Prioritize, Organize, Customize: Fastmail Lets You Do it All

Fastmail is email that prioritizes you. Learn more about how Nathanaël uses our custom productivity features to keep his workflow organized.

Email is home for personal info, life planning, work interactions, and everything in between. At Fastmail, we know email is not “one size fits all.” It’s never been easier to personalize your workflow and make email yours. Nathanaël, a software developer based in France, gets the most out of his email by using labels, custom swipes, a personal domain, and more through Fastmail.

1. What are your favorite Fastmail features, and what purpose do you use them for?

Almost every email I receive has gone through one of my Rules. I have different email aliases for each topic on my custom domains: paperwork, university, professional exchanges, personal missives, voluntary commitments, and newsletters I’m subscribed to. My Fastmail filters automatically apply the label corresponding to the email alias. The newsletter rule also applies a snooze until 18:00/6 p.m. every day, to avoid useless interruptions during the day. This way, I receive all the newsletters when I come back from work, which is the moment that works best for me.

I also use Snooze as a follow-up, like “oh, I can’t answer to this email right know, but I know I will have the missing information after Wednesday’s meeting ⇒ let’s snooze it to the beginning of the meeting, so I can remember to ask the question and send the answer.” Meanwhile, the email is not in my inbox and I don’t have to think about it.

2. Is it hard to organize your workflow with Fastmail?

I took some time when I first joined Fastmail to set my rules, maybe one hour or so. I don’t often need to add new rules (sometimes, some new recurring topic is brought up, and I create an email alias and the corresponding label and rules for it), but I don’t hesitate to do it because the filter editing interface is really smooth.

Because my “manual” snooze times are mainly used to follow-up, I don’t use default snooze times really often.

3. How have you changed the way you use email since you started using Fastmail?

If I were to redo all my setup now, I would probably use Masked Email instead of a common “newsletter and alike” alias for all my subscriptions. I did setup Custom Swipes for sorting my emails on the go, mine are: Archive, Move To, Snooze, and Snooze until 18:00/6 p.m. Most of the time, I use the keyboard shortcuts on my computer, because they are easy to find and they make sense. Just hover over a button and it will tell you, like D=delete.

I mainly use my email on my laptop now, because the keyboard shortcuts are the best.

The “Undo” button that appears on every action (archiving while reading, sending a not-finished reply, setting snooze to the wrong time) is so useful, because I can be very clumsy.

4. Do you use color in your workflow?

I have one label and colors for each big topic I have to manage. I kept the default theme because it works for me, and I like blue.

I really appreciate the automatic dark/light theme switching. I spend most of my day in light theme but like to switch my mobile and laptop to dark in the evening or when riding the train.

5. Is there anything else about your workflow or your Fastmail experience that you would like to tell people about?

Having my own email domain, it was really straightforward to connect it to Fastmail. It helped me to setup DKIM and SPF even if I’m clearly not a pro at email hosting. The fact that Fastmail let me use my own domain was important in my choice, as it reduces the “vendor lock-in” you usually have. I don’t plan to leave Fastmail anytime soon, but if I had to, I could switch my email provider without needing to tell everyone that I’m changing my email address.

The search does the job well: I’ve never had any cause for complaint.

I recently used my email to connect to a third-party service, and I loved that as Fastmail requires specific app passwords, it sent me a “Need help setting up your email app?” email to guide me. It explained to me how to set up my email in the service instead of simply sending a vague “wrong password” message. It’s a general impression about Fastmail: each feature seems to have been thought through before shipping, so you don’t fall into borderline cases.

Not only does a Fastmail account increase your productivity, it also protects your privacy. Let email work for you when you try Fastmail free for 30 days!