folder, pin it, print it, create a rule to automatically filter similar mail, or even mark it as spam.

More information on receiving mail.

Sending mail

You might want to compose a new email, or reply to an existing mail. You can adjust whom your message is going to by changing the list of email addresses in the To: field.

The Cc: (carbon copy) field lets you set who else will be sent a copy. The Bcc: (blind carbon copy) field lets you choose who else will be sent a copy without anyone else seeing these additional recipients.

You can also attach files, and change the formatting of your message.

More information on sending mail.

Contacts

Storing information in your contact list makes it easy to send them mail: type a few letters of their name when writing a new email and we'll find their email address for you.

By default, any time you email someone, we'll add them to your contact list so they're ready for next time.

You also have the option to include additional information in your contacts, such as a phone number or alternate email addresses. This is useful if you want to sync your contact list with your mobile phone.

More information on your contact list.

Searching

You might be after a particular email, but can't remember when it arrived and your inbox is overflowing.

Use the powerful search functionality to locate mail. For simple searches, enter what you're looking for in the search box in the menu. This could be: who the mail is from, or to; or something in the subject line; or something in the body of the message.

If you want a more refined search, you can use the Advanced search... option below the search box to join more than one search term and add filters to find relevant mail.

If you find yourself running the same search more than once, you can save your search and have it appear in the folder list.

If you want to move the messages from a search to a folder that already exists, or take some other action on them - like mark them as read, pin them, or forward them - you can click Create rule to make a rule.

More information on searching.

Managing your account

Choosing a theme

You can customize your user interface by choosing a theme. We offer a range of pre-designed color themes to choose from, or you can design your own custom theme.

You can also choose between dark mode and light mode, or follow your system preferences, and choose a button style.

More information on themes.

Change password

You can update your password at any time. We strongly encourage you make use of our two-step verification (2FA) feature to protect your password and keep your account safe.

With two-step verification, you use a second device (a special USB key or a code from an app on your phone) to log in. This means even if your password is compromised (through password reuse on an insecure site, or a malicious attacker getting hold of it), your Fastmail account can't be accessed by anyone else without the second device.

More information on passwords and two-step verification.

Change plan

You can change your plan whenever you'd like. Your payment amount will be adjusted to the end of your subscription due date automatically.

You might want to upgrade or downgrade to adjust the set of features you need, or adjust the length of your subscription to take advantage of our multi-year discounts.

Pay subscription

Your subscription to Fastmail will automatically renew on the due date, using any credit you have stored on your account, or via your saved payment method.

You can make a one-off payment in advance of your subscription due date if you don't want to save your payment type with us.

More information on managing payments.

Using a mail client

Whether you'd prefer to access your email, contacts and calendars on a desktop client, or if you want them on your phone or a tablet, our email client setup guide has all the details. We provide interactive guides in Settings → Migration → Apps & Setup guides for many of the popular email clients such as Apple's Mail.app, Microsoft Mail, and Mozilla Thunderbird.

Users on a Basic plan will not be able to use Fastmail on third-party mail clients, or create app passwords. IMAP, SMTP, CalDAV, and CardDAV are available to Standard and Professional users only. If you have a Basic plan, you can use Fastmail on a desktop web browser or the Fastmail app on any mobile devices, such as a phone or tablet.

For security purposes, third party clients require that you authenticate with a separate app password. Unlike in the Fastmail app, your normal password won't work. If you are on a Basic plan, you cannot create an app password. If you downgrade to a Basic plan from another plan, any existing app passwords will automatically be disabled.

Using the calendar

Fastmail has a powerful calendar interface, allowing for full event management. This includes inviting colleagues or friends to an event, setting reminder notifications, sharing your calendar with others, or syncing your calendar out to another service, or in from another calendar host.

Stopping spam

Fastmail has excellent spam protection, and we are always inventing new ways to combat the efforts of phishers and spammers. However, for every protection we put in place, spammers are devoting more time to avoiding safeguards.

Our guide to stopping spam is filled with steps you can take to stop unwanted mail without blocking real mail:

  • How to identify a mailing list and unsubscribe.
  • Using your contacts to make sure real mail is never stopped.
  • Training your personal database to recognise spam targeted at you.
  • Using rules to delete mail from particular senders.

Personalize your Fastmail experience

You can customize your language, mail view and calendar timezone in the Settings menu.

Customize your view on the web interface by selecting your language and layout in the Settings → Display options screen.

Customize your mail experience by:

  • selecting who you want browser notifications from;
  • whether you'd like to use threaded conversation view;
  • whether you prefer to compose new mail in plain text or rich formatted text;
  • whether new contacts are automatically saved to your contact list.

Customize your calendar by choosing:

  • your timezone,
  • whether a new event by default should have a reminder,
  • whether event invitations and updates should be automatically added to your calendar.

All this and more can be adjusted on the Settings menu.

Power features

Filtering rules

If you'd like incoming messages automatically saved in a folder, you can create a rule to do so from the Settings → Mail rules screen.

Each incoming email is checked against your rules. If aspects of the message matching the rule condition, then the action in the rule is taken.

Email addresses

Email addresses can be used in two ways:

  1. Add extra email addresses (at our domains or your custom domain) that you can also receive email into your account from.
  2. Assign more than one person as the target of an email address. Sending mail to that address (such as sales@mycompany.com) will send a copy of mail to everyone on that address.

If you have a custom domain, you can use wildcard or catchall addresses to ensure any address used at your domain will be received into your account.

Masked Email

Masked email addresses can be created automatically anytime you need a private email address, for example when signing up to a new mailing list. You can disable them at any time.

Connect your Fastmail account to your 1Password account and generate new masked email addresses and a strong password every time you sign up for a new service.

Read more about Masked Email.

External accounts

If you have accounts still on other providers, but you'd like to use Fastmail as a central location to read and reply to all your mail (both Fastmail and other), you can fetch mail from your other email account into your Fastmail mailbox. You can also continue to send mail from your external addresses, too!

Keep your mail from different accounts separate by using folders and rules to filter mail from other accounts into those folders.

Subdomain and plus addresses

Even if you don't have your own custom domain, you can still make use of our subdomain and plus addressing to have additional mail addresses for your use. Addresses in this format can be automatically filed into a folder.

Useful for creating an address when signing up to a new website and you want to send all mail from that company to its own folder. Or, if that address is compromised, use the individual address as a target to file as spam or even move to trash.

What next?

This guide only touches on the main parts of your Fastmail account. For more information explore our help...

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