TL; DR: The largest independent email provider, FastMail brings inbox management software to more than 150,000 customers around the world. The company’s top priority, in an age of inbox overload, is to make email feel less like work — by making it work for the customer. FastMail and its related products give users the flexibility and power to control the flow of information in and out of their email. Helen Horstmann-Allen, COO at FastMail and long-time email services veteran, chatted with us about the unorthodox notion of making work emails a shared resource and how the company plans to take up less of its users’ time.
Helen Horstmann-Allen doesn’t have the typical response when you ask how she came to work for FastMail. After running email services Pobox and Listbox for nearly 20 years, she approached the independent email hosting platform about buying her company, thinking the company would be able to take her vision even further.
FastMail’s values of privacy and owning one’s own data aligned with hers, and the two groups decided to merge platforms. Since then, the FastMail team has enhanced the products that Helen’s company brought in and has devised new ones that are changing the way people think about email.
From the beginning, FastMail has been centered on making a quick and easy web email interface. Over time, the company’s vision has evolved beyond email to how email fits into the bigger picture of a customer’s workflow.
Email is like an electronic cultural memory. It reminds teams of past interactions, drives future innovation and decisions, and keeps current projects on track. FastMail’s newest product, Topicbox, takes this cultural memory and preserves it by placing it in a shared environment from the start.
With this in mind, Topicbox allows for the sharing of messages sent and received by anyone in the company and provides customizations to keep inboxes manageable. Message threads are assigned to different groups, and users can choose how many and what types of emails they receive from each group.
In addition to its predicted success among established commercial and nonprofit organizations, Topicbox also resonates with smaller teams across a variety of markets, Helen told us.
The notion of deprivatizing email can take a while to get used to, according to Helen, but clients overall see improvement in communication and workflows.
In the never-ending quest to figure out how FastMail can make life easier for customers, Helen said the answers often come from everyday interactions with clients.
Helen Horstmann-Allen joined FastMail in 2015, bringing Pobox and Listbox email services with her.
One feature that came out of such conversations is the ability for people to customize their notifications on the mobile versions of FastMail’s products.
The customer support team is intentionally overstaffed so team members can spend more time individually with clients. They’re constantly engaged in casual daily research on what makes customers tick and how they interact with the products.
Not only a leader in the email industry by way of its high-performing products, FastMail also collaborates with other companies and organizations to make email better for everyone — regardless of the platform they’re using.
“Our technical teams work in industry groups on email and calendar standards, in anti-spam and anti-abuse groups, and in the open-source community building email tools used by thousands of organizations to power their own products,” Helen said.
As a foundational technology used by everyone with increasing volume, email demands new and improved ways to make it more efficient. Being part of building standards and open-source tools enables FastMail to take solutions beyond its customer base to understand and address concerns of all emailers.
FastMail emphasizes reliability, security, and efficiency in its ad-free email, calendar, and contacts platform.
The collaborative culture at FastMail lends itself to open-source work. From customer service representatives to software engineers, all voices are heard to get a holistic view of problems and potential solutions.
In an effort to get past the mundane email communication to focus on innovation and mission-critical work, businesses are retreating from “always-on” communication tools and optimizing efficient workflows, according to Helen.
Customer privacy is also a primary consideration when developing new product features and enhancements, Helen said. With security issues involving various free email and social media services making headlines, privacy is at the forefront of business and technical conversations in the email industry.
Because the company has prioritized privacy since its founding more than 15 years ago, it’s in a position to stay ahead of those vulnerabilities. Like many other online providers, FastMail recently completed preparations for the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) — a European Union regulation intended to give citizens increased protection and control of their personal data — but it mostly involved creating documentation instead of changing business practices to come into compliance.