Why isn't there a Superhuman for Fastmail?

There’s no Superhuman for Fastmail. Gmail and Outlook dominate email. Together they power nearly 40% of inboxes, with over 2.3 billion accounts (source). It’s no wonder tools like Superhuman focus exclusively on these platforms. But if you’re one of the many Fastmail users who care about privacy, you’re out of luck — there’s no Superhuman for us.

Superhuman is an awesome email client, but it isn’t an email service. Piggybacking off of Outlook or Gmail, it adds features that make email so much faster. It’s hard to explain without trying it, mostly because their landing page doesn’t do the product justice, but once you use it for a few weeks, you’re hooked. Superhuman’s shortcuts, speed, split inbox, and AI summaries have changed how I process email. Once you’ve archived 200 emails in a minute or triaged your whole inbox from the keyboard, it’s hard to go back. You’ll say to yourself, “Why hasn’t email always been this way?”

For many years, I’ve been a hesitant Gmail user for a number of reasons. The product hasn’t changed much, their takes on privacy have always been a bit off-putting, and I’ve usually found better alternatives, such as Fastmail.

Fastmail is a privacy-first email service with some awesome features. I can use unlimited domains with it and with that I use wildcard aliases. That means, when I’m asked for an email, I can make one up on the spot. Like [email protected] or [email protected]. It’s such an underrated feature and lets you know who’s sharing/selling your contact info, especially with car dealers (for example [email protected] is where I’d send all email if I was car shopping for Toyotas).

There are some other great features and it’s pretty inexpensive. I pay for email because I want the privacy. Yes, I know, if I wanted true privacy I’d host my own email server, but I don’t have time for that.

So why not use paid Gmail? I do for my business, but I’m hesitant to move all of my email back to Gmail after nearly 8 years. But it’s getting harder not to, because the good tools only plug into Gmail and Outlook.

As much as I love Fastmail’s values and flexibility, the experience feels a bit… manual. There’s no split inbox, no blazing keyboard shortcuts, no magic AI to help me fly through messages.

The tools are missing for a reason. Fastmail, like many privacy-first providers, is mostly reached through IMAP (Fastmail did build JMAP, a modern alternative, but few clients use it) — an aging standard that doesn’t offer the same real-time capabilities or developer flexibility as Gmail or Outlook’s proprietary APIs.

A few indie developers have taken stabs at solving this — like FMail2 on macOS or various open-source clients — but none feel anywhere near as fast as Superhuman.

I’d love to see a Superhuman-style client for Fastmail — something private that’s still fast. Maybe it’s time we start building one. Or at least ask louder for it.

Would you use it?

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Just as I was about to hit publish, I read that Superhuman was acquired by Grammarly. No idea yet what that means for the product, but it doesn’t make me any less interested in an alternative.