Fastmail adds EU data region — but won't promise your data never leaves it

Fastmail now lets customers choose the European Union as the primary home for their email, storing the live copy on company-owned servers co-located in Amsterdam. Until now every account lived entirely in the US (Philadelphia and St Louis). The new site runs on Fastmail’s own hardware and software rather than rented cloud infrastructure, mirroring the setup the provider says it has used for 25 years, with data encrypted at rest inside locked racks. Users near Europe with EU billing addresses were pre-migrated; everyone else defaults to the US and can switch region under Settings, with moves toward the EU running slower because mail has to sync across the Atlantic.

The post is notable less for the feature than for its candor about the limits of data residency. Choosing the EU moves your primary copy, but a geographically separate replica still sits in the US since Amsterdam is Fastmail’s only European site so far. Emergency encrypted backups for all users live in Philadelphia, system logs are consolidated in the US, and metadata such as email addresses, website/file storage, and third-party billing and support integrations are replicated everywhere. Fastmail states plainly that it cannot guarantee data stays only in the EU.

The company also stresses jurisdiction over geography: as an Australian business bound by Australian law and its legal-cooperation treaties, it says it responds the same way to lawful requests regardless of where data is stored. That framing — spelling out what’s replicated, what isn’t, and who can compel access — is a pointed contrast to providers that make residency claims sound absolute. There’s no EU surcharge; Fastmail treats the choice as the customer’s to make with full information.