This is a big reason why I list cheaper alternatives to Fastmail whenever the topic of emails comes here. If your needs are more than one mailbox (not aliases), then Fastmail soon becomes prohibitively expensive. A few years ago, when asked about cheaper pricing plans, Fastmail replied that it has no plans (no pun intended) to go cheaper or offer cheaper plans.
There are other alternatives that are cheaper and focus on privacy, reliability, etc. They may not be as famous as the Fastmail brand. Posteo (no custom ___domain support), Mailbox.org, Runbox, Migadu, Mailfence and Mxroute are just some of the providers out there that give Fastmail a run for the money. Vote with your wallet.
I suspect Fastmail can't afford to offer cheaper plans. I bet their common customer is a small business and offering cheap family plans would put a huge dent in their revenues. Also, I suspect it would attract people that need tech support. I'd bet a really nice dinner their cfo has modeled the numbers.
So as to prevent abuse from small businesses, why not request proofs that you are indeed a family, or something of the sort? (there some privacy-related edges in doing that though, and a time expense in verifying those docs...) Or, the other way around, add it explicitly in t&c that small businesses abusing family plans are violating t&c's?
Also, a family plan doesn't have to be 4x cheaper, even a 2x discount might do the trick if we're talking a family of 3-5.
I highly doubt this would put a "huge dent" in their revenues if all the nerds who are currently using their standard plans solo will invite their family members in and would start paying a little bit more than they currently do (e.g. 1.5x); what it would do though is it would earn them some positive karma and visibility on hn, reddit and other corners of the net.
Before the current prices, they had family plans and the rationale for removing them was that they are struggling to be profitable.
So your hutch goes counter to their direct declaration at the time (I'm a long time customer, don't have references ready, but I can look if you want).
"Positive karma and visibility on HN/Reddit" is laughable. Don't get me wrong, but I see a lot of self-entitlement on these threads, with people supposedly blocking ads for privacy reasons and due to not having a way to give money, yet when something like YouTube Premium happens, they still don't subscribe, because fuck them, too expensive. Brings the "eating your cake and having it too" ideal to a whole new level.
As a matter of fact the cheap or free users generate over 80% of the support tickets, always. And if it's free or too cheap, it means you're the product.
What gets actual positive karma is staying in business and not milking user data in order to serve ads. If you want your data to be milked, Gmail is still free.
Thanks, these are all good points (and I did a bit of research/googling on the family plans that they had, too).
In a very simple example though: I'm currently considering getting a FM account, but I would only get it for the whole family, e.g. of 4. As of right now, I probably won't because 4 x $50/y is a tad too much.
So, in the one extreme, FM has to support +0 extra customers and gets $0. I'm not happy, they lose a customer, noone wins.
If I subscribe alone, FM has to support +1 customer and gets $50. Since it's their current plan, they are happy with it. FM wins.
Another unrealistic extreme, the whole family is free, FM has to support +4 customers and still gets $50. Obviously they aren't happy with it.
However, if the family gets a discount K, so that a family of four pay (K * $200), where K < 1, we get examples like e.g. they get +4 customers and +$150. If that's above their profit margins, they're happy and we're happy, everybody wins. I'm pretty sure even if K was something like 0.8 this would already attract many, the question is finding a number that suits everyone. Or it could be - get discount X% for family of size Y, so the discount is dynamic, e.g. 0.9 for 2, 0.85 for 3, etc.
I wouldn't categorize these users as "cheap" (why?) since it's not a whole lot cheaper than buying the normal plan X times. As long as there's a non-zero discount, it would be viewed differently by the users (as opposed to the current "fuck off, we don't care" approach).
Your analysis again skips the cheap family plans (1) cannibalizing the full-price SMB plans; and (2) the families that are already on the normal plans that immediately demand a discount. And implicitly assert Fastmail's cfo hasn't modeled these scenarios and is just leaving money on the table because they don't like money.
Just speculating here, but it is likely not going to be much cheaper than Fastmail, knowing basecamp's pricing history. I hope they do launch a family plan though
There are other alternatives that are cheaper and focus on privacy, reliability, etc. They may not be as famous as the Fastmail brand. Posteo (no custom ___domain support), Mailbox.org, Runbox, Migadu, Mailfence and Mxroute are just some of the providers out there that give Fastmail a run for the money. Vote with your wallet.